India

Since the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, in 2014, India has been witnessing an authoritarian turn. This process of autocratization is captured well in some of V-Dem’s variables that range from 1 to 0. There was a decrease from 0.52 in 2013 to 0.26 in 2025 on the “Liberal Democracy Index.” India’s “Academic Freedom Index” (AFI) score also deteriorated in the same period but faced an even sharper decline from 0.62 in 2013 to 0.14 in 2025. In its 2025 report on India, Freedom House has noted how factors such as pressure and censorship of opposition students and scholars, appointment to administrative positions based on party loyalty, and mob violence by Hindu nationalists are linked to the decline in academic freedom. Meanwhile, Scholars at Risk (SAR) has identified a total of 375 instances of restriction of academic freedom in India between 2017 and 2026, which include physical attacks, police and state violence, as well as administrative sanctions and punishments.

The policies of the BJP government are the source of some of the most significant restrictions to academic freedom. Recently, the Indian government has been targeting Overseas Citizens of India, who are critical of the Hindu-nationalist policies of the BJP by revoking their status as overseas citizens, which takes away their visa privileges and requires them to seek permission from the government to do research or journalism. Additionally, the BJP government has been changing school curricula and the content of textbooks to erase the history of Hindu-nationalist ethnic violence, as well as the role of Muslims in the history of the Indian subcontinent. The intervention into education also extends to higher education. As the Kerala State government’s appeal to the Supreme Court from April 1, 2024, shows, the government has been using federally appointed governors to delay and block state legislation aimed at localizing control over educational institutions, and to influence the process of who gets appointed to vice-chancellor positions at universities.

The BJP government and the Indian state directly target academics and punish them for their views, as well. On May 18, 2025, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, Associate Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University, was arrested by police for a social media post in which he made some anti-war statements and criticized the government’s policy towards Muslims. He was released on bail two days later, and in June 2026, charges against him were dropped. Another major case was that of Dr. Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba, former University of Delhi professor of English and human rights activist. Following years of incarceration under terrorism charges, due to alleged links to banned Maoist groups, Dr. Saibaba died in October 2024 as a result of the multiple health complications he developed during his time in prison. As an academic and political activist, Dr. Saibaba was committed to advocating for the rights of marginalized groups such as Dalits and Adivasis.

Academics are not the only group whose expression is limited by the government in India. Student expression, especially in the form of protests and similar gatherings, is frequently repressed. The nationwide student protest wave which emerged in the summer of 2026 has demonstrated clearly the extent to which state violence is mobilized against student protests. Known commonly as the Cockroach Janta Party movement (a reference to a Supreme Court judge’s reference to young unemployed people as “cockroaches” and a wordplay of Modi’s BJP), Indian youth, many of whom are students, started mobilizing in response to claims of a leak of questions from the country’s medical college examination. Protests soon became a focus of youth frustration against the government, turning into a movement demanding educational reform and the dropping of charges against protestors. While the student protests resulted in the resignation of the Minister of Education in late July 2026, the first minister to resign over an issue of accountability during the Modi-BJP era, the response of the government has not been accommodating. On July 20, 2026, New Delhi police responded to protestors’ attempt to march towards the Parliament of India with tear gas and batons. About 150 students were injured while around 70 students were detained. A similar attempt to march on the state legislature in Jharkand state on August 10 also resulted in a police crackdown on the protestors. Violent police confrontation of student protests was common in India even before the most recent protest wave emerged. Examples include the police repression on October 9, 2025, of Pondicherry University students demanding their university suspend a faculty member accused of sexual harassment of several dozen students and the repression of Panjab University students calling for the protection of institutional autonomy on November 10, 2025.

University administrations are also to blame for the decline of academic freedom in India. In February 2026, Delhi University imposed a month-long ban on all protest gatherings. A month before that, Jami Millia Islamia University issued show-cause notices to student protestors. Beyond targeting student expression, universities have also been restricting faculty speech. In September 2024, a professor of anthropology at South Asian University resigned after his advisee received a show-cause notice from the school for citing a source criticizing Narendra Modi. In 2023, two professors resigned from the Economics Department at Ashoka University located in Sonipat, after the university tried to influence the department’s process of evaluating an academic paper which was about democratic backsliding in India. The faculty members of three departments later issued statements in which they accused the university of infringing upon the academic freedom of its faculty members. Such actions are often accompanied by restrictions on broader campus life, especially on events and activities. In January 2026, a guest lecture at Banaras Hindu University by an artist, scholar, and government critic was cancelled following state and federal government pressure.

Aside from the government and the university administrations, academic freedom in India is threatened by of mob violence, especially targeting Muslim students. On March 16, 2024, around 15 international students of Muslim faith were attacked by an armed group of 25 people for praying in their on-campus housing at Gujarat University. Likewise, at Savitribai Phule Pune University, a 19-year-old Muslim student was harassed and beaten up by a group that threatened to kill him if they saw him on campus again.

Endangered Scholars Worldwide is monitoring the developments around academic freedom in India with deep concern. We call upon the Indian government to immediately halt ongoing efforts to restrict the academic freedom of all members of university campuses including students and faculty members and to create the conditions in which campus members can freely engage in academic activities. We further call upon the members of the international community dedicated to protecting human rights to echo our calls to the Indian government to uphold human rights within its territories, which it has guaranteed under international law.

(Last updated: September 14, 2026)

Please send appeals to the following:

Narendra Modi

Prime Minister of India

Email:pmosb@pmo.nic.in

Fax:+ 91 11 2301 685

Surya Kant

Chief Justice of India

Email:supremecourt@nic.in

Parvathaneni Harish

Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations

United Nations