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‘Indianisation’ of Syllabi is Hollowing Out Knowledge in Our Universities

Apoorvanand

Knowledge – its very disciplines – are today locked in a struggle for survival on university campuses in India. It is a bloodless war, but no less brutal for that. Most people in India remain blissfully unaware of this conflict and carry on with their business. On one side stand those who defend knowledge, armed with nothing but their training, their discipline, and their commitment to intellectual integrity. On the other side are the invaders, wielding a far more lethal weapon: nationalism, sharpened into its Hindutva form.

The latest dispatches from this battlefield tell us that the standing committee of the academic council of Delhi University has asked the Departments of Economics and History to reconsider their curricula. In the Economics syllabus, the unit that has provoked particular ire is titled “Gender and the Economy.” Even within this, it is the sub-unit “Crime and Gender” that has most angered certain influential members of the committee. Their objections are twofold. First, they ask: What possible connection can gender have with the study of economics or the economy? Second, why should crimes related to gender be discussed at all? This, they insist, lies outside the domain of economics.

The chair of the Economics Department tried to explain that violence against women – whether inside the home or outside – has a direct bearing on economic structures and outcomes. Such violence affects women’s participation in economic activity, often in deeply adverse ways. This relationship is well recognised and widely studied within economics across the world. The explanation made no impression. The committee members remained unmoved and returned the draft syllabus to the department. Now it remains to be seen what will happen if the department sends the syllabus back unchanged.

Reading this report brought back a recent conversation with a colleague from the Economics Department. There was a paper in the syllabus titled “The Economics of Discrimination.” The standing committee had ordered its removal. When teachers from the department went to meet the chairperson of the committee, they were told that the very word ‘discrimination’ was offensive to the ear. How, they were asked, could such an unpleasant-sounding word be allowed into a syllabus?

The Department of History was informed that there was no need to teach so much global history. India’s own history, they were told, was deep and vast enough – why look beyond it? The department explained that nearly 70% of the syllabus already dealt with Indian history, and only 30% with global history. If historians did not learn about the wider world, would they not risk becoming frogs in a well? The chair of the department stood his ground. We learn that it has also been suggested that the word ‘society’ be removed from a paper titled “Ancient Indian Economy and Society.”

It has also emerged that books and articles by certain scholars have been marked for removal. Among them are Shireen Moosvi, Indrani Chatterjee, and Richard Eaton. This year alone, similar debates have taken place over proposed changes in the syllabi of the Departments of Psychology, Geography, and Political Science. The Department of Political Science, for instance, was advised to drop units on Pakistan and China, ‘religious nationalism’, ‘the politics of the RSS, ‘Islam in international relations’, and the civil war in Sri Lanka. The Department of Sociology was asked why it relied so heavily on foreign thinkers such as Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, and was advised instead to place greater emphasis on Indian thinkers and Indian family values.

The Department of Geography was instructed to avoid topics such as internal conflict and nation-building. Social geography, which examines the location of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in social space, was also recommended for removal. “Foreign” terms such as caste, church, cult, and sect were to be replaced with supposedly Indian words like ‘rishi’ and ‘muni’. Books and writings by scholars such as Paul Brass and Nandini Sundar were removed. One might recall that the Delhi Police once accused Sharjeel Imam of having read Paul Brass, implying that this reading had corrupted his mind. Now, the representatives of Delhi University’s administration wish to protect students from the evil influence of Paul Brass.

For the past eleven years, the making of syllabi has turned into a continuous tug-of-war. Hapless department heads have had to defend their curricula against volleys of nationalist and “Indianist” sophistry. Whatever the discipline – particularly in the humanities and social sciences – the moment words such as caste, gender, discrimination, sexuality, or LGBTQ appear, administrative representatives react with hostility. Foreign authors and thinkers provoke a similar unease. In their haste to “Indianise” knowledge, committee members do not hesitate to browbeat subject experts.

Some heads of departments still feel a responsibility toward their disciplines and argue their case in committee meetings. Often, this requires tactical manoeuvring. Others find the struggle exhausting and pointless, and preemptively Indianise – and Hinduise – their syllabi. In my own field of Hindi literature, for instance, a paper on ‘Bhartiyata Bodh’ has been introduced. I have also heard that ‘Hindu Navotthan’ now forms part of the undergraduate syllabus. Even Premchand’s novel ‘Godaan’ has come under suspicion because, in the end, it is a Hindu who kills a cow. To read and teach such an “anti-Hindu” text is seen as an act of sacrilege. A search is now underway for works that conform to the ideology of Hindu nationalism. Unfortunately, such writers are scarce. When “authentically Indian” texts cannot be found, nationalist writings are pressed into service instead.

