Dousing The Spark of Free Enquiry on India’s Campuses
Janaki Nair | 04 March 2026 | Deccan Herald
In 2024, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka raised its objections to the ‘tweaking’ of a purported quote from the state’s poet laureate, Kuvempu, emblazoned on the entrance to residential government schools. The change exhorted students to ‘question everything’ (dhairyavagi prashnisi), while the original had asked students to enter the temple of learning respectfully, ‘with folded hands’ (Jnana Degulavidu, kai mugidu olage ba). This was instantly declared as one more example of the newly elected Congress’ anti-Hindu stance. As the literary critic S G Siddaramaiah immediately pointed out, Kuvempu had used no such words in his original poem Pakshikashi, but the change was definitely warranted in our times.
Perhaps today the commandment at places of learning should be ‘Thou Shalt Not Know’. When the formidable power of the judiciary was used to defend the Indian court system against calumny in the Standard VIII NCERT textbook, it was asserting this commandment. Students should not know of the grinding delays of the courts. A judge who speedily exonerated himself from sexual harassment (Justice Ranjan Gogoi) and another who ‘burnt notes’ in his Delhi home (Justice Varma) could prejudice tender minds. However, minds are never too tender to know what the State today mandates: that ‘the evil that men do lives after them’ while ‘the good is oft interred with their bones’. Thus, Moghul rule is now painted as unadorned tyranny; ‘Partition Horrors’, emphasising the role of some villains, will be taught from Standard VII…