Instrumentalizing The University: The Principles Underlying Higher Education Regulation at India’s Founding

The contemporary literature on Indian universities is rife with discontent about academic freedom. Apart from attacks within and outside the university on the production and dissemination of knowledge, the state has systematically undermined institutional autonomy using the University Grants Commission’s first-order regulatory powers. This literature has grounded the crisis of autonomy in developments post Narendra Modi’s election in 2014, particularly after his re-election in 2019. However, this article argues that the crisis should be situated in a context predating this regime. It can be traced to the instrumentalist conception of the functional role morality of a university that was entrenched in the constitutional and statutory scheme at the nation-state’s founding. This argument is made through an institutional discourse analysis of the thought of the political elite as revealed in the constitutional and legislative material associated with the creation of the University Grants Commission during the Nehruvian period.

Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinion or stand of the University.