Information Filtering with Mango Chutney, Please
May 30, 2025
Censorship is having a moment. And not just in the US. For example, India’s The Wire laments, “Academic Censorship Has Become the Norm in Indian Universities.” Writer Apoorvanand, who teaches at Dheli University, describes his experience when a seminar he was to speak at was “postponed.” See the article for the details, like the importance and difficulty of bringing together a diverse panel. Or the college principal who informed speakers the event was off without notifying its organizer, Apoorvanand’s colleague. He writes:
“It was a breach of trust and a personal humiliation, my colleague fumed. Of course the problematic speaker would not know the story but he knew what was the real reason. He said that principals today only want one type of speaker to be invited. The non-problematic ones. Was it only about an individual? No. My friend felt that it went beyond that. There is an attempt to disallow discussion on topics which can make students think. Any seminars which would expose the students to different ways of looking at a problem and making their own decision are not permitted. For the last 10 years we see only one kind of meets being held in the colleges. They cannot be called academic and intellectual fora. They are platforms created for propaganda for the regime and one kind of ‘Indianness’ or ‘nationalism.’ If you do a survey of the topics across colleges, you would find a monotonous similarity. It is a campaign to indoctrinate young people. For it to succeed, the authorities keep other voices and ideas out of the reach of the students.”
Despite the organizer’s intent to not single out the “problematic” participant, the individual knew. Apoorvanand spoke to him and learned cancellations are now a common occurrence for him. And, he added, a growing list of his colleagues. Neither is this pattern limited to Dheli University. We learn:
“When I told [other teachers] about this, they opened up. Some of them were from ‘elite’ universities like Ashoka or Krea and Azim Premji University. There too the authorities have become very cautious. Names of the speakers have to be cleared by the authorities. There is an order in one university to share the slides the speakers would use three days before the event. The teachers are also cautioned against going to places that could upset the regime or accepting invitations from people who are considered to be its critics.”
At Indian universities both public and private, Apoorvanand writes, censorship is now the norm a bit like mango chutney.
Cynthia Murrell, May 30, 2025
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