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India\u2019s premier universities and professional institutes that were once considered the republic\u2019s most independent and vibrant spaces of inquiry are being steadily transformed into ideological instruments. The resignation of Professor Ram Kumar Kakani, Director of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Raipur, in mid-2025, marks yet another chapter in the long erosion of institutional autonomy under NarendraModi government.<\/p>\n
As The Indian Express reported on October 9, 2025, Kakani became the third IIM head in five years to quit after clashes with politically influenced boards. He cited \u201cconstriction of professional space\u201d and the shrinking of institutional freedom. His exit followed a Chhattisgarh High Court ruling that disciplinary authority lay with the Board rather than the Director under the IIM Act 2017, effectively reducing directors to figureheads. The New Indian Express, on October 10, 2025, observed that the debate on IIM autonomy has \u201creached a breaking point.\u201d<\/p>\n
This pattern is not new. Former IIM Calcutta directors Anju Seth (2021) and Uttam Kumar Sarkar (2023) also resigned following board interference. Their departures, reported by The Wire and The Indian Express, illustrate how governance reforms once touted as \u201cliberalisation\u201d have, in practice, enabled greater central control through government-nominated boards.<\/p>\n
The phenomenon extends beyond the IIMs. India\u2019s standing in international assessments of academic freedom has dropped sharply in recent years. The Academic Freedom Index and Scholars at Risk\u2019s 2024 Free to Think report describe India as a country where \u201cacademic freedom has deteriorated seriously since 2014.\u201d (PIE News, March 2024). The reports note pressures on universities, from ideological monitoring of syllabi to political influence over faculty appointments.<\/p>\n
The experience of Ashoka University \u2014 once held up as India\u2019s liberal beacon \u2014 exemplifies the climate of fear. In August 2023, Assistant Professor Sabyasachi Das resigned after controversy over his working paper on the 2019 general election, which suggested statistical irregularities favoring the ruling party. Al Jazeera reported on August 28, 2023 that Ashoka distanced itself from the paper amid political backlash, prompting Das\u2019s resignation. Soon after, economist PulapreBalakrishnan also resigned in protest, calling the university\u2019s response a \u201cgrave error of judgement,\u201d as noted by The Hindu on August 17, 2023. Two years earlier, in March 2021, political scientist PratapBhanu Mehta and economist Arvind Subramanian had left Ashoka, citing the administration\u2019s inability to shield academic independence \u2014 a development covered by The Print and The Wire.<\/p>\n
The chilling effect has reached beyond academia\u2019s private enclaves. The International Studies Association (ISA) warned on April 10, 2024, that \u201cacademic freedom and institutional autonomy are being systematically eroded by political control and interference by the state and ruling parties,\u201d urging vigilance against the politicisation of higher education governance.<\/p>\n
This politicisation is equally visible on India\u2019s public-sector campuses. During the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in December 2019, Delhi Police entered the JamiaMilliaIslamia campus, firing tear gas inside the library and beating students \u2014 acts documented by The Guardian and Al Jazeera (February 16, 2020). The Delhi High Court later criticised the use of force on students exercising their right to protest. Only weeks later, on January 5, 2020, masked attackers stormed Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), injuring students and faculty. Scroll.in (January 6, 2020) and Time magazine (January 8, 2020) reported widespread allegations of police inaction and links between the assailants and the student wing of the ruling party.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the purge reached media education. In December 2018, senior journalist Amit Sengupta of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) was abruptly transferred to Dhenkanal, Odisha \u2014 a move widely viewed as punitive after he criticised government policies. The Caravan magazine\u2019s January 2019 report titled \u201cAmit Sengupta\u2019s Removal from IIMC Shows Government\u2019s Grip on Media Education\u201d detailed the incident, quoting Sengupta\u2019s resignation letter decrying \u201cideological policing within journalism education.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s defenders insist these are isolated incidents. Yet taken together \u2014 the resignations at IIMs and Ashoka, the violent crackdowns at Jamia and JNU, the coercive transfers at IIMC \u2014 they reveal a coordinated project of campus capture. The strategy is subtle but systemic: reshape boards, install compliant administrators, weaponise bureaucracy, and stigmatise dissent as disloyalty.<\/p>\n
As independent journalist Abhisar Sharma argued in an interview with Newslaundry on October 9, 2025, the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, are \u201ctightening control over universities \u2014 from JNU and BHU to IITs and IIMs \u2014 eroding their independent character.\u201d While the government\u2019s media allies celebrate \u201cacademic excellence,\u201d India\u2019s finest institutions are being hollowed out from within.<\/p>\n
The Boundary 2 Journal, in its June 26, 2025 essay \u201cHinduizing the University: Academic Unfreedom on the Indian Campus,\u201d described how intellectual spaces are being \u201cre-engineered to reward conformity and punish critical scholarship.\u201d That transformation is not confined to curriculum or research but extends to the very ethos of learning \u2014 from inquiry to obedience, from debate to dogma.<\/p>\n
The consequences are profound. Universities are where democratic conversation begins, where dissent matures into thought. If these spaces lose their autonomy, a nation forfeits its intellectual sovereignty. The Modi government\u2019s tightening grip over India\u2019s knowledge institutions may yield short-term ideological triumphs, but it is draining the lifeblood of democratic imagination.<\/p>\n
A society that fears free minds will soon find itself ruled by obedient ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s premier universities and professional institutes that were once considered the republic\u2019s most independent and vibrant spaces of inquiry are being steadily transformed into ideological instruments. The resignation of Professor Ram Kumar Kakani, Director of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Raipur, in mid-2025, marks yet another chapter in the long erosion of institutional …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":185359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2025\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-10-11-at-10.15.12-AM.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185360,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185358\/revisions\/185360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}