From Umar Khalid Book Row to RSS Events, JNU’s Autonomy is Increasingly at Risk

The cancellation of discussion on Umar’s book is a rung on the same Hindutva ladder of producing docile subjects.

Umar’s PhD thesis, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power, was supposed to be discussed on 10 August—a day after Adivasi Diwas—in JNU.

(Photo: Namita Chauhan/The Quint)

In the latest attack on academic freedom, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration has decided to cancel a book discussion on Umar Khalid’s PhD thesis. Umar’s PhD thesis, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power, was supposed to be discussed on 10 August—a day after Adivasi Diwas (International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples).

The event at the School of Social Sciences One (SSS1) auditorium, organised by Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) featured a panel comprising Professor Prabhu Mohapatra, Professor Uma Chakravarti, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Harsh Mander, and Umar’s confidante, Banojyotsna Lahiri. Citing ‘non-disclosure of the full facts about the programme’, the event was cancelled with the approval of the Dean, SSS. JNUSU has said the event will go ahead regardless, now outside the SSS1 building.

Meanwhile, Umar, who has been incarcerated by the State under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), will be spending his sixth consecutive birthday in prison on 11 August in the aftermath of the 2020 Delhi riots. The trial for his case hasn’t begun yet. Despite the Supreme Court consistently harping about the principle of ‘bail is the rule and jail is the exception’, his bail application and that of Sharjeel Imam, another PhD scholar from JNU, have been rejected numerous times by the courts, violating previous precedents. 

Six Birthdays in Prison, No Trial

Legal experts have previously pointed out that the ‘process has become the punishment’ for Umar and others incarcerated by the State, and their Muslim identity has a huge role to play in this.

Umar’s PhD thesis traces 200 years of changing relationships between various forms of administration and natural resources in Singhbhum, Jharkhand. His work resists oversimplification of history, dismantling clear binaries of 'egalitarian Adivasis’ with land and forests and an aggressive state intent to capture these resources.

Umar shows that reality is often more complicated and nuanced than this simplistic reduction. It is no surprise that Ramachandra Guha called his doctoral dissertation "one of the most accomplished doctoral dissertations by an Indian" he had read.

Umar submitted his PhD thesis at Jawaharlal Nehru University on 2 August, 2018, after securing a Delhi High Court order that forced the university to accept it. His thesis was supervised, evaluated, and accepted by JNU’s Centre for Historical Studies itself. JNU's betrayal of one of its own scholars appeares more a political act to appease the State and than about objections to the contents of the book. 

This development comes just after the Reporters’ Collective published an investigative report unearthing the recruitment scam at JNU. The report analysed the opaque procedure in the appointment of assistant professors in JNU since the current Vice Chancellor's appointment, pointing out that in at least seven cases, shortlists drawn up by subject experts were silently expanded to include favoured candidates who had initially been rejected, accusing the JNU admin of rampant favouritism and corruption.

At least two serving teachers were appointed as professors through direct recruitment, bypassing the standard promotion process, even as at least one serving assistant professor with a research score nearly seven times the minimum required has been repeatedly denied the position.

JNU’s Crisis of Accountability

The incumbent JNU Vice Chancellor has long been accused of favouring the current establishment. In fact, JNU VC Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit openly called herself a proud Sangh member while sharing a stage with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat at a book launch event in Pune.

On 15 April 2026, for the first time in JNU’s history, the RSS RK Puram Unit was allowed to organise a major event titled “Yuva Kumbh” at the JNU convention centre as part of its centenary celebrations under her watch. JNU’s Rector (Pro-Vice-Chancellor) Professor Brajesh Kumar Pandey (also Vibhag Sanghchalak of the RK Puram RSS unit) was one of the chief guests at the event. 

It is noteworthy that Point C of the official guidelines for the reservation of the JNU Convention Centre explicitly states: “the Convention Centre cannot be made available to any political/religious organisation”.

Ironically, RSS is both a political and a religious organisation, even though it uses the facade of being a “cultural organisation”. Its structural and ideological integration with the ruling BJP makes it difficult to maintain such a distinction in practice. Several BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are members of the Shakha and have actively participated in RSS-organised summits and events.

Additionally, at every level of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—National, State, District—the post of "General Secretary(Organisation)" is held by an RSS Pracharak (full-time worker). Furthermore, the organisation’s religious and ideological core, the pursuit of a Hindu Rashtra, is undeniable. Its historical ideological anchors, such as MS Golwalkar, famously pointed to the ethnic homogenisation of 1930s Nazi Germany as a model for "race pride," and "a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”

The same admin who proudly tagged PM Modi and Amit Shah on Twitter has failed to provide booking details of this event. An RTI filed by me, DOHED/R/E/26/02486, on 19 April 2026 requesting the details of booking has not elicited any response despite a 30-day cap to reply under the RTI Act, 2005.

The Slow Death of Academic Freedom

To think this dismantling of autonomy and critical thinking in university spaces is only limited to JNU would be a big mistake. JNU’s Delhi counterpart, Delhi University, has also followed the same trajectory of saffronisation—RSS was given space in campuses for their centenary celebrations; the University administration abruptly cancelled a long-running Friday Colloquium seminar at the Delhi School of Economics (DSE) titled "Land, Property and Democratic Rights" scheduled for 31 October, 2025, citing administrative reasons.

The cancellation triggered a protest resignation of the event's convener, Professor Nandini Sundar. The Democratic Teachers' Front subsequently pointed out that the same administration was simultaneously promoting the "Rashtriya Godhan Summit" on cow-based innovations.

Similarly, a few days back, a trial Court in Bombay refused to grant anticipatory bail to two former TISS students, Abhirup Paul and Kamakhya Prasad Das, in connection with a gathering to pay homage to the late GN Saibaba—a former Delhi University professor with over 90 percent disability who spent seven years in jail on Maoist-link charges before being acquitted by the Bombay High Court in 2024, and for raising slogans seeking the release of Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid. One of the ex-students, Abhirup Paul, was subsequently produced before a court and sent to police custody till Monday.

In another instance, Azim Premji University also filed a complaint with the police against its own students who are in charge of the Spark Reading Circle APU, accusing them of instigating trouble at the university and repeatedly “defaming” it—after roughly 20 Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP) members vandalised the campus in protest against a planned Spark event.

The organisers of the event, Spark Reading Circle APU, had created a post that said that Kunan-Poshpora, a village in Kashmir, saw “one of the most gruesome incidents of mass rape” on 23 February, 1991, allegedly by army men, highlighting that not a single conviction had taken place.  

While the vandalising ABVP members were granted bail, Spark's student organisers faced non-bailable charges—an asymmetry the university's own Student Council has publicly criticised as disproportionate, alongside more than 400 academics who have called for the FIR's withdrawal.

These events at the university and state level are not one-off incidents and should be seen as a microcosm of what has been happening in the country. In this regard, it is important to refer to the recently released Academic Freedom Index Report by V-Dem (Varieties of Democracies). The report highlighted that India ranked among the bottom 10-20 percent of countries globally in academic freedom, its lowest since 1900, even below the Emergency years between 1975 and 1977.

With universities becoming spaces for the ruling establishment to indoctrinate young minds with a particular kind of ideology and banning/outlawing the other side, the project of Hindutva wants to produce docile subjects who don't question the state- the cancellation of discussion on Umar’s book should be seen as part of another rung on the same ladder.

(Harsh Mamnani is an independent researcher and reporter. He holds a Master's degree in Political Science with a specialisation in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University.This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)