India’s academic freedom ‘severely curtailed’ under BJP rule: report

India’s academic freedom has been “severely curtailed” under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), according to the annual report “Free to Think 2026” published by Scholars at Risk’s (SAR), an international network of higher education institutions working to protect at-risk scholars and promote academic freedom, based at New York University.

SAR was founded in 1999 at the University of Chicago and includes more than 650 universities, academic associations and educational organizations in 40 countries.

US-based lawyer and human rights advocate Rob Quinn is spearheading SAR advocacy efforts. The SAR Council of Ambassadors includes well-known scholars and public leaders such as former Pen America President Dr. Anthony Appiah, prominent historian Ian Burma and former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Lloyd Axworthy.

According to the report, India’s Academic Freedom Index (AFI) score decreased from 0.16 in 2024 to 0.14 in 2026, both falling into the “severely restricted” category alongside its neighbors China (0.07) and Afghanistan (0.09), where academic freedom was in the “completely restricted” category. India’s AFI has declined significantly over the last decade from 0.41 in 2015.

The AFI is measured on a scale of 0 to 1 and assesses parameters such as campus integrity, freedom of academic and cultural expression, freedom of academic exchange and dissemination, freedom of research and teaching, and institutional autonomy.

The report documents 382 attacks resulting from 321 verified incidents in 59 countries and territories, as reported by SAR’s Academic Freedom Monitoring Project from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. Of the 382 attacks, India accounted for the most with 42 cases, the report said. These attacks included violence, imprisonment or the loss of position of academics or students.

Declining academic freedom under BJP rule

The report states that India’s central government has expanded its authority over higher education, influencing university governance, executive appointments and academic priorities. “University administrators have taken actions to suppress campus discourse, including firing faculty members, canceling academic events, and enforcing new policies limiting student speech. Both students and police have engaged in violent acts at protests or other campus gatherings,” the report said.

The report said the ruling BJP government continued to deploy the University Grants Commission (UGC) as the primary instrument of state influence over higher education. “The UGC has faced scrutiny in recent years for policies to tighten government control over universities, including relaxing academic qualification requirements for university vice-chancellors and speeding up the causalization of academic work by removing the 10% cap on non-permanent contract faculty,” he notes.

The report also said that the Jammu and Kashmir government banned the sale, distribution and possession of 25 books by world-renowned scholars, historians and journalists that dealt with the socio-political history of Kashmir, including discussions of enforced disappearances and feminist resistance. “Actions such as these are particularly dangerous because they provide a new model for the relationship between states and educational institutions that favors ideological conformity over independent thought,” the report said.

Repression of academics

Regarding the targeting of academic faculty, the report cites an incident in which the Supreme Court issued a “lifetime ban” on three academics from receiving public funding for curriculum development over a reference to “corruption in the judiciary” in a National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbook. “One of the scientists, Michel Danino, a visiting professor at IIT Gandhinagar and chairman of the NCERT Social Sciences Curriculum Group, has been dismissed from his faculty position,” the report said.

In another example, he states that after a two-year suspension, the South Asian University officially dismissed Professor Snehashish Bhattacharya in September 2025 for “misconduct against the interests of the university”. Mr. Bhattacharya and fourteen other faculty members signed a November 2022 letter expressing concern over the university’s handling of the October 2022 student protests.

The report also mentions the case of SRM Institute of Science and Technology professor Lora Santhakumar, who was sacked for social media posts critical of civilian casualties as a result of Indian military action in Pakistan.

The report also highlights a case in which Jamia Millia Islamia, a public research university in Delhi, suspended Professor Virendra Balaji Shahre for setting an exam question that asked students to “discuss atrocities against Muslim minorities in India” for his course on “Social Problems in India”.

Fines for student protesters

Ideological polarization between student groups, particularly the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the left-wing All India Students Association (AISA) and the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), turned academic and cultural events into “political flashpoints,” the report said. “Shifts in policy, academic decisions and debates about national identity, caste, religion and historical interpretation have led to student protests. In some cases, demonstrations have led to clashes between rival student factions,” it says.

The report said students protesting on Indian campuses faced pressure from university authorities, the police and opposition student factions. Some institutions, such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and Jamia Millia Islamia, cited a lack of official permission and “unauthorised” assemblies to punish students participating in peaceful protests. These include setting up a “peaceful” memorial for GN Saibaba, an Indian scholar who died after repeated imprisonment. Police complaints have been filed against the students at TISS. Following a peaceful demonstration on the fifth anniversary of the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)-related police crackdown at Jamia Millia Islamia, students were given a show-cause notice, a report said.

More broadly, Delhi University has imposed a temporary blanket ban on all public meetings, gatherings and demonstrations, resulting in the cancellation of cultural festivals, press conferences, iftar gatherings and any gathering of five or more people. “When the ban expired, the university notified the campus community that all future protests would require 72 hours’ prior approval and warned that violators would risk expulsion or police action,” the report said.

The report states that academic freedom has declined significantly in 50 of the 179 countries analyzed over the past decade. The AFI rated 9 of the 22 countries or territories covered in this report – and 34 overall – as “fully restricted”: Afghanistan, China, Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT): Gaza, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Another six countries or territories in this report – and 30 overall – were rated as “severely restricted”: Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, OPT: West Bank and Ukraine.