The report is about academic freedom, Therefore probably it will not be discussed much in India. the report becomes popular, Then the government will reject it. The reply from the ruling party will be that this is a biased report. These are all expected reactions in today’s times.
In societies where there are inventions and whose eyes are fixed on the future, there are generally no attempts to impose limits on mental freedom. Rather, it is a popular belief that it is better to tolerate mental mischievousness than to control the mind. Whereas a recent international report concludes that educational freedoms in India have reduced significantly in the last ten years. The international organization Scholars at Risk (SAR) has released its latest Academic Freedom Index. SAR is a network of 665 universities that has developed a scale to measure the state of academic freedom in different countries.
The latest report has been released titled ‘Free to Think- 2024’. It has been told that between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, 391 attacks were made on the freedom of communities related to higher education in 51 countries. India has special mention among these countries. In 2013, India scored 0.6 on the SAR index. In 2024, India has got only 0.2 points on this. In this way, SAR has put India in the category of ‘fully controlled’ countries. This organization has also prepared a historical database. In light of that, it said that the state of academic freedom in India today is at its lowest level since the mid-1940s.
The report mentions many examples of attacks on academic freedom in India. It has been said – ‘The biggest threats facing the academic freedom of students and scholars in India include the efforts of the Bharatiya Janata Party to control universities, university politics, and student resistance and impose a Hindutva agenda. ‘ Since this report is about academic freedom, it probably won’t be discussed much in India. If the report becomes popular, the government will reject it. The reply from the ruling party will be that this is a biased report. These are all expected reactions in today’s times. But they will not provide answers to the fundamental questions raised by this report.