Over the past 10 years, India has seen a significant decline in academic freedom, now ranking in the bottom 10-20% globally on the V-Dem Index of Academic Freedom. Despite its vastly bigger higher education sector, India performs worse than all countries in South Asia other than Afghanistan and Myanmar. However, all countries in the region have seen scholars targeted in recent years – whether on blasphemy charges, like Junaid Hafiz in Multan, or on charges of hurting religious sentiments, like a faculty member and students in Pune’s Savitribai Phule University. Student clashes between groups supported by the administration and others are common across the region. Sri Lanka, under its current dispensation, and Nepal top the South Asian list in terms of academic freedom, but they too face challenges, especially in the privatisation of higher education and the attendant shrinking of space. One may well ask whether a regional comparison is useful, given the differences in country size (see Table 1), and the fact that Myanmar and Afghanistan are not democracies. Indeed some commentators have claimed that the very idea of South Asia as a region is dead. But it is important to think regionally – not only by way of comparison but by way of conceptualising the problem – because apart from being a value in and of itself, free intellectual exchange would lead to better scholarship. Take my own discipline of sociology. For far too long, caste was studied as if it was based on religious strictures alone – rather than being a South Asian phenomenon of discrimination. Scholarly debates in India on personal law do not draw on the Pakistani or Bangladeshi experiences, although that would have been the most obvious comparison; for instance, when considering triple talaq. In history, both Indian and Pakistani textbooks work selectively to bolster official ‘national’ narratives. This is compounded by the lack of access to each other’s archives which were artificially apportioned at partition. Even on issues that need common research such as climate change or epidemics, country boundaries are used as defining frameworks, as if waters, winds and viruses are obedient slaves to nationalist narratives. Add to this the difficulty of visas for research (or even tourism between India and Pakistan) and what all of this essentially means is that foreign scholars can do comparative studies which South Asians themselves cannot. Beyond the advantages of thinking in South Asian terms, there are also serious disadvantages to not thinking regionally or allowing free exchange. One feature of the attack on academic freedom within each country is the construction of the enemy-neighbour. Going beyond the effacement of each other’s histories and sociologies, in recent years even the acknowledgement of the other has been actively criminalised in both India and Pakistan. Kashmiri students have been the worst victims but across India, students have been jailed under charges of sedition or terror for playing Pakistani songs, cheering the Pakistani cricket team, even cheering Pakistan along with India. In Khyber Pakhtunwa, Pakistan, four students were expelled for singing India’s national anthem during a youth festival on campus. Pakistanis and Indians are not given visas to attend conferences in each other’s countries, also reducing the chances both have to host international conferences. For example, the 2018 Association for Asian Studies Conference held at Ashoka University attracted much controversy because of the Indian government’s refusal to give Pakistani scholars visas. Following the India-Pakistan war in 2025, Delhi University’s Standing Committee for Academic Matters refused to pass courses on Pakistan and China and instructed faculty not to include works by Pakistani scholars. In 2026, a Committee at Jammu University decided to drop Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Jinnah and Iqbal from an MA Political Science course. While the India-Pakistan rivalry is prominent and has affected the international framing of South Asia, several other borderland exchanges, both intellectual and material, happen on a regular basis – whether across the boundary between Nepal and Bihar or between Bangladesh and West Bengal, or between the Tamils in Sri Lanka and India. Kanak Mani Dixit who has been in the forefront of promoting the idea of South Asia, has called for a ‘penumbra Southasia’, where fuzzy intellectual and cultural borders soften the hard political divides, and affiliations are decentralised between regions rather than between nation-states. But here too, there are periodic restrictions to the detriment of intellectual freedom. The popular revolt against Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh followed by an interim government and then the electoral victory of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Bangladesh may likely worsen academic and cultural exchanges, especially after the BJP’s win in