5 Academic Activism and Living with Sedition in the 21st Century: Reflections from India

Abstract

Abstract Academic activism has a long tradition in Indian higher education. Students across the universities actively participated in the Indian freedom movement and students and teachers were booked under the sedition1 law by the colonial government. Sedition law was brought by the colonial government to curb all the forms of protests by the people for independence, which has continued under the Indian penal code till today. Although India became free in 1947, colonial law exists and has been misused by the different consecutive governments in power over the seven decades. In recent years, universities have become the site of conflicts in India due to the continuous suppression of the voices of students and academics. There has been an increase in the diversity of the students and faculties from underrepresented groups in the university spaces and so new forms of questions are being asked with respect to discriminatory practices based on caste, class, gender and other markers of identity. Academic freedom as well as academic activism have been questioned by the dominant ruling groups. The suicide of doctoral student Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad and the arrest of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) President Kanhaiya Kumar with other students have created new debates in Indian higher education about the importance of academic freedom and the role of academic activism in reviving the idea of a university as well democracy in the production of knowledge and fight against existing inequality, exclusion and injustices in the campuses as well as in the Indian society. Academic activism is deeply rooted within the idea of democracy and universities are the sites of critical consciousness. The present study uses primary as well secondary sources in understanding the idea of academic activism in Indian higher education in the 21st century. For the primary sources, the researcher interviews two former JNU scholars charged under the sedition law as well the academic activists in higher education in India. The study finds that protests against the closure of common fellowship in higher education as well as protests against the privatisation of higher education in the form of an increase in fees in public universities have revived the academic activism in Indian higher education. The study also finds that the demands for higher education as a common good by the academicians and students in public universities has sort of unsettled the neoliberal idea of universities. Academic freedom and academic activism need to be protected for the production of knowledge in higher education and as a global common good for a just and equitable society.