New Delhi: “German Universities have still not managed to come out of the shackles of the Nazi regime. That is what authoritarianism does to academia,” said Gilbert Sebastian, an assistant professor of political science at the Central University of Kerala in Kasargod in North Kerala.The university administration suspended him in May 2021 after he called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh a “proto-fascist organisation” during an online class, and he was later reinstated after issuing a letter of regret. “There is a similar process going on with [other] universities in India,” he added.Sebastian’s words echo the latest findings of the Academic Freedom Index, released by the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute in 2026. India’s rank has steadily decreased from 0.65 in 2012 to 0.14 in 2025 on a scale of 0 to 1 (1 being the highest). Last year, it was ranked 156th among 179 countries and it has sustained its position in the bottom 10% to 20% bracket this year too.Similarly, the ‘Free to Think 2025’ report, released by Scholars at Risk (SAR), a New York-based international network promoting academic freedom, places India among 16 countries and territories with “concerning developments and trends” in academic freedom.SAR criticised the ruling party’s grip on academia in the country, saying that the Bharatiya Janata Party “took actions to extend its authority over the country’s system of higher education, undermining university autonomy” and that they have tried to “exert political control and impose a Hindu nationalist agenda over universities”.This steady decline reveals a pattern involving both state and non-state actors – legal policies, administrative bodies and fringe groups that have continuously attempted to curb and silence academic spaces.Academicians have been threatened with various forms of punishment and legal action. The Indian Academic Freedom Network identified 62 such professors and lecturers from universities across the country, who were subjected to multiple punitive actions for their public opinions and political stances between January 2014 and April 2026. Most of them were targeted due to critical remarks they made against the government, right-wing authoritarianism and the saffronisation of their respective campuses.Ten of the professors were terminated, while 16 were suspended. Twelve professors were forced to resign, and four received show-cause notices.When it comes to police action, arrests happened in 21 cases, with several cases pending before the courts.Disciplining the university: The adoption of CCS RulesIn India, the formalisation of the state’s grasp on academic freedom was confirmed through the adoption of the Central Civil Service (Conduct) Rules in 2018. Established in the year 1964, through Article 309 of the Constitution, it acts as a legally binding set of regulations to “defend and uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India” by imposing restrictions on government employees in engaging in political activities and public interactions.The professors who have faced prosecution are alleged to have committed ‘offences’ that largely fall under the premise of the CCS rules, even though they have not been formally adopted in many cases. These cases, right from 2014, have thus acted as a precedent for the unquestioned actions that have been taking place.“Central University teachers are by definition not government servants. My responsibility is not to defend the government, it is to speak the truth,” said Surajit Mazumdar, professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the former president of the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA). “These rules do not make sense because teachers are supposed to have academic freedom and enrich public discussion.”The rules include restrictions on engaging in political activity, strikes, holding influential associations, unauthorised media interaction or criticism of the government.Various court rulings also uphold Mazumdar’s view, such as in the case of Suchitra Mishra v. Union of India in March 2015, when the Allahabad high court stated, “The Professors of the University are neither members of service nor do they hold a civil post under the Union nor they are in the service of local or other authority.”However, on May 1, 2018, the University Grants Commission and the Ministry of Human Resources Development issued a circular that said, “for service matters, the University should follow the Govt of India rules/ orders as applicable to Central Govt. Civilian employees”, adding “for service matters, the University should follow the Government of India rules/orders applicable to Central Govt Civilian Employees”.This UGC-MHRD circular from May 1, 2018, directs universities to follow the Central Civil Service (Conduct) Rules, 1964.According to Mazumdar, these rules are being adopted in universities in two ways: either the universities formally adopt these rules, like in the case of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), or universities formulate individual statutes aligning them with the CCS rules, like in the case of Visva Bharati. The effects of this soon follow.In August 2019, show-cause notices were served to 48 teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who conducted a one-day strike against harassment by the vice-chancellor. “This was a direct application of the Central Civil Service Rules,” Mazumdar said.From social media to classrooms: How teachers are surveilledRule 9 of the Central Civil Service (Conduct) Rules bans any government servant from criticising the government. In the aftermath of the 2025 Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor, social media in India had been bustling with calls for revenge, war cries and open threats. India’s retaliatory military operation, Operation Sindoor, also proceeded with expressions of national valour. The media briefings for the operation were conducted by two female military officers – Colonel Sofia Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh.Amidst this, associate professor of political science at Ashoka University, Ali Khan Mahmudabad, wrote about the ‘hypocrisy’ in the optics of this.