West Bengal. These exchanges were already coming under strain. In 2025, for the first time since 1996, there was no Bangladesh pavilion at the Kolkata book fair. Nepali students are India’s largest contingent of foreign scholars (28.1%) followed by much smaller numbers from Afghanistan (9.1%), Bangladesh (4.6%) and Bhutan (3.8%.). However, the death of Preeti Lamsal, a Nepali student at KIIT, Odisha, and the subsequent order (then rescinded) to all Nepali students to leave the institute’s hostels highlighted their vulnerability. Overall, the number of foreign students in India is very small (49,348), compared to the nearly two million Indian students abroad, and the lack of a strong South Asian presence is striking. Table 1: University Landscape in South Asian CountriesCountryTotal No. of UniversitiesSourceAfghanistan 129 (36 public, 93 private)https://whed.net/home.phpBangladesh176 (58 public, 116 private, 3 international including SAU)http://www.ugc-universities.gov.bd/, accessed 12 may 2026Bhutan3 (2 public, 1 private)https://whed.net/home.phpIndia849 (525 public, 324 private)1168 https://whed.net/home.php(AISHE 2020-21)Maldives9 (2 public, 7 private)Myanmar97 (all public)https://whed.net/home.phpNepal 14 (public 14)https://whed.net/home.phpPakistan175 (104 public, 71 private)262https://whed.net/home.phphttps://www.dawn.com/news/609563/towards-e-learningSri Lanka28 (public 28, private 7)https://whed.net/home.phpSource: World Higher Education Database (https://whed.net/home.php), accessed on May 17, 2026. This site may be slightly outdated since National Higher Education Commissions/UGC sites have higher figures. Common historiesWhen one thinks of the subcontinent as an intellectual space, there is no logic to contemporary national silos. The study of religion, philosophy and languages makes sense only in the context of migratory flows – whether that of the early Aryans, the Mughals or the Mundas. The transmission of Buddhism from Nepal to India to Sri Lanka and elsewhere, crossed kingdoms and oceans. Coming down to the subcontinent as an academic space which is a much narrower concept with colonial origins, much can be gained by studying some of the inherited commonalities. One such common framework is evident in the structure of public universities such as Boards of Studies and University Courts. Even Nepal, though it was not directly colonised, was influenced by the Indian academic establishment through affiliations and faculty being trained in India. Tri-Chandra College set up in 1918, now part of Tribhuvan University, was initially affiliated to Calcutta University. Rangoon University, established in 1878, also started life as an affiliated college of the University of Calcutta. Also read: Forced Resignations, Suspensions, Threats, Imprisonment: India’s Shrinking Academic FreedomThe commonalities continued even after independence and separation. In the 1970s (in Nepal in the 1990s), several South Asian countries established University Grants Commissions (UGC) to fund and regulate public universities, modelled on the British UGC. How specific this name (now changed to the Higher Education Commission in Pakistan) and style is to South Asia can be seen by looking at other countries, especially Commonwealth nations like Canada or Australia, which do not have similar bodies. In terms of where universities stand vis-à-vis other landscapes of advancement, we see a common divide between metropolitan and regional universities, English as an elite passport, and the mass centralised examination systems for the civil service, modelled on the colonial Indian Civil Service (ICS). For instance, in Bangladesh, in 2024, out of 4.75 lakh candidates, only 0.46% got in. In India, out of the 10-13 lakh candidates who apply every year, only 0.1-0.2% are selected. Inevitably, all these exam systems rest on private coaching, which takes away from the importance of the university as a space of learning. Political economy of higher educationIf a bedrock of public education is common to all the countries of South Asia, so too is the growing privatisation of higher education, the turn to the United States and other western countries for partnerships and intellectual validation, the numbers of students going abroad for higher studies (with some dips depending on the state of the economy) and funding cuts for those – students and faculty – staying at home. Compared to elsewhere in Asia, all the countries of South Asia are united in spending a very small percentage of their GDP on higher education. However, there are also interesting differences – China is the top destination for Pakistani students studying abroad, though Indian students are also ecumenical in their choices – studying in China, the UAE, Russia and other Central Asian countries. In all the countries of the subcontinent, there is also a growing trend towards welcoming universities from abroad, mainly the UK and Australia, setting up campuses and