At the undergraduate level, courses are increasingly taught in the name of values and skills that have little academic substance – papers on cleanliness or happiness, for example. These empty courses waste students’ time. Speak to students at Delhi University, and you will encounter a deep sense of betrayal. They feel they were lured by the institution’s reputation, only to be met with academic disappointment. A student recently told me that she chose a four-year BA programme, only to discover that the one-year MA exists nowhere except at Delhi University. She now has no alternative. She has, in effect, been taken hostage.

The same logic governs PhD admissions. Instructions now prioritise candidates who have qualified for the JRF. The JRF or NET is little more than a lottery. It rewards mastery in rote memorisation rather than intellectual ability. We have watched with sadness as many exceptionally talented students fail repeatedly to clear it. The fault lies not with them, but with the nature of the examination. What kind of intellectual capacity is tested by questions about the colour of a character’s slippers in a particular scene, or the colour of another character’s cap? There is no need to assess research aptitude or writing ability. Meanwhile, officials insist that PhD admissions must be maximised. In some departments, hundreds of students are simultaneously enrolled in PhD programmes.

Listen to the research topics being approved, and you’ll cry. Many in literary studies may not even be aware of the writings of Pokhriyal, who writes under the name Nishank. To remedy this alleged ignorance, research is now being conducted on his work. His qualification was perhaps political: he was a minister when the topic was approved. He no longer holds that office, but the quest to establish his literary significance continues undeterred.

It would be wrong to say that everything is lost. As I have noted earlier, many department heads and teachers continue to devise ways to protect the dignity of their disciplines. Sometimes they succeed; sometimes they are forced into compromise. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Indian universities have become battlefields where a fierce struggle is underway between knowledge and Hindutva ideology. Knowledge itself cannot fight. On its behalf stand those teachers who still remain teachers, entering committee meetings prepared to counter an endless barrage of Hindutva idiocy.

Outside public universities such as Delhi University or Jawaharlal Nehru University, disciplines like history, sociology, geography, and literature at institutions such as Ashoka University or Shiv Nadar University do not face such assaults. This year, foreign universities have opened campuses in India. Will their curricula also be aligned with Hindutva nationalism? If not, why not? Why are their students being denied the blessing of nationalism?

What we are witnessing is the emergence of a new inequality in the domain of knowledge. On one side is an Indianised knowledge that turns away from contemporary research because it is labelled “foreign.” On the other is knowledge that continually enriches itself through research conducted anywhere in the world. If you were forced to choose, which would you choose? It is for this reason that many teachers now send their own children to private universities.

The consequences of this new inequality will be grave. It is doubtful whether India’s public universities will continue to produce scholars of international standing. Will students trained under these curricula be accepted as researchers or teachers abroad? Will they be able to participate in the global community of knowledge? They are destined to lag behind their peers from private universities – and this is not their fault.

For now, “anti-national” or “anti-Indian” books are merely being removed from syllabi. Slowly, they will disappear from libraries. Soon, they will cease to be mentioned at all. A long winter has begun to descend on the land of knowledge. Whether India’s Hindus will ever recognise the injustice being done to their children remains doubtful. Or perhaps that is not quite true. They cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for this slow annihilation of knowledge, for it is they who placed the sword in the hands of those now cutting its body, inch by inch.

[Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.]

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Gagged Campuses, Hollowed Classrooms: The Universities in India Today

Rishabh Kachroo

It is not uncommon to read a new media piece every few months where someone rediscovers the same supposed malady that ails the Indian universities: Indian universities are failing because they are too political. If only the campus could be disinfected of politics, the argument goes, “human knowledge” would finally flourish.

A recent column, offering this old beaten-to-death story, begins with global league tables (Times Higher Education rankings) and laments India’s absence from the top rungs, and then continues to propose a cure: revive greatness through either a strong state or a new class of philanthropists. Along the way, the piece treats reservations and democratic contestation as the primary reasons universities “lost their lead”.

This is not an entirely uncommon set of arguments. What is uncommon is how clearly it reveals the ideological core beneath the “minor hints” – the belief that knowledge is a technocratic enterprise, best produced in enclaves protected from politics.

