Azim Premji University:  The Latest Campus To Buckle Under Hindu Nationalist Intimidation 

On February 24, 2025, Azim Premji University (APU) in Bengaluru joined the growing list of Indian campuses where academic freedom has been violently attacked and administratively betrayed. What was planned as a reading and discussion on the Kunan-Poshpora mass rape case which is alleged to have occurred in Kashmir 35 years ago, became a scene of violence and institutional capitulation. The incident reveals a coordinated national pattern: right-wing groups attack, administrators buckle, and spaces for critical inquiry are eliminated. APU, founded with explicit commitment to liberal values, has demonstrated that even institutions created specifically to resist ideological capture cannot withstand the sustained assault on academic freedom under the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s rule. 

Established in 2010 with funding from Wipro founder Azim Premji, APU aimed to create space for rigorous liberal arts education and engagement with social justice issues that mainstream Indian universities increasingly avoided. APU distinguished itself through substantial scholarships ensuring economic diversity, interdisciplinary programs focused on inequality, faculty committed to critical inquiry, and institutional structures designed to resist political interference that had compromised other universities. 

Over its first decade, APU established significant reputation. Its education programmes attracted students committed to working in underserved areas. Its development studies engaged seriously with caste, gender, and minority rights. Students described a campus culture encouraging critical thinking and engagement with uncomfortable questions about power and injustice. But this success made APU a target. As Hindu nationalism systematically captured Indian institutions, spaces maintaining independence became threats to be neutralised. 

The Systematic Capture of Indian Campuses 

The attack on APU must be understood within the broader pattern of systematic assault on campus autonomy since 2014. University after university has faced similar trajectories: students organising around issues challenging Hindu nationalism are targeted by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP); administrations respond by disciplining activists rather than protecting them; and universities transform from spaces of inquiry into sites of ideological conformity. 

IIT Madras in 2015 banned the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle following ABVP complaints that the group was promoting ‘hatred against the Prime Minister.’ The University of Hyderabad in 2016 suspended five Dalit students including Rohith Vemula following a BJP minister’s demand for action against ‘anti-national’ activities. Vemula’s subsequent suicide exposed the lethal consequences of administrative complicity in political persecution. Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2016 saw students arrested on sedition charges following an event on Kashmir, with ABVP activists attacking students and journalists on campus. Allahabad University in 2017 witnessed students protesting fee hikes facing police violence and mass suspension. Banaras Hindu University in 2017 saw female students protesting inadequate security being lathi-charged by police on campus at night. Minor skirmishes abound across the country. The latest episode at JNU, where the police blocked a democratic protest march by students, used force against them and made arrests, is part of this troubling pattern. 

This pattern is normalised in Indian campus life. The ABVP targets student activists organising around caste justice, minority rights, or left politics. Administrations discipline students for creating ‘disturbance’ rather than protecting them. Police and courts treat activism as potential criminality. Media amplifies ‘anti-national’ narratives while minimising right-wing violence. The cumulative effect chills dissent as students recognise that organising invites violence, discipline, prosecution, and stigmatisation. 

Spark: Creating Spaces for Political Consciousness 

The Spark Reading Circle emerged from students’ recognition that spaces for political discussion were disappearing. In universities dominated by placement-focused careerism and atmospheres of fear, Spark sought to create deliberate space for reading and discussing social and political issues—caste, gender, labour, Kashmir, communalism, state violence—precisely the topics the BJP government has worked to render taboo. 

Spark operated through publication and discussion circles, bringing students together for structured engagement with texts and issues, creating communities of inquiry and political education where formal curricula avoided controversy and faculty faced pressure against political engagement. The Kunan-Poshpora discussion that ABVP attacked exemplifies this approach. The 1991 mass rape of Kashmiri women by Indian Army personnel has been  documented, though the military has never acknowledged it. Discussing this means confronting uncomfortable truths about state violence and military impunity—precisely what right-wing groups cannot tolerate because it threatens narratives of the state as benevolent protector. 

The ABVP's Attack and APU’s Betrayal 

On February 24, ABVP members forcefully entered APU campus, vandalised property, spray-painted ‘BAN SPARK’ slogans, physically assaulted a student, and verbally abused others as ‘anti-national.’ Students responded with spontaneous mobilisation, organising marches condemning the violence and defending democratic rights. The response demonstrated that despite years of systematic attack on campus activism, students remained willing to defend spaces for critical inquiry. 

What happened next exposed APU administration’s complete failure to uphold its founding values. Rather than defending attacked students or taking action against outside groups who invaded campus and committed violence, the administration filed an FIR against the Spark Reading Circle. The charges were extraordinarily serious: Section 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (deliberately outraging religious feelings), a non-bailable offense, along with IT Act sections regarding privacy violation and publishing obscene material. These charges were inversionary—treating victims as perpetrators and framing academic discussion as criminal activity. 

