Institutions of education are meant to do what politics often cannot: create shared futures across difference. Universities, colleges, and research centres are supposed to transcend immediate identities, equipping students with skills, ethical grounding and critical thinking that allow them to participate meaningfully in a democratic society. Yet in India today, these institutions are increasingly being repurposed as sites of ideological assertion and communal mobilisation. Instead of nurturing merit and knowledge, they are being dragged into battles over belonging – who deserves access, who represents the nation, and whose presence is considered legitimate.The crisis at the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Medical College in Jammu and Kashmir is not an aberration. It is the latest symptom of a deeper structural transformation in how education is imagined, governed and politicised in post-2014 India.The Vaishno Devi Medical College episode laid bare this transformation with alarming clarity. A medical college established to address regional healthcare shortages in a strategic location and expand access to professional education became the site of communal agitation after its first MBBS intake included a majority of Muslim students, selected purely on merit through NEET.Instead of defending the integrity of a national entrance examination or focusing on improving institutional compliance, public discourse was diverted toward religious arithmetic. The question ceased to be whether the college met regulatory standards and became whether its students “belonged”. The subsequent withdrawal of permission by the National Medical Commission, regardless of its formal reasoning, unfolded in a political atmosphere thick with communal pressure. The damage was immediate: students displaced, public confidence eroded, and the principle of merit quietly subordinated to identity.When religious or communal composition becomes a metric for institutional legitimacyWhat makes this moment dangerous is not merely the disruption of one institution, but the precedent it reinforces. Once religious or communal composition becomes a metric for institutional legitimacy, education ceases to function as a constitutional guarantee and becomes a negotiable privilege. This logic has surfaced repeatedly across India’s educational landscape over the past decade under PM Modi’s regime.Consider the sustained, deliberate ideological vilification of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Since 2016, JNU has been portrayed not as a centre of academic debate but as a symbol of ideological deviance – “anti-national”, “urban Naxal”, or worse. Student dissent was criminalised through sedition charges, and complex debates on nationalism were flattened into binaries of loyalty and betrayal. The purpose was not merely to discipline a campus, but to send a message: universities are not spaces for questioning power; they are expected to conform to a prescribed national identity. The chilling effect on academic freedom has been real and enduring.Jamia Millia Islamia offers another instructive example. In December 2019, the university became the epicentre of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The police crackdown on campus, which included library assaults and indiscriminate detentions, marked a watershed moment. Jamia was not treated as a university populated by citizens exercising constitutional rights, but as a suspect Muslim space requiring forceful containment. The communal coding was unmistakable. The message again was clear: certain institutions, by virtue of their history or demographic composition, could be stripped of the protections ordinarily afforded to spaces of learning.Aligarh Muslim University has long been subjected to similar treatment. Debates around its minority status, the appointment of vice-chancellors, and the regulation of student activities have repeatedly been framed not in terms of governance or academic autonomy, but as ideological contests over history and identity. The question of AMU is rarely allowed to be about education policy; it is continually repurposed as a referendum on nationalism and religious legitimacy. This persistent framing ensures that the institution remains politically vulnerable, its academic mission perpetually overshadowed by communal suspicion.Even institutions without explicit minority identities have not been spared. In 2024, Gujarat University became the site of communal violence when a group of international students was attacked for offering namaz on campus. The incident was followed not by a robust defence of the students’ rights, but by administrative restrictions on religious practices, subtly reinforcing the idea that visible minority identities are disruptive to institutional order. Here again, the university’s role as a space for cultural coexistence was replaced by a logic of regulation and exclusion.The erosion is not limited to campuses experiencing overt conflict. It is also visible in quieter, bureaucratic transformations. Curriculum revisions by the NCERT, which have removed or diluted references to Mughal history, caste oppression and communal violence, represent another axis of institutional politicisation. These changes are often justified as “rationalisation” or “decolonisation”, but their cumulative effect is the narrowing of historical understanding along ideological lines. When