Let us not lose sight of the fact that there indeed is a crisis. The despair on campuses is real. The stagnation in many institutions is real. What is wrong is the fantasy that universities become great by becoming less democratic.

The idea that a university exists to “advance human knowledge” is an incomplete one. Universities have always been institutions where knowledge is produced through social life, not outside it. A university is a civic form. It is a community of teachers and students, a culture of argument, a discipline of evidence, and a space of disagreement. The pursuit of truth is protected by building norms and institutions that keep power from monopolising truth. That protection has been fought for – against kings, churches, markets, states, and sometimes against the university itself. If you strip away contestation in the name of “knowledge,” you simply get obedience. And obedient institutions are rarely original.

So the first move in the “depoliticise to improve” script is already suspect because university’s politics – the struggle over who gets to speak, what counts as legitimate knowledge, what the public owes the institution, and what the institution owes the public – is part of its very definition.

Rankings as simply an alibi

Rankings have become the favourite instrument of this supposedly novel diagnosis because clean numbers seductively imply that academic quality is quantifiable, quite like GDP. In both cases, it is not. Such rankings are treated like a report card that proves Indian universities are broken.

But rankings are not neutral descriptors. They reward particular kinds of output and visibility, often privileging wealth, English-language publishing ecosystems, citation networks, and older reputational hierarchies – all potentially disastrous governing philosophies.

Most importantly, rankings talk allows policymakers and commentators to skirt harder questions about academic freedom, appointment of faculty, and curricula development. You can blame student politics forever and still not answer why universities are being made structurally incapable of intellectual risk-taking.

Campus autonomy under siege

One possible way to describe India’s higher education predicament is this: public universities are being asked to do a lot more with a lot less, even as their autonomy gets narrowed in the name of standardisation and discipline.

The emerging governance architecture centralises control over universities through appointment mechanisms, regulatory redesign, curricula frameworks, and the quiet normalisation of state interference in campus life. Instances like guest lectures being cancelled for being politically inconvenient, film screenings being blocked, and faculty facing targetted campaigns have become a part of the regular functioning of the university space, particularly the public ones. In this environment, students learn very quickly which questions attract scrutiny thereby creating a climate that teaches caution as professional survival.

This is where the “privatisation-as-cure” argument collapses in on itself, because private universities exist in the same political environment, under the same regulatory state, amid the same informal pressures. If you doubt that, simply recall what happened at Ashoka University earlier this year.

The university space in India is one where society’s inequalities, anxieties, and conflicts get negotiated. More so in the case of public universities. The current sorry state of affairs is precisely because the state increasingly treats that negotiation as a problem to be managed instead of a democratic function that ought to be protected.

Gatekeeping knowledge

One of the most telling moves in the depoliticisation script is how it narrates reservations, especially caste based. Caste is not an external “social problem” that unfortunately intrudes into the serene space of knowledge. Caste is a system that has historically regulated access to learning. If universities are one of the few institutions capable of breaking that inheritance, they will necessarily become arenas of conflict. That conflict is precisely what democratisation looks like when the past is not dead.

You do not get a great university by returning to an imagined pre-reservation meritocracy. You get a great university by building intellectual excellence through inclusion. When debates about caste discrimination surface on campuses, the university’s unfinished transformation from an elite institution into a public one gets revealed. The greatest irony here is that the people most invested in a “politics-free” campus are often perfectly comfortable with the politics of exclusion that silently reproducing hierarchy while calling it quality.

Limits of the “privatisation” solution

The privatisation cure rests on a deceptively simple idea that private universities can be protected from the dysfunctions and idiosyncrasies of the public sector and therefore they can focus on excellence. But what does “protected” mean in practice? If it means protected from interference, private universities have not demonstrated that protection. If it means protected from democratic claims, then the model becomes about creating educational enclaves where inequality gets designed into the institution. And if it means protected from politics altogether, then it misunderstands politics. Money is political. Philanthropy is political. Donor-driven universities simply relocate ideology by becoming less accountable to society and more accountable to funders.

Treating privatisation as the route to greatness is quite like treating gated colonies as the route to urban reform. You can build comfort for some, but you cannot solve the civic crisis.

What would it take to fix Indian universities

If we stop treating democratic contestation as the enemy, we can finally talk about real reform. A serious agenda for Indian universities could begin with the following four commitments:

First, fund the public university like a public good. Second, protect academic freedom as a core governance principle. It also means building internal university processes that defend due process and intellectual pluralism. Third, treat inclusion as part of academic quality, not its rival. Fourth, stop using “world-class” rhetoric to justify shrinking civic space.

