Silence like a cancer grows
– Paul Simon
Once known for intellectual risk-taking and passionate disagreements, India’s university campuses today feel subdued. A new caution hangs in the air, shaping conversations and silences alike. This sinister shift has occurred not through dramatic crackdowns but through small, incremental decisions that have collectively altered the academic spirit in many higher educational institutions.
Instances of a talk quietly cancelled, ‘controversial’ speakers disinvited, or an uncomfortable theme dropped from the syllabus are becoming all too familiar. Each of these decisions may appear minor and even pragmatic. University administrators describe such actions as necessary precautions in polarised times. But taken together, they reveal the slow unmaking of the once-vibrant, plural Indian university into a space defined by anxiety, not curiosity.
For decades, campuses in India were arenas of contestation. Lecture halls echoed with debates on varied subjects such as justice, development and identity. Professors frequently disagreed publicly and modelled disagreement as a scholarly virtue. From professors, students learned that knowledge grew through friction rather than consensus.
Unfortunately, that ethos is fading. More worryingly, it is slowly being replaced by a cautious search for safety over intellectual challenge. This becomes clear when university managements usually frame controversial decisions in the language of risk management, such as concerns about reputation, regulatory pressure or security threats.
These anxieties are real. There is no denying that administrators operate today under relentless scrutiny, not just from political actors but also from online campaigns and organised pressure groups. In such an environment, caution appears responsible, even inevitable and sometimes unavoidable.
However, we cannot afford to ignore the far-reaching consequences of this approach. This internalised censorship is a Faustian bargain. Institutions performing anxiety risk, as Asghar Ali Engineer argued, are abandoning their historic role as sanctuaries for alternative thought and counterweights to majoritarian narratives. Such institutions are slowly shifting from knowledge centres to risk-management units, prioritising institutional survival over intellectual courage.
Scholars have described this transformation as the ‘authoritarianisation of civil society’ in which regimes succeed not by dismantling every independent institution, but by fostering a pervasive fear that inevitably leads to self-censorship. Consequently, universities begin to police themselves, anticipating backlash even before it arrives. Over time, silence becomes habitual, and worse, intellectual neutrality is mistaken for institutional wisdom.
It may also be worthwhile to recall German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who described universities as central spaces of the ‘public sphere’, where citizens debate power and imagine alternative futures. According to him, when campuses retreat from controversy, the public sphere contracts. That is precisely what is happening today on our campuses.
More often than not, it is political polarisation that starts and deepens this crisis. When disagreement is increasingly framed as disloyalty, university leadership naturally prioritises institutional preservation over intellectual vitality. Faculty wary of professional repercussions recalibrate research agendas and public engagement. When administrative and academic leadership fail in their duty, what can one expect of students? They begin to view the university as a credentialing factory and not a civic space.
All of these trends reinforce one another. When administrators emphasise caution, faculty retreat further and students internalise restraint as normal academic behaviour. As a result, the campus transforms from a place of inquiry into a site of quiet compliance. We pay an enormous price for this. Students learn not only from lectures but from institutional conduct. A cancelled seminar tells them that certain ideas are too dangerous to examine. A disinvited speaker teaches them that intellectual challenge carries consequences. Gradually, curiosity gives way to prudence.
The national costs of such a trend are even greater. Universities are spaces where young citizens practise democratic deliberation, listening to opposing viewpoints, refining arguments, and learning to change their minds. When campuses abandon this role, democracy obviously weakens. A society that discourages argument loses the capacity for self-correction.
Is it possible to reverse this trajectory? Yes, but it demands collective resolve. Only when university leaders learn to reframe controversy as evidence of intellectual vitality rather than reputational danger, faculty members are assured of institutional protection to pursue difficult questions without fear, and students are encouraged to approach unfamiliar ideas with curiosity instead of apprehension, such a change is possible. Above all, government agencies and policymakers must recognise that democratic resilience depends on intellectually confident universities.
It is common knowledge that India’s universities have endured crises before and have often recovered through academic courage and institutional reflection. Whether they can do so again depends on recognising the urgency of the present moment. The hard truth is that the issue at hand is not merely about individual speakers being disinvited or a few incidents being cancelled, but more about the intellectual culture that institutions choose to cultivate on campus.
John J Kennedy | Former Professor and Dean, Christ (Deemed) University, Bengaluru
(Views are personal)