Vice-President Hamid Ansari said yesterday universities must uphold liberal values and respect dissent, a month after violent protests erupted at a university in New Delhi over a speech by a student accused of sedition.
Addressing students at the Panjab University in Chandigarh, Ansari said commitments to the right to dissent should be revisited at a time when the “value and scope of academic freedom” was being called into question.
“The right of dissent and agitation are ingrained in the fundamental rights under our constitution, which sets out a plural framework and refuses any scope to define the country in narrow sectarian, ideological or religious terms,” he said.
“Recent events in our own country have shown that there is much confusion about what a university should or should not be. The freedom of our universities has been challenged by narrow considerations of what is perceived to be ‘public good’.”
Ansari appeared to be referring to violence at the University of Delhi last month involving Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a pro-Bharatiya Janata Party student union.
According to media reports, ABVP protested against inviting the student to give a speech at a literary seminar and violent clashes broke out.
“In a period of rampant distrust of matters intellectual, there is an imperative need to defend the universities as free spaces, as independent, critical repositories of knowledge, and as sources of renewal of liberal values that provide avenues of social mobility and equality to people,” he said.
“We need to remind ourselves of the democratic aspirations of pragmatic liberal education while recalling that ‘our finest universities help fulfill the dreams of our best selves as a people’,” he added.
Talking of the importance of academic freedom in the university system, Ansari said: “Academic freedom is the foundation of the university’s mission to discover, improve, and disseminate knowledge.
“The ideas, no matter how uncomfortable or disturbing to the accepted status quo, can and must be challenged, modified and even discarded - on their merit, but may never be muted or suppressed.”
Asking for openness to new ideas that may prove offensive and willingness to have one’s assumptions questioned, he said: “This tolerance always has the potential to conflict with other virtues and causes, so it needs to be defended repeatedly and vigilantly.”
He said the rights to dissent and agitation are ingrained in the fundamental rights under the constitution, which sets out a plural framework and refuses any scope to define the country in narrow sectarian, ideological or religious terms.
The vice president’s defence of plurality also comes as criticism grows over an apparent shift in course by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that could redefine the world’s largest democracy as a Hindu nation.
Yogi Adityanath, a firebrand Hindu ascetic with a history of agitation against minority Muslims, was sworn in to lead Uttar Pradesh on March 19, and observers said it marked a departure from the platform of development for all on which Modi rose to national power in 2014.


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