India needs freer campuses with stronger institutions where dissent is not a policing problem, where students are not treated as potential criminals, where teachers do not fear that a lecture can become a scandal, and where “quality” does not mean ideological conformity. A university becomes great when it is trusted enough to be free, funded enough to be ambitious, and public enough to matter. If Indian universities feel far from greatness today, it is because the political imagination around them has shrunk. And, if you want to look at the kind of politics ailing the state of universities in India today, look here because this is the one politics that will reliably kill a university.

[Rishabh Kachroo is an independent researcher. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.]

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Cash Crunch, Research Void and Guest Faculty Surge: The Collapse of Social Sciences in India

Kishor K. Podh

India likes to speak of a knowledge century, often referring to it as a ‘glorious’ past. However, on the ground the space for scientific research and quality teaching and learning environment, in general, is weathering away. Social sciences, particularly, has shrunk into the margin – a shadow of its promise. The problem here is not the lack of talent. It is the consequence of policy dormancy and improper implementation of educational policies, along with stagnant R&D investment, erratic support for social science institutions, mass vacancies in faculties positions, and widely practiced ad hocism and contractual appointment of teaching staff. Together these trends are corroding teaching and research quality as well as the international standing of Indian institutions and scholarship.

The recent publication of Ernest Aigner, Jacob Greenspon, and Dani Rodrik in World Development (2025) analysed the publication trajectories in the field of economics and offered a sobering reminder that the geography of knowledge is unequal as the geography of wealth. The United States (which constitutes only 16% of the global GDP) alone accounts for 65% of all research output in top-ten economics journals. In contrast, developing countries, constitute over 80% of the world’s population, are largely invisible in the global research publication. South Asia accounts for a mere fraction of global authorship, this imbalance has worsened over the last four decades.

This academic asymmetry and imbalance is not confined to economics. It mirrors a deeper and more systemic erosion of scientific and social science research potential in the Global South, and nowhere is this more acutely felt than in Indian academia and universities. India – the country once envisioned as a self-reliant ‘knowledge society’ presently finds itself in a paradoxical position: a nation of 140 crore people with a vibrant youth population, but one where research and development, especially in social sciences is increasingly underfunded, institutionally adrift, and precariously staffed.

The silent retreat of research

Over the past decades, India’s investment in research and development has stagnated at around 0.6-0.7% of the GDP which is well below the global average of 1.8% and far behind emerging economies like South Korea (4.8%) and China (2.4%). The social sciences in India occupy the bottom rung in this already meagre pool. As per the Department of Science and Technology, less than 3% of the national R&D expenditure is directed towards social science research. The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), once an intellectual backbone of critical inquiry, has seen its budget fall by nearly half in real terms since 2014 when adjusted for inflation.

This fiscal contraction has had visible effects manifested through delayed and irregular fellowship, reduction in project grants, delayed revision in salary and other allowances in the ICSSR network of institutions. Universities and higher educational institutions that once produced rigorous field-based studies in social sciences (primarily, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, Gender Studies and so on) are largely reduced to functioning merely as teaching institutions. The social sciences as a discipline, once the conscience of the republic, is being strangled by neglect and indifference in funding.

However, in recent years, the social sciences have gained renewed traction through the revitalisation of research activities and growing interest, particularly in women-centric studies, tribal issues in general and Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), as well as a stronger focus on longitudinal research.

Despite the renewed interest and the apparent revival of the ICSSR, its impact remains largely confined to research, unlike the University Grants Commission (UGC), which has the ability to influence teaching and learning across the country’s education system.

Ad hocism and the rise of guest faculties and academic gig workers

This crisis of the erosion of the social sciences in India runs deeper than a mere contraction of research funding. It is structural and institutional.

Across the country, public universities and colleges are struggling with lack of full-time faculty positions which remain unfulfilled for years and in some cases even decades. These positions are being managed by ad hoc faculties and now increasingly by guest faculties, which has become a norm.

In many state universities, the majority of teaching posts are filled by contractual or part-time instructors, often paid a very meagre amount (difficult to meet the basic needs), without any other benefits, research support or job security. These academic gig workers bear the full teaching load but are excluded from research projects. They are not even eligible for leading such projects.

