• How Humanities and Social Sciences Education in India draws students towards anarchic protests? Politics is studied through the framework of identity and rights discourse whilst India is the Land of Dharma. Humanities in IIT’s only complicating matters. What is the way forward? 

A lot is written about the student protests under the banner of Cockroach Janata Party (CJP). Protesters (included some hooligans) tried to disrupt the barricades and march towards Parliament, brutally attacking police and CRPF. Some protesters used abusive and vulgar of slogans against Prime Minister Modi

Why are students into a toxic protest culture? This article looks at the Cause more than the Effect.

Leftist Protest Culture & the Higher Education Ecosystem

Leftist protest culture is a quintessential part of the higher education ecosystem in India. Leftist student groups and organizations have traditionally dominated campus politics in the most prestigious universities, such as Delhi University (DU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

When I studied at Miranda House (about 2005-2015), participating in campus protests was like a necessary rite of passage for humanities and undergraduate students. The Students’ Federation of India (SFI) is the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI (M). It was immensely popular on campus at that time, and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the RSS, was demonized as “right-wing” and “hooligans”.

At that time, protest culture in DU was so common that students would often attend many such protests accompanied by their teachers.

While the situation might have changed a bit, the larger stranglehold of leftist organizations on campus remains.

Various media reports establish that student-activists of leftist groups such as the All India Students’ Association (AISA) majorly participated majorly in the CJP’s protest. A similar pattern was seen in the 2019 anti-CAA protests, where leftist student groups collaborated with Islamist ones as the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind and the Popular Front of India. 

An article in the Open magazine said, “The crowd at the Cockroach Janata Party’s first protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on June 6 drew a modest crowd. It would have been even thinner if AISA had not mobilized on behalf of CJP leader A Dipke. An AISA office bearer present at Jantar Mantar said the protest leaders had approached the student organization for help and the request was accepted.”

Disruptive Framework of Social Sciences and Humanities Education in India 

What is it about humanities and social sciences education in India that draws students towards anarchic protests?

As Rajiv Malhotra and Vijaya Viswanathan emphasize in Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0, liberal arts and humanities education in Indian universities is still rooted in a predominantly Western paradigm. Most social science theory draws heavily on various isms – Marxism, Liberalism, Postmodernism, Post-Structuralism, Feminism, etc. A simplistic oppressor/oppressive paradigm is used to evaluate society, culture, and politics and is disruptive. For example, in Marxism, capitalists become the archetypal oppressors, and the proletariat or working class becomes the archetypal oppressed. Similarly, in feminism, women become the oppressed, and men or patriarchal society are permanent oppressors. 

With the advent of wokeism, the oppressor/oppressed framework has been stretched beyond all limits of reason and rationality to implicitly suggest that so-called upper-caste Hindus are the archetypal oppressor, and the institution of “Hindutva fascism”, “Brahmanical patriarchy”, “Hindu majoritarianism” etc., are the quintessential oppressor, while minorities, Dalits, LBTQ+community, women, etc. are their victims.

A simple Google search using some of these terms would reveal how this woke ideology imported from the West is fast making inroads into social sciences and humanities education in India, where a Western bias in the curriculum exists.   

Implicit Glorification of Anti-National Discourse & the Academic-Activist Complex

Political activism is an implicit part of the humanities and social sciences education in India’s higher education ecosystem. 

Apart from other elements of the curriculum, politics is studied through the framework of identity and rights discourse, thus essentially creating an enabling narrative around protest culture. In 2017, Ramjas College, Delhi University, organized a seminar on the topic “cultures of protest”. Amongst various people invited to address the gathering was the UAPA accused Umar Khalid (currently in jail). The ABVP protested against the seminar. It reportedly led to clashes between left-affiliated students’ organizations and ABVP and resulted in the usual perpetration of a typical narrative by sections of the media on freedom of speech. According to this India Today report, the event was eventually cancelled.

Before 2014, universities such as Delhi and JNU freely held seminars glorifying Naxalism, Kashmir separatism, demonizing of the Indian army and accusing it of human rights violations, etc. The frequency of such events has reduced. Thus leftist influence has fallen but exist.

Leftist Humanities extends to Higher Education – Examples

An even more worrying development is that with the expansion of humanities and social sciences education to IITs, such ideological indoctrination has begun to make its presence felt in the country’s premier centers of scientific education. 