franchises. Inevitably, this affects academic freedom, not in the narrow sense of freedom to research and teach, but in the deeper sense of developing an alternative intellectual voice. Internationalisation, while important, also runs the risk of aggravating intellectual dependency and reducing autonomy. Sadly, as higher education systems prioritise international rankings and accreditation without investing correspondingly, South Asia is also united in the prevalence of plagiarism and academic fraud, including the retraction of articles – with India leading the pack. India is third globally in the number of Life Sciences retractions after the US and China. The exceptions to this trend of privatisation, of course are Afghanistan and Myanmar. In Myanmar, all the universities and higher education institutes are public. In Afghanistan, while private universities proliferated in the first two decades of the 21st century, the Taliban takeover has meant that they are struggling to survive without female students, and with large scale emigration. Female students constituted 28% of the total in Afghanistan in 2021; in 2023, none. Militarised and surveilled campusesAfghanistan and Myanmar are also exemplars of how militarised education works against academic freedom. The dominant image in the Western media is of a medieval anti-education Taliban, ignoring the West’s own complicity in creating this situation. Kabul University was first established in 1946, followed by decades of expanding secular education. In the 1980s, however, the USAID underwrote violent Islamist textbooks for Pashto children across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Taliban takeover between 1996 and 2001, and subsequently 2021 onwards has resulted in the exclusion of women from the educational system, and the Islamisation of the curriculum at all levels. But even in the US-governed interregnum, the curriculum was not autonomously developed to meet Afghan needs, and university capacity could not match student needs. In Myanmar, the 2021 Tatmadaw coup reversed fledgling reforms after decades of isolation. But elsewhere in South Asia too, in regions with independentist movements, militarism has taken over education. As Aparna Sundar and I have argued in the context of civil war, contrary to the failed states literature on civil wars, what is distinctive about South Asia is the solidity of the states and their long histories. South Asian states have been successful at deploying nationalism on the one hand, and colonial era emergency instruments like sedition, preventive detention and the use of paramilitary forces on the other. The university is central to both – in articulating the historical and cultural basis for sub-nationalism or independence and as a site for the central attack on such aspirations. Kashmir, Manipur, Balochistan, Jaffna, Chittagong are all regions with vibrant intellectual traditions which have challenged dominant state narratives. However, their faculty and students have faced expanded surveillance, arbitrary suspensions, arrests, disappearances, closures, and an erosion of academic autonomy. Under such conditions, fear and self-censorship become the norm. These regions are often treated as no-go thought areas elsewhere in the country too. For instance, in 2025, 25 books on Kashmir were banned in the UT of J&K, and routinely, academic events on Kashmir are banned or suspended, as is the case with discussions on Balochistan. Jointly inherited colonial era laws like sedition also have a chilling effect on academic freedom, as was famously the case with the 2016 arrest of JNU students for holding a meeting on Kashmir. Student politicsOne important and completely understudied feature of South Asian politics is the role of student movements in raising both campus issues and shaping national and sub-national politics. In recent years, Sri Lanka (2022) Bangladesh (2024) and Nepal (2025) have all seen Gen-Z led political transformations; while student and faculty protest has been a mainstay of the resistance to the Tatmadaw coup in 2021 in Myanmar. The very birth of Bangladesh is indelibly associated with the university. In India, too, the first resistance to the Modi regime came from student movements on different campuses, focused on issues of quality education, caste and gender inequality and access in terms of fees and scholarships. In Pakistan, the students action committee – an umbrella organisation of progressive student groups organised a series of Student Solidarity Marches from 2018 to 2021, raising campus issues, demanding that student unions be restored, and campuses be demilitarised. Indeed, how threatened South Asian governments feel by student unions is evident in that one of the first acts by Nepal’s new premier Balen Shah in 2026 was to ban party-affiliated student unions; a move which was rescinded by the Nepal Supreme Court. Also read: Why Academic Freedom in India Hangs Between Attacks and ResistanceHowever, the