A Battle for India’s Soul
India’s student movement is one of the main forces challenging the government of Narendra Modi. But the movement against Hindu nationalism needs to take root even deeper in civil society.
Students of Jamia Millia Islamia University face security forces as they march to parliament to protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Delhi, India on February 10, 2020. (Javed Sultan / Getty Images)
For the past couple of months, India’s leading media outlets have been camped out in the vicinity of the country’s leading universities, from Aligarh Muslim University to Jamia Millia Islamia or Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Students have been making the headlines with their raised fists and bruised bodies, inspiring many others to join protests in solidarity with their demands. But some Indians have asked why these young people, who had gone to study at the expense of taxpayers, were protesting when they should have been kept busy in the library. This article is an attempt to answer such questions from the older relatives of India’s combative students.
Education as Liberation
The Humboldtian ideal of a modern university distanced it from both the state and the market. It was to be an institution that would produce better citizens, aware of their duties, responsibilities, and (crucially) rights. The idea of liberating education from a religious straitjacket, nurturing a scientific outlook and the values of secularism, had the potential to deepen democracy.
If realized, it would equip students with the necessary attributes of an engaged citizenry, able to question established forms of oppression and inequality. Universities were meant to be spaces that would allow students to develop as autonomous human beings, sharpening their ideas and critical skills in an environment of academic freedom.
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