Are Nations Made Of Such Brittle Bones?

Universities embody the coming together of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. They play a crucial role in shaping independent and critical thinking. Regardless of the ideological bent of the university itself - or the dominant political cultures that mark such as a space - what all universities have in common is this ideal.

One of the barometers of the intellectual health of a university is its academic freedom and capacity to voice and listen to dissenting opinions. And it is inevitable that this will also include political opinions that you find disagreeable. But if we are to sustain the idea of the university as a safe space then it will have to be through a careful nurturing of the right to dissent in universities.

The recent developments in JNU have serious repercussions not just for JNU but for all universities in India. If the exercise of thought and speech in universities are subject to a misuse of legal process -- one in which there are no substantive legal grounds whatsoever for charges of sedition being applied – it does not bode well for the future of universities.
It is clear that as per the numerous rulings of the Supreme Court there is nothing in what took place at JNU that would qualify it for sedition, but the shrill, rhetorical responses to appeals of reason have been shunned in favor of a general populist appeal to an indignant nationalism. Are nations really made of such brittle bones?

The right of freedom of speech and expression while applicable to all citizens has always been interpreted in a manner that acknowledges that for certain democratic institutions (such as the press) this right acquires a special salience. As institutions whose primary responsibility is speaking truth to power, they are placed in a privileged and vulnerable position which demands that we be even more vigilant in the protection of their rights.

If the the decibel high circus delivered by the likes of Arnab Goswamy are anything to go by, we have already seriously damaged one of the pillars of democracy by converting it into an institution that shouts power to drown the truth.

By branding an entire university as anti national and obfuscating the debate into one of the misuse of taxpayers’ money as some commentators have done, we seriously run the risk of compromising the intellectual and academic freedom of all universities.

It may not be a bad analogy to think of universities as mirrors that reflect the health of our collective polity, and as mirrors go, JNU presents a face that is diverse, polyphonous and confident in its claims to participating in the democratic imagination.

If on the other hand all that we expect from our universities is that they praise and parrot existing power structures or endlessly recycle nationalist conceit  we risk making them into the mirror of the stepmother in the Snow White fable, whose only job is to tell us how beautiful we are.

Lawrence Liang is a lawyer & researcher; he is co-founder of Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore

(The views expressed in the Freedom Series are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of ‘Outlook’ magazine or its journalists.)