history of student protest as a potent political force goes back to the freedom movement with universities serving as the outpost for new ideas and associations and students, especially those studying abroad, becoming part of international movements, along with co-Southasianists. Since then, student wings of national parties, as well as regional student associations, have played prominent roles. For instance, in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatra Dal, and the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wings of the Awami League, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami respectively, have been major actors. In Pakistan, the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) have faced off against the Democratic Students Federation (DSF); the National Students Federation organised against the Ayub Regime, while the Sindh Students Federation and the Baloch Students Federation have articulated regional issues. On the one hand, students movements embody a culture of resistance and revolutionary change, on the other, students linked to ruling party act as stormtroopers for the regime. Student ‘clashes’ are often extensions of state politics with the student wings of ruling regimes getting tacit support, such as in Bangladesh where students protesting against reservation in the summer of 2024 were attacked by students from the ruling Awami League. In India, the ABVP, the student wing of the RSS, is alleged to be behind a lot of the recent student violence. However, these do not exhaust the canvas of student associations. In India alone, a rough mapping of student organisations will reveal at least five different types: a. Party-affiliated organisations, such as the National Students Union of India (Congress), the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (RSS-BJP), and the Left-associated Students’ Federation of India, All India Students’ Federation and All India Students Association (affiliated with the CPI(M), CPI and CPI(ML), respectively); b. Faith-based student movements, for e.g. the Naga Baptist Student Association, or the banned Students Islamic Movement of India;c. Ethnicity/regional based movements, for e.g. All Jharkhand Students Union, and Bodo Students Union;d. Issue based, for e.g. the Chatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini in the 1970s, Youth for Equality (against affirmative action), and e. Campus based issues, for e.g. Pinjra Tod, a student women’s movement against campus restrictions. Unfortunately, while the students of South Asia have much to say to and learn from each other, they are rarely allowed to meet. For a brief period in the early years of the UPA government, student exchanges between Pakistan and India took place, but that has stopped completely. Ongoing academic exchangesEfforts at promoting South Asian academic exchanges are, unfortunately, limited. The decline of the South Asian University set up in 2010 with contributions from all SAARC countries signals not only the loss of a common South Asian educational dream, but showcases Indian insularity, with Indian students and faculty now dominating the Delhi-based South Asian University. Similarly Nalanda University in Bihar was meant to attract students and faculty across Asia, but has fallen prey to ideological controls within India. Civil society initiatives like the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFD); the South Asian Peace Action Network (SAPAN), and the magazine Himal, or specific efforts like the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) and the 1947 Partition Archive, function best in the diaspora or in smaller countries like Nepal which are seen as relatively neutral. But even in the diaspora, South Asian organisations are heavily outnumbered by specific national, religious, regional or even caste associations. Even within universities, the economic power of Indian global capital and its donations to American universities do not create a field of South Asia as such. For instance, in the South Asia Across the Disciplines series jointly published by the University of Chicago Press, Columbia University Press and University of California Press, titles on India dominate. If South Asia is to truly come into its own as an intellectual space, we need peace and free exchange within the countries of South Asia – not just in the diaspora. Universities and research should be protected and valued as autonomous spaces, and there should be free admissions and faculty hires across the region. Investment in higher education must increase, especially support for public universities. Like the European Research Council, there should ideally be a South Asia Research Council. It is only in our common associations that we will recognise our individual freedoms. Nandini Sundar teaches sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, and is co-editor, along with Aparna Sundar, of Civil Wars in South Asia, Sage 2014.