“I am very happy to see so many right-wing commentators applauding Colonel Sophia Qureshi, but perhaps they could also equally loudly demand that the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing, and others who are victims of the BJP’s hate mongering be protected as Indian citizens. The optics of two women soldiers presenting their findings is important, but optics must translate to reality on the ground, otherwise it’s just hypocrisy,” he wrote.He was arrested just days later – on May 18, 2025 – under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which includes offenses that endanger the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India. He was released on interim bail three days later. Last month, the Haryana government dropped its case against him after almost a year of accusation and unjust persecution.However, Mahmudabad was neither the first person nor the last person to have endured this. The same month he was arrested, Professor Lora Santhakumar of the SRM University in Tamil Nadu was suspended for her anti-war views during Operation Sindoor. She was later dismissed in December 2025, after months of targeted online abuse from right-wing groups.Such attacks have been recurring during periods of heightened national tension.In February 2019, an assistant professor of English at Icon Commerce College in Guwahati, Papri Banerjee, was suspended from her college and arrested for a Facebook post she made a day after the Pulwama attack. In the post, along with condemning the attack, she had criticised the Indian Army’s role in Kashmir.In the same month, Salman Shaheen, then a member of the faculty at Jalandhar’s Lovely Professional University (LPU), was forced to resign when his replies to a student’s posts regarding the Pulwama terror attack were taken out of context and circulated. Shaheen said that he was asked by the LPU authorities to either resign or face suspension for two months.In November 2019, an Aligarh Muslim University professor, Huma Parveen, was arrested for her tweet referring to the disruption of communication in Jammu and Kashmir after the reading down of Article 370, following the complaint of a Hindu Mahasabha leader, Alok Pandey.Barring these situations, any verbal comments or critical remarks against the ruling BJP regime on social media have brought multiple professors suspension and dismissal orders.Professor Indranil Bhattacharya was suspended in July 2019 without due process by the director of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, for a Facebook post he made criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi.As Bhattacharya moved to the Bombay high court against the suspension, the bench remarked, “FTII is not Doordarshan. It is not a limb of the government media.”The next year, in February 2020, at Assam’s Gurucharan College, physics professor Souradeep Sengupta was arrested after a post on the 2020 North-East Delhi communal violence. In the Facebook post, he called the PM “a mass murderer” and said “Sanatan Dharma my foot”. The very next day, ABVP filed a complaint against him, and he was arrested while a mob of 40 people attacked his house.Apart from personal distress, such attacks debilitate the career prospects of these professors, especially when a legal action is involved.Jeetrai Hansda, an Adivasi professor of drama in Jharkhand, wrote a Facebook post in support of a beef festival organised in IIT Madras and expressed his interest in organising a similar event in Jamshedpur in 2017. He also wrote about the Adivasi community’s right to eat beef and how the state cannot ban it. ABVP filed a complaint against the post in 2017. Two years later, Hansda was arrested under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 295A (attempts to insult religion or religious beliefs), and 505 (statements causing public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).This surveillance of professors has extended to classrooms as well.“When you talk to teachers, they share how they are scared of speaking in classes, especially when it is recorded,” said Apoorvanand, a professor of Hindi at Delhi University. “A few seconds of a lecture could be edited and circulated without context, and they end up in trouble.”Waqas Farooq Kuttay went through a similar situation while he was teaching a course in political science to the students at Sharda University in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.During the annual semester exams in May 2022, he included a question on whether India was a fascist country. The question was widely circulated on X, leading to him receiving multiple threats. Kuttay said an enquiry committee formed by the college told him he had “hurt the sentiments of some students by putting up that question”.“I told them it was part of the syllabus and the question paper was already approved by the admin,” Kuttay added. The committee terminated his employment a couple of days before the end of his contract, which was till May 31, 2022.A similar case occurred recently, in December 2025, when Professor Virendra Balaji Shahare of Jamia Millia Islamia was suspended after he included a question on the atrocities faced by Muslims in India in the semester exams of the Bachelor’s in Social Work programme.What can and cannot be writtenRule 8 of the Central Civil Service (Conduct) states that government servants cannot own, edit, or manage any publication or electronic media without prior government approval.In August 2023, a thread on X, on a working paper by then Ashoka University Economics professor Sabyasachi Das, sparked widespread debate. The paper, later published in July 2024, titled ‘Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy’, alleged electoral manipulation by the BJP in the 2019 elections.Ashoka University distanced itself from the paper, stating that individual views do not reflect the university’s position. Das resigned on August 14, 2023. Fellow economist Pulapre Balakrishnan resigned from the university in protest, stating, “Academic freedom was violated in the response, and it would be unconscionable for me to remain.”Such instances are not restricted to criticism of the Union government. In April 2021, Professor K.S. Madhavan of the University of Calicut, under the left-wing state government, was sent a show-cause notice alleging that he violated various sections of the Kerala Government Servants Conduct Rules, 1960, for writing an article in a Malayalam newspaper alleging that universities in Kerala were subverting reservation in faculty appointments.“Many teachers have told me that they are being advised not to write anything publicly. And be cautious while writing. So your freedom is taken away,” said Apoorvanand, who was also denied leave to attend a conference in April 2025 on the topic ‘The University Under a Global Authoritarian Turn’ in New York after he refused to submit the text of his speech.This also extends to global universities like the South Asian University (SAU) in Delhi, which issued a notice to a research scholar in July 2024, after he cited an interview with Noam Chomsky in which Chomsky critiqued Narendra Modi. His supervisor, Sri Lankan anthropologist Sasanka Perera, was also sent a notice. He resigned in protest.This censorship has often caused distress among professors, with many of them resigning from their posts.