This has resulted in a culture of exhaustion and demoralisation even for capable researchers. Such perpetual uncertainty and unrewarding working conditions negatively affects the educational outcome, classroom engagement, creative learning, and students’ performance. When one is always unsure about next month’s pay check, scholarly creativity becomes a luxury. Further, the neoliberal restructuring of universities has created a two-tier system: a shrinking elite of full-time faculty who handle administrative work, and an expanding group of precarious staff who shoulder the teaching burden.

This is not typical Indian anomaly rather a global trend. In their piece, Aigner, Greenspon and Rodrik noted that even when researchers from developing countries produce work of comparable quality as per the citation counts it is unlikely for the researcher to get published in top-ranked journals. The problem here is not the lack of intellect, but lack of institutional scaffolding. Without reliable employment, research funding, and intellectual freedom, it is impossible to sustain long-term creative, critical and engaged research endeavour and knowledge production because knowledge cannot grow in temporary quarters.

The practice or norms of ad hocism in academic positions is increasingly hollowing out research and teaching, in general. In an uncertain, ill-treated, exploitative workplace environment one cannot work with eagerness and enthusiasm, which ultimately manifests in the form of lower performance of students. Further, such precarious working conditions significantly and adversely affect research output. Research requires sustained engagement, and the lack of stability creates a spiral of inadequate outcomes such as fewer publications in journals and limited participation in seminars and conferences of global repute.

The collapse of continuity: Research quality and the crisis of local knowledge

The contraction of stable, full-time academic faculty positions in universities and colleges has hollowed out the very environment of creative, and critical thinking, as well as knowledge production. Unlike natural sciences, social sciences thrives on continuous engagement in fieldwork, mentorship, and intergenerational dialogue.

Now, in many universities – including higher‑education institutions in India – new faculty members are hired on short‑term contracts, often for just six months, until the contract ends or the funding runs out. Without a continuous and stable mentorship or institutional memory, research becomes episodic, disconnected, and devoid of cumulative depth.

Considering the state of academics, the quality of both teaching and learning has unsurprisingly deteriorated. The classrooms are overcrowded and some departments handle 200-300 students per paper while the faculty available is often ineligible for leading research projects, denied basic facilities such as work leave, travel grants and fieldwork support. In such a scenario, teaching becomes mechanical and research becomes symbolic to a ritual rather than a pursuit of knowledge.

India’s global position

The analysis of Aigner et al. (2025) shows that despite a surge of research publications globally, authors from developing countries remain confined to the margins. Their representation has increased primarily in journals ranked below the 100, while it has barely improved in elite journals. Despite its direct link with the Global South fields like development economics, including international economics the authorship continues to be dominated by scholars based in Western and North American institutions.

The share of social sciences and management (Economics and Business) in recent Stanford Global Research Ranking 2024 is very low at 1.7% despite the presence of a larger number of premier management institutions. Similarly, in areas where India should lead intellectual discourse such as rural development, gender studies, caste and inequalities, or minority studies, the majority of widely cited works are authored by scholars who are based abroad, often using data collected by Indian researchers (in Indian institutions) working on contractual or project-based employment. It is a peculiar outsourcing model where India provides the field sites, enumerators, and data, while interpretative authority and publication credit goes outward.

A system designed for under performance

Behind such academic marginality lies a culture of ad hocism. Research funding in India is often guided by bureaucratic priorities rather than academic performances. Moreover, call for research grants has been sporadic, disbursements are often delayed, and the evaluation process is opaque.

In recent years, the engagement and performance of ICSSR – as the leading institution for social science research – have shown signs of a possible revival. However, a majority of the ICSSR institutes are still struggling with lack of full-time staff, and are led by bureaucrats rather than academics. The regional centres of ICSSR are run in collaboration with the state governments. This is particularly problematic because bureaucrats appointed by the state may not be equipped to handle the academic nitty-gritty, yet they dictate, authorise, or reject research activities, leading to procedural delays and discouragement. In the absence of smooth institutional support, researchers spend more time chasing bureaucratic clearances and approvals, often having to explain and justify their work rather than focusing on conducting research.

All these factors result in devastating consequences particularly in the field of Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science which require continuity, trust, and local presence. When scholars and researchers are forced into short-term consultancies, or rapid assessments dictated by project deadlines, the cultural and contextual nuance and ethical depth that define social science research is severely weakened.

The devaluation of the social sciences

Such degradation is not mere academic rather it is political. As state-run universities and institutions are nudged towards market alignment, disciplines that cannot directly produce patents, profits, or innovation indices are deemed expendable.