In November 2023, a group of students at IIT Bombay made a police complaint against an event organized by Professor Sharmistha Saha (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences). In the guise of showing a documentary, radical leftist S Deshpande was invited to deliver an online talk in which he reportedly glorified Palestinian militants Zakaria Zubeidi and Ghassan Kanafani.  Source and India Today

Why is an Indian Institute of Technology teaching Humanities is beyond the scope of this article?

A few days later, the OP Jindal Global University organized a talk titled “The History and Politics of the Palestinian Present” by Prof. Achin Vanaik, Retired Professor of International Relations and Former Head of Department of Political Science at Delhi University. 

“Several video clips of the lecture appeared which shows that in the made expressing solidarity with Gaza, he made several anti-Hindu and antisemitic comments.” According to media reports, he also attacked India’s official positioning on the Israel-Gaza conflict. OpIndia Prof Achin also criticized India’s stand on the conflict, which is fine but where does Hinduism come in. 

Something similar was tried at a 2021 online conference titled Dismantling Global Hindutva. Read  What is Hindutva

Ultimately, hapless students bear the brunt of this ideological weaponization of humanities and social sciences. If the faculty is such, students could be influenced and follow too. Further, if students are routinely made to participate in seminars, conferences, and talks whitewashing terrorism in the name of resistance or implicitly advocating Kashmir separatism, what can one expect?  

Guru has such an exalted status in Bharatiya Sanskriti.

“Gururbrahmā gururviṣṇuḥ gururdevo maheśvaraḥ
Guruḥ sākṣāt paraṁ brahma tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ” 

In Indian Culture, a teacher has a divine status just next to God. When teachers become academic-activists what to expect!

Lack of an Objective Framework for Humanities and Social Sciences Education

One of the root causes of the weaponisation of academia is the lack of an objective framework for teaching humanities and social sciences.

The study of social sciences is extremely subjective, creating ample space for opinionated rants and value judgments instead of a rational and scientific discussion. In a lot of research, Western social science theory is applied to the Indian context to make wild generalisations about Indian culture, society, politics, etc. Read  Question and Answers Indian Civilization

For example, “caste” is the most sought-after topic for research in social sciences academia. The way theories around caste are taught in class, the kind of examples and perspectives given depends on the faculty to an extent. The curriculum might not be biased in itself but the global body of atrocity literature around caste creates a certain frame for “Caste” to be taught in a certain way. Read  Benefits of the Caste System and Caste as Social Capital

Revamping Social Sciences and Humanities Education – The Way Forward 

The implicit ideological indoctrination of humanities and social sciences students is what ultimately leads to the romanticization of chaos and anarchy. Under the spell of Western social science theory and half-baked generalizations based on its simplistic application to Indian society, culture and politics, the youth gradually internalize that being against the government is progressive and the only way to bring about change. What is the way forward? Briefly -  

1. Revamping Social Sciences and Humanities Education in India. Rerouting it in an Indic framework with minimal dependence on Western Social Sciences.

2. Redesigning the curriculum (atleast some elements) in a way to make it more objective and analytical rather than purely subjective and speculative.

3. Inclusion of a more Bhartiya view on nationalism and a balanced view on citizenship rather. Read  Unsung Women Warriors of India  

4. Rooting education in a Dharmic framework – emphasis on inculcation of values like empathy, harmony, seva, etc. Read  India’s Rebirth by Sri Aurobindo

5. Decoupling of academia and activism.

6. Revival of the “Shaastrath” tradition. Emphasis on logically informed debates and discussions rather than ideological rants and polemics. 

The New Education Policy 2020 has already made a beginning in this regard. But a lot more needs to be done to reorient social sciences and humanities education in India.

We need to internalise Sri Aurobindo’s words, “Sri Aurobindo said, “It has been said that democracy is based on the rights of man; it has been replied that it should rather take its stand on the duties of man; but both rights and duties are European ideas. Dharma is the Indian conception in which rights and duties lose the artificial antagonism created by a view of the world, which makes selfishness the root of action, and regain their deep and eternal unity. Dharma is the basis of democracy which Asia must recognize, for in this lies the distinction between the soul of Asia and the soul of Europe”. (India’s Rebirth)

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