University cannot give up its role as a site of dissent and questioning

Synopsis: The exit of Pratap Bhanu Mehta from Ashoka University has challenged popular assumptions about the space for unregulated intellectual freedom.

Introduction 

Concerns about the future of the academy and the ecosystems that define its routes have risen. 

• The 967 universities and 128 institutions include state, central, deemed and 370 private universities and accommodate around 3.74 crore students. 
• Universities are not just hubs of teaching and learning. They expect a new reality, imagine alternatives, establish the positions of civilised engagement in democratic citizenship and represent transformative impulse.
• The university today is an unsolidified daily poll. It has to navigate through academic freedom and organisational accountability, between its connections with the state and centres of power; between equality.

Why is dissent important?

The NEP persistently highlights outreach programmes, started by the social responsibility of the university. The NAAC and NIRF rankings pay significant attention to this dimension.

• Firstly, the public thinker’s accepted trained stature enables them to seek explanations for public action from those in power. They intervene in the interests of public good based on condensed study. 
• Secondly, these involvements are always in the interests of justice and democracy and define the options that are available for a better ordering of society.
• Thirdly, the public intellectual is expected to be an impartial critic and show that a politics that rises above resentment is possible. Due to many reasons, universities have abandoned their role as sites of the dissenting tradition. 
• Fourthly, History is filled with examples of the possibilities of dissenting interrogations opening new lands of thought. 
• Fifthly, Teaching to break the rules becomes integral to pedagogy as classrooms evolve from safe to brave spaces. Analysis of the structures of dominance, power, prejudice, and silences in knowledge production becomes important.

How has dissent enriched academics over the years?

• The contributions of an Aryabhata, Buddha, Khwarizmi, Copernicus, Galileo, Al-Zahrawi, Descartes, Newton, Marx, or an Einstein were built on paradigm shifts that disturbed settled comfort zones.
•  The often prayed Nalanda tradition too excelled in pushing the “sutras” to arouse new voices through reasoned dialogue and debate.
• The newest NEP even pushes HEIs to integrate critical thinking into course and discourse.

The conclusion 

• Education is to protect citizens against the rigid closure of their own beliefs and shake them to put their own truths to constant scrutiny. 
• The issue is unceasing, unstoppable, interminable satyagraha against simplification, uniformity, and totalisation” that the academy will truly reflect atmanirbharta.

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