This is ironic because, as global crises from climate change to pandemics reveal, the questions that matter most – socio-economic inequality, governance, social trust, migration, and the morality and ethics of technology – are quintessentially based upon social science epistemology. Yet, India’s higher education system continues to prioritise technocratic expansion over reflective knowledge.

The lack of geographical diversity in research led to impoverishment of the very quality of knowledge. The discipline of Economics and by extension all the social science disciplines become parochial when dominated by a handful of countries (mostly Western developed ones). When the local experiences and voices are absent, theories turn blind to the plurality of the world. This is true in the case of Indian academia as well, when research becomes concentrated in a few metropolitan centres and provincial universities and institutions are reduced to a place of teaching only, we lose not just diversity but, more importantly, imagination and reflexivity which is the essence of academia.

The human cost: Precarity and marginalisation

The lives behind this institutional crisis are stories of despair and resilience of temporary – contractual, ad hoc, and guest – faculty who shuttle between campuses on local transportations, doctoral researchers who fund their fieldwork through personal loans, and young sociologists and anthropologists, including others in the social sciences, who leave academia altogether and work in NGOs and in data collection and data entry jobs. Further, a significant percentage of young academics under 40 are on temporary employment under severe research constraints primarily due to lack of access to funding or mentorship.

Such precarity has both psychological and epistemic costs as it narrows intellectual risk-taking, discourages theoretical engagement, and promotes what is called ‘safe, fundable research’ that mimics existing global trends rather than critical engagement and challenges them. The epistemology of the social sciences thrives on dissent and critical reflection, but in the current academic environment, challenging the existing accepted knowledge is punished both economically and institutionally.

A call to reclaim universities

It is not only the future of the social sciences at stake but also the future of public universities themselves. When the university ceases to be a site of open and critical inquiry, it becomes a factory of degrees where democracy is severely affected. The decline of social science research and thinking is not merely an academic problem rather it is a civilisational crisis.

If India aspires to be Viksit Bharat by 2047, it cannot afford an underdeveloped and conformist mind. The social sciences inculcate reflexive epistemology and critical imagination, provide a moral compass, and preserve the historical memory that a society needs to navigate rapid change. Unless the situation of academic precariousness and the hollowing out of the social sciences changes, it will threaten the world’s largest democracy, turning it into a desert of ideas.

[Kishor K. Podh, obtained his Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Currently, he teaches sociology at Rama Devi Women’s University, Bhubaneswar. Courtesy: The Wire.]

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The Cost of Learning: Protests Mount Across Universities as Fee Hikes Deepen Crisis of Accessibility

Aditya Sharma and Unzila Sheikh

“From AMU to Jamia, No NEP, No Fee Hike!” These slogans echoed in the halls of Jamia Millia Islamia on the eve of August 13 as students rallied in support of the protests at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). All India Students’ Association (AISA), along with several student organisations and Jamia students, marched in solidarity, starting from the central canteen and to gate number 7 of the campus. At the heart of the protests is a steep increase in annual fees at AMU, which students say will lock out large sections of the economically weaker and marginalised communities from higher education.

Although after a 10-day-long agitation, AMU announced a series of rollbacks and concessions, following a meeting on August 18, the agitation escalated the next day, August 19, as students marched to the district collectorate and burnt an effigy of vice-chancellor Naima Khatoon.

How it started

The tensions had been simmering across universities since August 8, when a demonstration at AMU turned violent after Friday prayers. “I saw students being dragged away and beaten – something I had never seen before,” recalls Areeba (name changed to protect identity), an undergrad Comparative English student at AMU.

“One student fell and was beaten with sticks. In the chaos, I even heard an officer shout, ‘Take the girls too.’ We weren’t on the road, just standing on the footpath.”

According to Areeba, police also issued threats to the protesting students: “They said, ‘We’ll make sure you don’t get admission anywhere, not even in private universities’.”

Despite the repression, students stood their ground. “The only reason we didn’t give up is the constant support from our batchmates, seniors, juniors, and even alumni. One alumnus told us that during his time, many students were suspended or jailed for protesting. When I think of people like Umar Khalid, I feel brave, because even if we face jail, at least it will be for the right cause,” she adds.

Following weeks of the agitation, in a significant relief, AMU finally announced a cap on the fee hikes between 2% and 10% after a student delegation met vice-chancellor Professor Naima Khatoon on August 18, pressing for a reversal of the hikes, which were initially between 36% and 42%.

