We condemn the de-recognition of Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle by IIT Madras, at the instigation of the MHRD, for the ‘crime’ of criticizing the Modi Government and raising relevant concerns about the failure to implement the policy of reservations in the IIT Madras.
This de-recognition of the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle amounts to a majoritarian, casteist crackdown on voices of dissent among students.
Those defending the de-recognition on the grounds that the IITs as institutions of excellence need to crack down on ‘politics’, need to answer why there was no crackdown when students of the same IITs launched political agitations against the policy of reservations? Why are they so allergic to the values of Ambedkar, Periyar, and Bhagat Singh? These are the values embraced by the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle, and it is these values which continue to hold out a hope for a truly free and egalitarian India?
Innovation and fresh scientific research will be stifled to death if denied the oxygen of free speech, expression and action. Human minds that are restricted from free expression of social and political dissent, can never feel free to come up with fresh and new scientific research or fresh academic thinking of any kind. The best poets, scientists and thinkers have never been products of ‘darbari’ culture.
Speaking about Nazi Germany, Albert Einstein said, “…The liberty of the individual brought us every advance of knowledge and invention….If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must keep clearly before us what is at stake…Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, and no Lister. It is only people who are free, who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worthwhile.” We hope the MHRD and those who run the IITM and other institutions of higher education, will remember these words of one of the world’s greatest scientists, before they try to tell us that scientific or academic ‘excellence’ demands a ban on free speech.
The current Central Government, in cracking down on freedom of expression in colleges, universities and other institutions of higher education, is imposing an undeclared emergency. And this emergency is the biggest threat not only to free speech and expression, but to the excellence of our institutions of higher education.
It is clear to the world that the de-recognition of the student group is a direct result of MHRD intervention. The MHRD cannot now try to distance itself from the de-recognition. We demand that the MHRD ensure that de-recognition of Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle be rolled back with immediate effect.
We stand committed to resisting every assault on free speech and expression anywhere in the country, and to defending the rights of students and people to free speech and association.
