Academic freedom severely restricted in India: Scholars at Risk

Some attacks on education in India involved direct repression, the report said, including police violence against student protests.

Hyderabad: Academic freedom in India was “severely restricted” between July 2025 and June 2026, according to a “Free to Think” report by Scholars at Risk (SAR), which placed the country alongside Hong Kong, Pakistan, Indonesia, war-torn Ukraine and the occupied West Bank.

SAR identified attacks on higher education communities worldwide, tracking and reporting key incidents aiming to protect vulnerable individuals, raise awareness, encourage accountability and promote tools to protect academic freedom. The 2026 report documented attacks in 59 countries and territories and saw “concerning developments” in 22, including India.

Centre’s involvement in influencing higher studies

It highlighted the Centre’s expansion of authority over higher education, influencing university governance and leadership appointments. Some attacks on education in India involved direct repression, the report said, including police violence against student protests.

Apart from the Centre, SAR found that university administrators often took actions that stifled campus discourse, such as canceling academic events, dismissing faculty members and enforcing rules to restrict student expression. “Both students and police committed acts of violence at protests or other campus gatherings. Academic freedom was ‘severely restricted’ in 2026,” the report said.

Role of UGC

To promote state influence over higher education, the report said the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) continued to use the University Grants Commission (UGC) despite facing criticism.

“Interference degrades university autonomy, including the independence of universities to make decisions about hiring, curriculum, administrative functions, and the physical campus environment. Without such autonomy, scholars and students face constraints on their research and teaching or self-censor for fear of facing direct repression,” it read.

According to SAR’s report, the UGC has been scrutinised over time for introducing policies which are perceived to have increased government control over universities.

Constrained freedom of research, teaching, publication

It highlighted the Supreme Court’s life ban on three academics for publishing the eighth-grade National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbook that included “corruption in the judiciary.” Not only did the apex court ban the book in all forms of publication, but also directed governments to dissociate from the authors. It later changed its ruling, allowing public universities and states to decide whether to work with the concerned authors.

Another factor contributing to the “severely restricted” status of academic freedom in India was the Jammu and Kashmir government banning the sale, distribution, and possession of 25 books on Kashmir’s socio-political history by global scholars.

Restriction of academic discourse, suppression of dissent

The report underlined university authorities’ role in limiting academic discourse and suppressing dissent by firing professors, canceling events, and banning or prosecuting student protesters.

It noted the sacking of Professor Lora Sathakumar by SRM Institute of Science and Technology over her social media posts critical of Operation Sindoor and civilian casualties in Pakistan. South Asian University fired Professor Snehashish Bhattacharya in September 2025 for “misconduct against university interests.” He was one of the fourteen faculty members to have signed a letter expressing concern over how the university dealt with the October 2022 student protests.

Against BJP: Justification of canceling events

The report found that universities often justified canceling an event by pointing to the anti-governmental statements made by the invited speakers, as both Banaras Hindu University and Mumbai University did. Other times, universities provided no clear reason, like Delhi University citing “administrative reasons” when it cancelled a seminar, “Land, Property and Democratic Rights.”

Polarisation between student groups (ABVP vs NSUI, AISA)

During research, the SAR found that ideological polarisation between student groups transformed beyond academic and cultural events and into “political flashpoints.”

Confrontations during student elections and campus events were mainly the driving factors for clashes between the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and left-wing All India Students Association (AISA) and National Students’ Union of India (NSUI).

In Hyderabad, ABVP members clashed with students at English and Foreign Languages University who were holding a protest in solidarity with Palestine on October 7 last year.

Police intervention to suppress protests

The report said that police sometimes intervened to suppress students’ demonstrations, with clashes reported across India. Telangana Police arrested several student leaders from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi Vidyarthi (BRSV), the student wing of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), during a protest at Osmania University on July 19, 2025.

Global academic freedom declining

Citing the Academic Freedom Index, the Free to Think report said global conditions for academic freedom are deteriorating as AFI found that only nine countries registered improvements out of the 179 countries it analysed. In the US, the institutional autonomy score dipped from 3.3 in 2019 to 1.7 in 2025.

India’s 2026 Academic Freedom Index Score was recorded as 0.14.