The university also announced that the long-awaited AMU Students’ Union elections would be held in the first week of December.

‘Compromise formula’

In a video statement, AMU proctor Mohamad Waseem Ali said that the university had reached an understanding on a “new compromise formula” regarding the annual fees. Details of the revised fee structure, however, have not been officially disclosed. He confirmed the fee increase ranged Rs. 500 to Rs. 1,500 across courses, explaining that the hike was mainly to improve infrastructure and was a collective decision by various committees.

However, student groups and political leaders called this hike unjustified and exclusionary, warning that such measures disproportionately hurt underprivileged students.

What unfolded in AMU is not an isolated incident. From Delhi University to Jamia, nearly every public university has been confronting fee hikes, shrinking scholarships and the burden of the New Education Policy (NEP), which critics say prioritises privatisation over accessibility.

“Jamia’s own exorbitant fee hike, which has gone even up to a 90%, was highlighted in the protest with regard to courses such as B.Ed, M.Ed, D.E.I.Ed, B.F.A and several other programmes. While concluding the march, the commitment of spaces like Jamia and AMU as inclusive minority institutions and a space for the most marginalized students was reaffirmed and a resolve was taken to fight for these spaces along with the spirit of public education. AISA Jamia stands in Solidarity with the protesting students of Aligarh Muslim University! Accessible Education, Affordable Education Long Live!,” AISA Jamia stated in a social media post.

‘Turning education into commodity for sale’

In March this year, Jamia had unveiled a prospectus reflecting course-wise fee hikes between 16% and 41% across several departments – Persian (+41.41%) and Arabic (+37.15%) among the sharpest including courses like B.A. (H) Social Work (+147%), M.Sc. Environmental Science & Management (+95%), M.A. Early Childhood Development (+89%) followed by B.Ed. Nursery Education (+88%), M.A. Educational Planning & Administration (+84%).

Jyoti, a Ph.D scholar from Jamia, recalls,”UP Police had lathi-charged on protesting students at AMU, and this is shameful.”

She believes colleges should be open, safe spaces, and every child must have the right to education. “This is not just AMU’s fight – it is Jamia’s fight too,” she says, adding, “Under the NEP, there are finance courses with fees as high as Rs 1,54,000. Is this not turning education into a commodity for sale, a business rather than a right?”

Jamia Millia Islamia is increasingly leaning on self-financed (S/F) courses to keep its finances afloat. What this means for students is stark: programmes that once had a single “regular” fee slab now run parallel batches at two to three times the cost.

Take the case of M.Sc. Environmental Science & Management, for instance, where a regular seat costs Rs 31,250, while the S/F batch is priced at Rs 94,600. The pattern repeats across departments: A LL.M. degree that costs Rs 35,700 in regular mode jumps to Rs 1.29 lakh under S/F. The B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) course moves from Rs 89,250 to a staggering Rs 2.62 lakh.

Architecture and design students are hit even harder. B.Arch fees climb from Rs 96,625 (regular) to Rs 4.39 lakh under S/F. For M.Design, the shift is smaller but telling – Rs 2.07 lakh (regular) to Rs 2.29 lakh in S/F. In the fine arts, MFA Applied Art rises from Rs 33,500 to Rs 94,800, with an evening S/F batch pushing fees to Rs 1.84 lakh. Similarly, BFA Applied Art costs Rs 65,300 in regular mode but Rs 1.84 lakh in S/F.

Even professional tracks like MBA pharmaceutical management have hiked fees by nearly double, from Rs 1.04 lakh to Rs 2.14 lakh.

For many students, these numbers translate into tough choices that push them to take on loans, juggle part-time jobs or abandon a course altogether. What was once a publicly affordable degree is now turning into a privilege – priced almost like a private university but under the banner of a central one.

Niranjan, a law student at Jamia and active member of All India Revolutionary Students’ Organisation (AIRSO), through an instagram post highlights three new courses thst have been introduced in Jamia Millia Islamia and says “one common thing in the three: all three of them are ‘self-financed courses’.”

The course fees are Rs 20,000 for B.A (H) German and B.A (H) Japanese and Rs.85,000 for advanced diploma in Child Guidance and Counselling.

“See how, sale of education is going on. Education no more is a right, it is a commodity for sale under this corporate-fascist regime,” Niranjan adds.