knowledge itself is selectively curated to align with majoritarian narratives, educational institutions cease to be sites of inquiry and become instruments of ideological reproduction.Professional institutions, too, have been drawn into this vortex. The controversy surrounding the designation of the Jio Institute as an Institution of Eminence, despite its lack of an operational academic track record at the time, highlighted how political proximity and corporate power can distort educational priorities. While not communal in a narrow sense, the episode demonstrated how institutional recognition can be untethered from academic merit and repurposed as symbolic validation. When excellence is defined by access to power rather than intellectual contribution, institutions lose credibility as public goods.Earlier, the appointment of a politically affiliated individual as chairperson of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) triggered widespread protests by students, who argued that cultural institutions, such as universities, require professional and pedagogical leadership rather than ideological loyalty. The government’s response framed the protest itself as illegitimate, reinforcing a broader pattern: dissent within institutions is not engaged with, but delegitimised.The tragic death of Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad remains one of the most searing reminders of how institutional power can intersect with identity to devastating effect. The reduction of structural caste discrimination to questions of individual misconduct revealed how universities can fail their most vulnerable when political considerations override ethical responsibility. While caste and religion are distinct axes, the underlying logic is similar: identity becomes a liability rather than a protected dimension of citizenship.Educational institutions are no longer autonomous spaces governed primarily by academic normsTaken together, these episodes suggest a systematic shift in how educational institutions are perceived. They are no longer autonomous spaces governed primarily by academic norms. Instead, they are increasingly treated as ideological territories that must reflect a dominant cultural and political identity. Belonging is policed, dissent is suspect, and merit is acceptable only when it aligns with prevailing narratives.I witnessed this inversion of priorities firsthand at my own alma mater, Pondicherry University. Convocations for batches graduating since 2021 were postponed, only to be finally conducted in the last week of December 2025 – timed not to fulfil an academic obligation, but to inaugurate a newly built International Convention Centre. Nearly 800 rank-holders, including myself, were assembled to fill a 2,500-seat hall for the Vice President’s inauguration.The symbolism was unmistakable: the university’s most basic duty – to formally confer degrees – had been deferred until it could be subsumed under a spectacle of institutional grandeur. Once the inauguration concluded, the dignitaries exited; the convocation itself felt almost incidental. Students, despite paying a separate convocation fee, were not even assured their official photographs from the university. What should have been a moment affirming merit, scholarship, and institutional continuity became a staging ground for optics. The message was subtle yet unmistakable: ceremony mattered more than students, and visibility more than academic closure.This transformation carries long-term consequences. First, it undermines trust in institutional neutrality. Students begin to perceive admissions, appointments and evaluations not as fair processes, but as contingent on identity and conformity. Second, it weakens India’s global academic standing. Universities that are politically volatile and intellectually constrained struggle to attract international collaboration or retain talent. Third, it fractures the social contract. When education – the primary vehicle for social mobility – is perceived as exclusionary, resentment and alienation deepen.The Vaishno Devi medical college crisis must therefore be understood not as a local controversy, but as part of this broader pattern. A medical institution meant to serve a diverse population and address systemic healthcare gaps was derailed because its first cohort did not satisfy an imagined communal balance. That this happened in Jammu and Kashmir – a region already marked by political instability and trust deficits – makes the implications even more severe.If institutions meant to guide the nation’s progress are reduced to arenas for identity assertion, the future they shape will be narrower, more divided and less resilient. Democracies do not collapse only through spectacular events; they erode quietly when institutions stop doing what they were designed to do. Universities that cease to protect merit, plurality and critical inquiry cease to be universities in any meaningful sense.The challenge before India is not merely to resolve individual crises, but to reclaim the idea of education as a constitutional promise rather than a cultural concession. That requires political restraint, institutional courage and public vigilance. Without it, the battle over belonging will continue to hollow out the very foundations on which the nation’s progress depends.Amal Chandra is an author, political analyst and columnist. He posts on X @ens_socialis.