The contrast in treatment could not be starker. The First Information Report against the ABVP was filed by security guards and a student—individuals with no institutional authority. The FIR against Spark organisers was filed by the university Registrar himself—the administration using its authority to prosecute its own students for organising a reading circle. This asymmetry reveals that APU administration has internalized its role as enforcer of right-wing demands rather than protector of academic freedom. 

Students responded with renewed mobilisation. The Student Council condemned the ‘asymmetry in outcomes.’ Over 400 alumni signed statements demanding withdrawal of charges. National organisations including People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Association for Protection of Civil Rights, and National Alliance of Journalists Against Repression issued statements condemning both ABVP’s violence and the administration's response. This mobilisation shows that resistance persists, but it also highlights what is being lost—APU alumni who experienced the university when it maintained its commitments recognise their institution is being transformed. 

Portents for Liberal Education in India 

The APU incident is significant precisely because APU was supposed to be different. Unlike public universities vulnerable to direct government control, APU is privately funded. Unlike historically conservative elite institutions, APU was created specifically for liberal education focused on social justice. Unlike older universities with captured administrations, APU is relatively young with structures designed to resist interference. Yet APU has buckled under the same pressures that compromised every other institution. 

This reveals grim reality: no institutional form, no founding mission, no structural protection is sufficient to resist the systematic pressure Hindu nationalism brings against spaces of critical inquiry. Private funding does not protect when institutions require government approvals. Explicit commitment to liberal values does not protect when administrators calculate that capitulation is safer than resistance. If APU—purpose-built to maintain academic freedom, funded independently, structured to resist capture, and operating in relatively liberal Bengaluru—cannot withstand pressure, then no institution can. 

Every university in India now understands that allowing spaces like Spark will invite ABVP violence and political pressure, and that administrations will not be supported if they defend students. The rational response for administrators is pre-emptive capitulation: don’t allow such spaces, don’t approve such events, surveil and discipline students who try to create them. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle. As more universities capitulate, those trying to maintain independence face intensified pressure. Students watch what happens and learn that resistance is futile. Faculty recognise that creating spaces for critical inquiry risks their positions. The cumulative effect is the elimination of institutional spaces where critical political consciousness can develop. 

The particular tragedy of APU’s capitulation is that it betrays the founding vision itself.  Premji created this university specifically to provide an alternative to the increasingly captured landscape of Indian higher education. The institution’s capitulation to the same pressures it was designed to resist represents complete failure of that vision. APU now functions to suppress rather than enable critical inquiry, using its reputation as liberal institution to make suppression more effective by demoralising those who believed such spaces could be maintained. 

What Must Be Fought For 

The attack on Spark and APU’s response represent microcosm of what is being systematically destroyed: spaces where students can encounter challenging ideas, read texts the state would prefer avoided, discuss questions the government wants suppressed, and develop political consciousness that might lead to resistance. These spaces are being eliminated through violence, administrative complicity, and criminalisation disguised as neutral procedure. 

The immediate demand is clear: APU must withdraw the FIR against Spark organizers, take serious action against ABVP members who invaded campus, and commit to protecting rather than prosecuting students who organise academic discussions. But immediate demands, even if met, do not address the systemic problem. As long as right-wing groups attack with impunity while students face prosecution, as long as administrations calculate that capitulation is safer, incidents like this will continue. 

The deeper requirement is rebuilding institutional courage to defend academic freedom even when defence carries costs. This means administrations willing to face political pressure, resist government demands, defend students against attacks, and maintain commitment to liberal values when inconvenient. But expecting such courage from administrators selected for their willingness to accommodate is probably naive. The courage will come from students, faculty, and alumni who refuse to accept their institutions' transformation into sites of ideological conformity. 

Spark’s importance extends beyond its immediate activities. In context where such spaces are being systematically eliminated, every space that survives, every discussion that occurs despite intimidation, every instance where students refuse to be silenced becomes crucial resistance. They demonstrate that alternatives remain possible, that Hindu nationalism has not completely captured consciousness, and that spaces for critical inquiry can be defended. 

The question facing APU students, faculty, and alumni is whether they will allow their institution to complete its transformation or fight to reclaim it. The question facing students at other universities is whether they will be discouraged by APU’s capitulation or recognise that maintaining spaces for critical inquiry now requires organised collective resistance. And the question facing anyone concerned with liberal education’s future is whether they will accept that such education is no longer possible or commit to defending spaces where critical consciousness can still develop. 

The attack on Spark will not be the last. The pattern will repeat until either all such spaces are eliminated or until enough people decide that capitulation’s cost exceeds resistance’s cost. What happens at APU now—whether mobilisation succeeds in forcing the administration to reverse course, whether Spark survives, whether students maintain space for critical discussion—will signal to campuses across India whether resistance remains possible or whether the assault on liberal education has achieved complete success. The stakes could not be higher: nothing less than whether India will retain any institutional spaces where young people can learn to think critically about power, injustice, and the political order that oppresses them.