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IF a new education policy is framed by a committee headed by a retired babu, the voluble T.S.R. Subramanian, it is fair to expect archaic views on student bodies and a desire to please the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the state.
The education minister is an abrasive Smriti Irani, of questionable academic credentials.
In Hyderabad Central University, the Ambedkar Students Association was targeted. The ministry pressurised the university, and a student leader Rohith Vemula and his friends were expelled from the hostel and their stipend was stopped.
Indian law on academic rights has hardly developed.
Vemula’s suicide led to a national outrage against the policies of the Modi government towards educational institutions and cultural bodies. The committee was aware of this.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi has been a particular eyesore with the BJP and RSS. It was regarded as a bastion of the left. An event on Feb 9 to mark the execution of Afzal Guru, after his conviction for the attack on Parliament House in 2011, provided an excuse for another clampdown.
The president of the students’ union Kanhaiya Kumar and his friends were charged with “sedition”. Kanhaiya was put in prison and released on bail after over a fortnight. This triggered a debate on what constitutes nationalism which continues. A pro-RSS man was imposed as vice chancellor on the JNU. At the IIT-Madras the Periyar Study Circle was banned.
For all the activism of champions of human rights and the judiciary in India the law on the rights of teachers and students has hardly developed. It is high time that the status of universities and the rights of teachers and students were recognised. A university is set up by statutes. That does not give the legislature any right to curb its autonomy.
It provides space, meals, community, lodging, library and opportunities in its campus for its members, the teachers and students, freely to mingle, share ideas, interests, and activities; above all, to conduct research, question, debate and reflect. All these are comprised in the concept of academic freedom which no law can constitutionally curtail.
Justice Abe Fortas of the US Supreme Court said in a notable case in 1969: “It can scarcely be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression at the school-house gate.”
The courts abroad draw the line between the rights of students and teachers at schools and at universities. In all cases, conduct must not disrupt teaching or disturb the rights of others, by action or speech.
Subject to this, Justice Fortas explained: “In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the state chooses to communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.”
Fundamental rights are subject to “reasonable restrictions”. Their reasonableness, which it is for the courts to decide, depends on a particular context. It has been held judicially, that university authorities violate free speech if they attempt to control the content of student journals.
Nor is there any curb on a university student’s right to publish, edit, or write for a journal or newspaper. University authorities may not remove books from the library of which they do not approve. Students have a right to set up a union.
Section 43(1) of UK’s Education Act, 1986, is a provision which should be inserted in all university acts: “Every individual and body or persons concerned in the government of any establishment to which this section applies shall take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of
the establishment and for visiting speakers.” No state can impose its own ideology on a university, college or school.
An Arkansas statute made it unlawful “for any teacher in any university, college, normal, public school, or other institution of the state, which is supported … from public funds … to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals”. The US Supreme Court struck down the statute.
Paul Sweezy was persecuted for a lecture he delivered on socialism. The Supreme Court quashed the proceedings. “To impose any straitjacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our nation. No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust.”
The state cannot stifle the students’ and the teachers’ right and duty to question conventional wisdom.
The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.
Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2016
