Teaching a Lesson?: Academic Freedom and the Indian State: Dr. S. Muralidhar

[Gopal Krishna]

The challenges ahead of us: How do we prepare for the day after tomorrow?

Academic freedom in the Indian context throws up the challenges of accommodating several competing interests and, on top of it, social inequalities exacerbated by caste, class and communal prejudices. The Supreme Court has in the context of accepting a limited quota for Christians in Delhi’s St Stephen’s College reminded that: “Every educational institution irrespective of community to which it belongs is a ‘melting pot’ in our national life. The students and teachers are the critical ingredients. It is there they develop respect for, and tolerance of, the cultures and beliefs of others. It is essential therefore, that there should be a proper mix of students of different communities in all educational institutions.”

Is there then hope? This is what most of us here would want to know. History tells us that even these times pass. Many a teacher and a student is, in some or other corner of the country, resisting being taken over by or surrendering to the pressures and pulls of a repressive regime. They signify the resilience of the human spirit to stand firm against odds. Ours is a plural society with lived histories of inclusivity, sharing and compassion. If we don’t let that yearning within each of us get snuffed out, there will be hope. Most importantly, it is essential for us to nurture that spirit and the constitutional values that we wish to live by, so that future generations will learn from our experience and know what to value and to preserve.

The changes we have witnessed in the past decade may be of a more enduring nature than we can imagine. It renders the task of restitution of our belief in constitutional values of inclusivity and pluralism even more challenging. How do we reclaim secular spaces for academic freedom within public universities and institutions of higher learning? How should private universities be facilitated to regain institutional autonomy? How can we cultivate and nurture ‘scientific temper’ and a spirit of enquiry in young minds? How can we improve the conditions of our public and government schooling to provide a hope for academic freedom from childhood to adulthood? How do we restore dignity of the individual in the closed learning space without distinctions on the basis of caste, gender and general stereotyping? How do we utilise to their full potential, the spaces that we have on the internet and strengthen the voices of the influencers who share our values and concerns? We have had in our midst, not too long ago, different models of education that appear to provide that alternate space and alternate system of education.

Full text: Teaching a Lesson?: Academic Freedom and the Indian State:Dr. S. Muralidhar