A New Code of Silence on Campus
John J Kennedy | 03 March 2026 | The New Indian Express
Once known for intellectual risk-taking and passionate disagreements, India’s university campuses today feel subdued. A new caution hangs in the air, shaping conversations and silences alike. This sinister shift has occurred not through dramatic crackdowns but through small, incremental decisions that have collectively altered the academic spirit in many higher educational institutions.
Instances of a talk quietly cancelled, ‘controversial’ speakers disinvited, or an uncomfortable theme dropped from the syllabus are becoming all too familiar. Each of these decisions may appear minor and even pragmatic. University administrators describe such actions as necessary precautions in polarised times. But taken together, they reveal the slow unmaking of the once-vibrant, plural Indian university into a space defined by anxiety, not curiosity…