“I felt extremely harassed by the lack of opportunity to do anything seriously academic and being questioned all the time. Everything we did, like writing and attending conferences, was subjected to scrutiny. Eventually, I resigned,” said Sumangala Damodaran, one of the founding professors of Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), who resigned in 2022.Two professors of the same university, Salil Mishra and Asmita Kabra, were dismissed in November 2024, accused of “procedural lapses” while they were part of the administration, ignoring the protests from students and teachers.Criminalisation of associationRule 5 – Government servants are prohibited from joining or supporting any political party or participating in political activities in any form.Rule 6 – Government servants cannot be part of any association whose aims or actions threaten India’s sovereignty, integrity, public order, or morality.Professor Sonya Surabhi Gupta, former honorary director of the Centre for European and Latin American Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) in Delhi, was suspended in November 2022 after she issued a notice to conduct the election to the teachers’ association in the university in the role of a returning officer.The teachers’ association, an independent body, was instrumental in maintaining the political decorum of the university and was the only organising body, as the university did not have student elections or other representative bodies.The elections were cancelled and she was suspended for a period of 20 months. When she challenged the university’s decision in the Delhi high court, the court upheld that the association was an independent body, but the university has refused to acknowledge that. The latest development in this case emerged when the current president of the association, Professor Majid Jamil, on April 7, 2026, wrote to the vice-chancellor to unseal the teachers’ association office for conducting elections before May 16, as per the rules of the association. However, two days after sending the letter, he was issued a show-cause notice, saying that he cannot use his designation as president since the body is now dissolved.Gupta retired in January this year. However, the university administration has stalled her pensionary benefits, citing the pending court case.“Teachers joining associations and political parties is not new,” said Surajit Mazumdar, adding that there are many professors who were active in national and regional politics.However, this has not stopped the government from targeting teachers’ associations and their progressive groups.Virasam, the revolutionary writers’ group organised by Varavara Rao, the activist who was jailed in the Elgar Parishad case, was one such group that came under the state’s baton. Professor Kasim of Osmania University was arrested from his residence in the staff quarters in 2020 for allegedly having Maoist links, a week after he was appointed the general secretary of Virasam.A few months before this, another professor of Osmania University, K. Jagan, also a member of Virasam, was similarly arrested by Telangana police for alleged Maoist links. Both of them were booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967.Should teachers speak outside the classroom?Rule 7 – Government servants are barred from participating in demonstrations and protests that threaten public order or integrity Amit Sengupta, an associate professor of English Journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), was transferred in 2016 to IIMC’s Dhenkanal campus in Odisha without consultation or consensus three days after he gave a speech during a march in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) protesting the death of Rohith Vemula, where he remarked “those who made a public spectacle of mass murders are now telling us what nationalism is.”“This decision to transfer me without any consultation was arbitrary, undemocratic, and without consensus. This seemed a retaliation for my JNU speech,” Sengupta told The Wire.IIMC has been alleged to have a pro-state stance since the appointment of K.G. Suresh as the vice-chancellor. “Under this regime, the entire academic and extra-curricular atmosphere of IIMC began to change. Journalists close to the RSS-BJP were engaged as guest faculty,” said Narendra Singh Rao, who was terminated from the institute in 2016, for his protests against the dismissal of manual scavengers on the campus.The curbing extends to private universities too.In 2016, then mathematics professor at Ashoka University Rajendran Narayan, was forced to resign when he signed a petition circulated by students that protested the killing of Burhan Wani, a Kashmiri militant, by Indian armed forces.In his resignation letter to Ashoka University, he wrote, “Your high-handedness in my case and others who ‘resigned’ will lead to a chilling effect and undermine the very cause that you have worked hard for.”Multiple professors were arrested during the period of 2019 and 2020 for their involvement in anti-CAA protests across India.Robin Verma from Shia College in Lucknow was arrested by the Lucknow police in December 2019 and detained for 25 days in the Lucknow Central Jail, while Arupjoti Saikia from IIT Guwahati was called to the NIA office in Guwahati in February 2020 for questioning.In 2024, Arjun Sengupta, assistant professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), was issued a show-cause notice for speaking at a protest organised by student groups in TISS Hyderabad against the arbitrary dismissal of 119 teaching and non-teaching staff from campuses of TISS.In the speech, he also extended solidarity to research scholar Ramdas Prini Sreenivasan, who was suspended by TISS for participating in protests against the government’s 2020 New Education Policy.Most of these teachers have not seen an end to the action taken against them. While some of them moved to other institutions, many of them are still attending court hearings.South Asian University professor Snehashish Bhattacharya was suspended for a period of two years and eventually dismissed in September 2025 for writing a letter to the administration along with other professors in 2023, asking for the resolution of student protests demanding an increase in the stipend for postgraduate students.“I receive an email every six months from the university informing me that my suspension has been extended till I issue an apology,” he told The Wire in May 2025.When asked the question of what lies ahead, the professors had different opinions. “With many appointments coming up now, there is an attempt to change the very nature of academic spaces,” said Apoorvanand.However, Mazumdar insisted that resistance is the only way forward. “There is no permanent victory for this kind of authoritarianism. It will always be challenged, no matter how long it takes,” he said.Hajara Najeeb is a researcher based in Delhi.