A Bengaluru professor’s mention of a minority community student as a ‘terrorist’ at least 13 times before a class full of students has evoked outrage. The police filed a suo motu case and the university suspended the professor. Such aberrant classroom behaviour is not new in India. In 2022, a student at the Manipal Institute of Technology took on a professor for calling him ‘Kasab’, referring to the 26/11 terror convict; the professor was dismissed from service. More worrying was the Muzaffarnagar case of 2023, in which a private school teacher told pupils to slap their seven-year-old Muslim classmate for getting his math tables wrong. Humiliation followed by the authorities’ silence had distressed Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula and tribal medical student Payal Tadvi. Casteist and communal targeting on campus is an unhealthy trend that reflects the fissures of our society. It is the normalisation of such behaviour in educational institutions that is more worrying.
Though action follows at times—the Bengaluru police charged the professor under Sections 299 (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings) and 352 (intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of peace) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita—such comments leave youngsters vulnerable. The professor is also recorded to have said, “The Iran war happened because of people like you.” In a world fraught with violence, teachers must keep their personal biases aside and, instead, host inclusive discussions on the various ways the label ‘terrorist’ has been applied and the need to be careful about it.
These incidents raise the need for a debate on the ethics and conduct of faculty, and how students should be equipped to handle such harassment. The need of the hour is a tool such as the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, which has been stayed by the Supreme Court. The Karnataka government has taken a step in the right direction with the Rohith Vemula (Prevention of Exclusion or Injustice) (Right to Education and Dignity) Bill, 2025. They promise students legal remedy against caste-based discrimination. Rights groups must also raise their voice for such cases. Just as students sign a mandatory declaration on ragging, institutions should have a binding code of conduct for faculty on campuses, which are considered to be temples of learning.