Roads Closed: Editorial on a Student’s PhD Proposal Regarded as ‘Anti-National’ by a University
31 July 2024 | The Telegraph
It is a sad state of affairs in the academia when a student has to apologise for his research proposal. That is what happened in the South Asian University, which is a joint venture of eight countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. The proposal seemed to be suited to acute regional concerns as it sought to study Kashmir’s ethnography and politics. Perhaps the turning point was the student’s uploading of a video interview with Noam Chomsky, who criticised Narendra Modi’s government for attempting to dismantle India’s secular democracy and establish a ‘Hindu technocracy’. It is ironic that the student was given a show-cause notice, after which he apologised and took down the video: that reinforced the Mr Chomsky’s point. Kashmir, in any case, is not a popular subject. The government discourages critical research on socio-cultural, religious and economic issues; perhaps it finds criticism and independent thinking unacceptable? But political leaders cannot decide what researchers should think about…