As the new academic year began last month, the once-venerated Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) issued a revised honour code for students that reads like a manual for young minds to, ironically, stay away from critical thinking and social education. Beset by a series of acts of resistance in recent months and the banning of the Left-leaning students group, Progressive Students Forum, the institution’s code restricts students from participating in protests that are “anti-establishment”, advises them to stay away from “unpatriotic discussions, demonstrations and dharnas” among other dos-don’ts which, taken together, is an attempt to make the campus as apolitical as possible. Students, as in other institutions, have had to sign an undertaking that violating these would invite strict action.
While an educational institution reserves the right to enforce discipline and behaviour on its campus in the interest of learning, academic excellence, and social appropriateness, the TISS’ revised code raises concerns that are now normalised since the crackdown on other Left-leaning institutions such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) — politics and political programmes are allowed except of the Left. The political slugfest at the student level is unlikely to end anytime soon but the TISS’s code points to a disturbing development. In the halls and on the campus of India’s premier social science institute, students are restricted from exploring and applying concepts learned in classrooms, must effectively curb their critical thinking skills instead of nurturing them, and treat dissent as criminal. What social science education is this?
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