DANGER TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM

PRATHAPA RAMASUBBAIAH

The stage through which the system of our university education currently passing is very crucial to the basic issues of our-goal of creating a just and democratic social order and the role of a university is expected to play in it. The autonomy of the university and the sanctity of academic freedom are as vital to democracy as the independence of the judiciary.

We must be conscious of the fact that funds for running our academic institutions come from public exchequer as much as the judicial courts are maintained at public expense. A university, therefore, is not an ivory tower isolated from the humdrum of social life. Such a socially and vitally beneficial institution and its autonomy should not imply lack of accountability to the society. But the irony of the situation is that it is the very sense of social responsibility which provides a guilty conscience to certain academicians who feel that their participation in the present educational system which has become irrelevant to the requirements of the people helps only to perpetuate the existing inequitable social order. Whenever the components constituting a university articulate their personal, social and professional problems and raise their voice of protest against injustice and misdeeds of the authorities, their exercise of legitimate freedom becomes intolerable to those who exercise complete material control over our education. Freedom of thought, expression and organisation in our educational life is now under systematic attack by the forces of status quo and the enemies of social change and progress as is evidenced from the policies being pursued by various state governments.

In the pursuit of knowledge which is essentially a social asset, both the individual as well as society make significant contributions. Academic institutions me fostered by society to facilitate systematic and disciplined process of learning. They not only educate the young in the advanced fields of arts and sciences but the university teachers are engaged in creating new knowledge. They assess the existing body of ideas and explanations and evolve new ones. At both these levels – training and proposing new ideas – the university performs a key role in social development. The performance of the university is, therefore, constantly a point of discussion. If the practitioners of knowledge, that is, the teachers, students and educational administrators, merely echo the voice of the ruling classes, then only play their role as the instruments of legitimation, and knowledge, as a social asset, remains mainly at the disposal of the Government. But if the university is responsible not to the Government but only to society at large, then the entire picture changes.

A scholar has not only to be conscious of the intellectual standards of his discipline but also the reality of his social environment. The process of knowing cannot be divorced from participation in social practice. Consequently if an intellectual is a seeker after truth, he then has to perceive his vocation independent of the State. He has to relate his work with the needs of people, material, moral, aesthetic and others while maintaining the logical and scientific rigour. When this is done, the university experiences diverse pulls, some from the State, some from society and others cutting across both. Various sections of society demand that universities should help in solving burning problems of the day and the university’s response might threaten the ruling classes. In such critical circumstances, the State moves in to control the process of education and even tries to make the university impotent and irrelevant. But actually in such a situation the university continues to be relevant but only as an obedient messenger of the State. The diverse pressures from society and State are both the impetus for innovation at the university and also the source of tension and crisis.

The Indian society has had been experiencing a deepening all-round crisis and the ruling classes have found the universities as one of the potential sources of thereat resulting in increased and steady State intervention in campuses across the country. At the same time, the academic climate has, of late, very much deteriorated and actually a more or less inert intelligentsia pervades our campuses and much academic mediocrity easily passes for high prizes. Yet in the very nature of the university, the ruling classes see threats since truth is ever subversive of facades.

If we look at the variety of State intervention in universities, several trends including direct control are visible. We see frequent cases of universities being taken over, academic bodies being suspended and administrators replacing vice-chancellors. The new legislations grant more arbitrary powers to the Government in appointments, conditions of service and management procedures.

In many parts of the country the growth of gangsterism and police entry into campuses is endangering sustained academic activity and also terrorising teachers and the taught. In many campuses situations of tension have been so badly handled that police were called in frequently to quell unrest and disturbances resulting in deplorable conditions where vice-chancellors and principals feel dependent upon collectors and police superintendents. These and other dangers to academic freedom and culture of free enquiry and learning in the country needs to be taken serious note of and fought by the entire academic community and leaders of public opinion. Another regrettable factor is that today many of the vice-chancellors are no longer outstanding scholars who can evoke respect and inspire scholarly endeavour but are political proteges of the ruling parties rewarded for their service to the State.

Yet another trend encompassing our campuses today almost all major parties have their student wings in universities and colleges and as a rule electoral politics in the states get entangled with student politics. But this politicisation has to be reconciled with the commitment to the philosophical and disciplinary idea of the university. The increased politicisation process with all its complexities and tensions has created a vulnerable atmosphere for State intervention by way of putting one segment against another. The ruling party now has its teaching groups who intervene in the realm of appointments and defend the governmental policies. Other parties also play this game of pressure politics in campuses instead of acting as positive links between the university and society. In the process the university’s intellectual and social functions inevitably suffer setbacks.

Progressive and forward-looking academicians are expressing their deep concern at the growing erosion of academic freedom in universities and institutions of higher learning. For instance in Jammu and Kashmir, Orissa, Bihar, Gujrat and some other states, the Government has either through direct interference in administration and appointments or through ordinances, streamlined teaching faculties into compliance with the state ideology. Even the University Grants Commission is reported to underscore this unhealthy and retrograde activity.

We must take a serious note of the intellectual domination by the ruling class ideology which is pervading various disciplines in manifold, divergent and subtle forms. In all these trends a desperate state machinery which feels insecure in the face of mounting opposition, grabs opportunities to use the agencies of communication towards its own end. After exhausting its legislative and executive powers, the Government resorts to political organization within the Campus. Conscious of the fact that knowledge itself can be a source of threat, the State wakes up to control the fountain.

The only way this process of State intervention be halted is to make the university more intimately linked with society. If our pursuit of knowledge can convince the working people of the country that it is purposive and scientific, then they will elect such a State which zealously protects academic freedom and integrity. When we find popular support for university autonomy, the State shall be pressurised to refrain from intervention. On the one hand our intellectual endeavour must be of such a quality that deserves support from the people and on the other hand, it must contribute to create social conditions congenial for such pursuits of knowledge and culture. Protecting academic freedom from the onslaught of the State and enriching it for the human progress must become a pledge of every concerned individual and institution.

There seems to be in operation a determined conspiracy to stifle the academic initiative and undermine whatever dignity and independence survive in academic life. These trends threaten not only the present functioning of universities and research institutions but their future existence as well. The dire need of the day is that education must be rescued from State debauchery. It is of utmost importance that minds are not enslaved, anaesthetised or numbed and academic initiative and independence not curbed. Let us remember that the history of our freedom struggle was inextricably intertwined with the struggle for the liberation of educational institutions where knowledge of new sciences, arts and history could be imparted unfettered in an atmosphere of freedom and fearlessness in order to create secular, democratic and socialist order.

It is up to the academicians confined to the seclusion of “academic monasteries” and that of laboratories to shed their false sense of superior complex and unhesitatingly join the fighting ranks of the working masses who are in the front line of the battle for bread and human dignity.

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