Battlegrounds of Belonging: Identity, Control and the Crisis of Indian Universities
Amal Chandra | 23 January 2026 | The Wire
Institutions of education are meant to do what politics often cannot: create shared futures across difference. Universities, colleges, and research centres are supposed to transcend immediate identities, equipping students with skills, ethical grounding and critical thinking that allow them to participate meaningfully in a democratic society. Yet in India today, these institutions are increasingly being repurposed as sites of ideological assertion and communal mobilisation. Instead of nurturing merit and knowledge, they are being dragged into battles over belonging – who deserves access, who represents the nation, and whose presence is considered legitimate.
The crisis at the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Medical College in Jammu and Kashmir is not an aberration. It is the latest symptom of a deeper structural transformation in how education is imagined, governed and politicised in post-2014 India…