India’s academic freedom has been “severely restricted” under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, according to the annual “Free to Think 2026” report released by Scholars at Risk’s (SAR), an international network of higher education institutions that works to protect threatened scholars and promote academic freedom, headquartered at New York University.
Plummeting academic freedom under BJP government The report states that India’s central government expanded its authority over higher education, influencing university governance, leadership appointments, and academic priorities. “University administrators took actions that stifled campus discourse, including dismissing faculty members, cancelling academic events, and enforcing new policies restricting student expression. Both students and police committed acts of violence at protests or other campus gatherings,” the report notes. “Policy shifts, academic decisions, and debates about national identity, caste, religion, and historical interpretation led to student protests. In some instances, demonstrations resulted in clashes between opposing student factions,” it states.
The report also notes that the government of Jammu and Kashmir banned the sale, distribution, and possession of 25 books by globally respected scholars, historians, and journalists which addressed Kashmir’s sociopolitical history, including discussions of enforced disappearances and feminist resistance.
The report says that the ruling BJP government continued to deploy the University Grants Commission (UGC) as a primary vehicle for State influence over higher education. “The UGC faced scrutiny in recent years for policies perceived to tighten government control over universities, including loosening academic qualification requirements for university vice-chancellors and accelerating the casualisation of academic labour by removing the 10% cap on non-permanent, contract faculty,” it notes. “Actions like these are particularly threatening because they provide a new model for the relationship between States and educational institutions that prioritises ideological compliance over independent thought,” the report notes. Ideological polarisation between student groups, particularly the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and left-wing All India Students Association (AISA) and National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), transformed academic and cultural events into “political flashpoints,” the report says.
India’s AFI value has declined significantly over the last decade, from 0.41 in 2015.
India’s Academic Freedom Index (AFI) score decreased from 0.16 in 2024 to 0.14 in 2026, with both values falling in the “severely restricted” category, next to its neighbours China (0.07) and Afghanistan (0.09), where academic freedom was in the “completely restricted” category, according to the report.
