Plummeting Academic Freedom and Autonomy in Modi’s India
Last week, Delhi University Professor Apoorvanand Jha was denied permission to travel abroad for an academic seminar as he refused to get the paper he was presenting vetted by the Union government. Jha is a well-known academic, activist, and vocal critic of the centralizing tendencies of the Narendra Modi government.
While denying his leave application, Delhi University authorities said they would need to seek “advice” from the Union Ministry of Education. Describing it as “alarming,” Jha told The Wire, “We are losing Delhi University’s autonomy willingly.” Ironically, the topic he was slated to speak on at The New School in New York was “The University under a global authoritarian turn.”
Lambasting the university, the Democratic Teachers’ Front said denying Jha permission is an arbitrary action that amounts to “an act of censorship.”
In the backdrop of such incidents, it is not surprising that India ranks an abysmal 156th out of 179 countries, in the bottom 15 percent, in the global Academic Freedom Index (AFI) of the V-Dem Institute’s 2025 report.
The AFI is a global report that the Sweden-based V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute has developed and presented annually since 2020. The institute’s other significant report includes the global ranking of democracies.
The 2025 AFI report attributes the decline of academic freedom and autonomy to “anti-pluralist parties being in government.” It is not surprising that the sharpest decline in academic freedom in India coincided with the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coming to power nationwide in 2014.
India’s AFI score, which was 0.58 (among the top 50 percent globally) in 2015, has been sliding over the past decade. It was 0.22 in 2024 and plunged further to 0.16 this year, with 0 being most restricted and 1 being most free.
The rankings take into account factors like freedom to research and teach, freedom of academic exchange and dissemination, the institutional autonomy of universities, campus integrity, and the freedom of academic and cultural expression.
Among other things, the AFI index ascertains to what extent scholars are free to develop and pursue their own research and teaching agendas without interference, and to what extent campuses are free from politically motivated surveillance or security infringements.
The BJP’s electoral success at three general elections in a row — 2014, 2019, and 2024 — has helped to make the Modi-led regime more authoritarian, anti–federal, and centrist. In fact, the BJP’s overwhelming numerical majority in government ensured that it needed no major coalition partners, and therefore, it paid little heed to diversity and pluralism.
The clampdown on free speech, dissent, and personal freedoms since 2014 has also been reflected in increasing restrictions by the Modi government on university campuses, students, and faculty.
In an editorial, news portal DTNext accused the Union government of tearing “university autonomy to shreds by taking control of appointments, curricula, and research agendas.” An overwhelming number, nearly 80 percent, of vice-chancellor appointments to Central universities involve figures affiliated with the BJP and its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), DTNext observed. Moreover, in 2023, the University Grants Commission (UGC), which administers higher education in India, effectively curbed “freedom of research by prohibiting Ph.D. scholarships for students researching ‘politically sensitive’ topics such as Kashmir, caste, and Hindutva.” Instead, the UGC encouraged scholars to focus on researching “Indian knowledge systems.”
The censorship goes beyond denying funding. As per the National Crime Records Bureau, 28 academics are currently facing sedition and terror charges under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
The well-respected Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, once known as a bastion of free speech and dissent, has been in the crosshairs of the Modi government in recent years. Right-wing groups unleashed violence on the campus, injuring students and faculty in 2020, and several prominent student activists, who were booked for sedition, continue to languish in jail. Hindutva groups often mock JNU students, many of whom are left-leaning and liberal, as “urban Naxals.”
The AFI report lists the “common tactics” of anti-pluralist ruling parties to undermine academic freedom, which include reducing institutional autonomy, limiting the freedom to teach, defunding research that contradicts the government’s political vision, and fueling anti-science sentiments.
As per the report, India is among 34 countries where academic freedom has deteriorated the most in the past decade. India, which figures at the bottom, is classified as status group E, a country where academic freedom is “severely curtailed.” Neighbors Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan are ranked higher in the 30–40 percent range, while Sri Lanka figures in the 40–50 percent bracket. Bangladesh figures alongside India in the bottom 10 to 20 percent. In the immediate neighborhood, only Laos, China, Afghanistan, and Myanmar are worse off than India with regard to academic freedom.
In India, education is a concurrent subject under the joint jurisdiction of the Union government and respective state governments. However, of late, opposition-ruled states have had several run-ins with the Modi government over encroachments on academic autonomy in universities. In Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Kerala, for instance, the Union government-appointed governors who act as chancellors of state universities have been furthering the central government’s agenda and thwarting state government control.
In a recent speech on democracy and academic freedom in India, prominent academic Zoya Hasan said that the decline in academic freedom impacts democracy. The “right to express dissenting views is at the core of not just democracy but of knowledge production itself,” which is under threat and endangered with growing restrictions on the autonomy of universities, she said.
