Teaching a Lesson? Academic Freedom and the Indian State
S. Muralidhar | 13 October 2025 | The Wire
Prologue: Three Real Scenarios
The First
In December 2022, the Madhya Pradesh police booked Professor Inamul Rahman, Principal of the Govt New Law College Indore (GNLC) for allegedly keeping a “Hinduphobic and anti-national book” in the college library. This was book titled ‘Collective Violence and Criminal Justice System’, co-authored by Dr Sheetal Kanwal and Dr Farhat Khan. This book was in the GNLC library since 2014. Dr Rahman joined GNLC five years later in 2019. The book, according to the ABVP, the student wing of the RSS, talks about the emergence of “Hindu communalism as a destructive ideology”. It is also supposed to have said that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Hindutva outfits seek to establish a Hindu-majority state and want to “enslave other communities”. It had been revised in 2021 to remove the so-called offending portions.
The Madhya Pradesh higher education minister Mohan Yadav (and now its Chief Minister) instituted an inquiry into how the book was being allowed to be used for reference in the college. Acting on a complaint by a second year LL M student Lucky Aidwal, and a member of the ABVP, Home Minister Narottam Mishra ordered the registration of an FIR under several provisions of the IPC. Sections 153A (promoting enmity on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence) and 295A (malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class), 500 (defamation), 504 (intentional insult with an intent to provoke and breach peace), 505 (statements conducting to public mischief). The FIR also named, apart from Professor Rahman, Dr Farhat Khan, the book’s publisher Amar Law Publication and Professor Mirza Mojiz Baig. The Supreme Court stayed the arrest of Rahman and Baig. Rahman resigned as Principal. The other two never returned to Indore. In May 2024 the Supreme Court quashed the FIR, terming it as “absurd”. But the damage was done. None of the three could teach again at the GNLC…