Habeeba, a second-year B.A Persian student at Jamia and member of the Disha organisation, shares how fee hikes are reshaping campuses.

“At AMU, students who paid Rs 8,000 last semester are suddenly being asked for Rs 12,000 – with no prior notice. Despite suspension threats and even police action, protests have continued for over a week, drawing solidarity from doctors, lawyers, and school students alike. At Jamia too, fees across nearly every course – from diploma to master’s – have risen between 19% and 40% this year. Many of us feel that as universities turn to loans to cover costs, the financial burden is being shifted directly onto students.”

A similar trend at Delhi University

For the 2025-26 academic session at Delhi University, fees for some programs rose by over 20%, exceeding the university’s stated 10% annual cap. The University Development Fund (UDF) increase to Rs 1,500, combined with a 200% rise in university facilities and services charges and a 150% increase in the Economically Weaker Section Welfare Fund from 2022, has added significant costs.

Specific fees include Rs 8,087 for LLB/LLM, Rs 16,900 for commerce, Rs 21,901 for M.A social work, Rs 23,007 for MCA, and Rs 52,279-Rs 60,818 for MBA programmes. A new library consultation fee for external students, Rs 200 for one month, Rs 400 for three, with a 10% annual increase, has further fueled privatisation fears.

Approved by vice-chancellor Yogesh Singh using emergency powers on April 3, 2025, the hikes drew sharp criticism.

Abha Dev Habib, General Secretary of the Democratic Teachers’ Front and an associate professor of physics at Delhi University’s Miranda House, frames the stakes starkly: “Without grants for expansion, the expense has been shifted to students, affecting women and Dalits the worst. As the standard of education in public universities like DU, JNU and Jamia degrades, the elite will move to private universities.”

Meanwhile, Devender Yadav, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president, calls them “against the BJP’s promise of free education from KG to PG,” warning that the additional Rs 1,500 in UDF and service charges would hit marginalized students hardest, particularly girls.

“Parents don’t want to pay a high price for educating daughters,” he says.

Student groups like All India Students’ Association (AISA), Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP), and Students’ Federation of India (SFI) protested demanding a fee rollback, centralised hostel allocation and proper implementation of Internal Complaints Committees.

“Education is a right, not a commodity,” ASAP declares.

‘Where is the development fund?’

The NEP’s funding model, reliant on loans from the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA), has fueled fears of privatisation. A proposed Rs 938.33 crore HEFA loan drew dissent from Rajpal Singh Pawar, an executive council member, who argued it would “shift the burden onto students’ fees and increase privatisation”.

DU Registrar Vikas Gupta countered that the government would cover 90% of the loan, with DU paying 10% over 10 years in 20 installments.

Habib challenges this: “What is 10% of 938 crore? Why should even 10% come at the cost of students? It should not come from student fees to save the public nature of this university.”

Asking for accountability, Delhi University Student Union (DUSU) President Ronak Khatri says, “The university is experiencing fee hikes continuously from the last four years, only under the name of the UDF, and in return, neither the students have access to clean drinking water, nor do the fans work in the classrooms. The benches and boards are old. So, where is the University’s development fund going?”

Meanwhile, DUSU secretary Mitravinda Karanwal says, “We have noticed in the Law Center and colleges like Daulat Ram College, fees have been hiked in a very unethical format against the mandate of 10%.”

“We have been on indefinite strike for the past six days with the participation of four to five thousand DU students,” she says, noting the efforts taken for students in their fight against fee hike.

However, the UDF’s fee hike from Rs 900 in 2022 to Rs 1,500 in 2025, alongside a proposed Rs 46.5 crore expenditure from the fund for new construction, has intensified concerns.

Critics argue that the UDF, built from student fees, should be reserved for emergencies and not infrastructure projects that could be funded by University Grants Commission (UGC) grants.

“If services, facilities, or infrastructure is being provided, it’s the responsibility and obligation of the university administration. This is not something that should come out of the pockets of students or their families.” Karanwal says.

For countless families, fee hike isn’t just a number; it is the breaking of fragile dreams built on sacrifices, such as parents taking extra shifts or cutting back on necessities. A majority of students in public universities come from modest financial backgrounds, where even a few thousand rupees can decide whether they continue their education or are forced to drop out.

Institutions like Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi University and Aligarh Muslim University have been ladders of social mobility for decades. Today, students fear those ladders are being pulled away.

[Aditya Sharma and Unzila Sheikh are Delhi-based journalists. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, and M. K. Venu.]