KS Ramadas
The Bombay High Court order upholding the suspension of TISS scholar KS Ramadas raises important questions about the extent of free speech allowed to students.
The Bombay High Court order upholding the two-year suspension of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) scholar KS Ramadas, despite UGC guidelines that do allow the right to free expression, is a highly regrettable judicial sanction to the penal action of educational institutions to scrub out all dissent not just on campus but even by its students outside the campus.
In an order delivered on March 12, 2025, Justices MM Sathye and AS Chandurkar also rejected the contention that the punishment (a two-year suspension) imposed was disproportionate.
The order comes in the wake of increasing criminalisation of campus protests and student activism over educational issues and social and political happenings around the world. While students in Columbia University grapple with the backlash after protests over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, students in India have been protesting the rise of the majoritarian hindutva ideology and its impact on education.
Since the FTII strike in 2015, there has been a series of conflicts and protests by students across India (including the protest by Dalit students in Hyderabad Central University and the death by suicide of Rohith Vemula in January 2016, the JNU students charged with sedition in February 2016, the forced entry by Delhi police into Jamia Milia Islamia, and the more recent police crackdown in Jadhapur University in March this year).
In TISS, students and faculty have been on a confrontation course with the management over the right to protest and hold meetings on campus. Scheduled programmes were cancelled while large-scale staff terminations and larger control by the government over funding has also caused unrest. The TISS management’s decision to take punitive action against Ramadas was only the latest in this ongoing conflict.
In January 2024, Ramadas was amongst the scores of students who participated in a march to Parliament to protest the BJP government’s New Education Policy (NEP). At least 16 student organisations had participated in the march, including Ramadas’s organisation, the TISS branch of the Progressive Student Forum (PSF). Ramadas had participated in the march as a central executive committee member of Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and as a member of Progressive Student’s Forum (PSF).
A TISS committee instituted an inquiry into Ramadas’s participation in the march, as well as other charges, including a protest before the office of the Director and a social media post urging the screening of the award-winning documentary ‘Ram Ke Naam’ on the day of the consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
In April 2024, Ramadas was suspended for two years.
Absurdly, TISS took objection to the use of its acronym in a single poster (amongst several) that advertised the march and the 16 organisations that came together for the protest. It actually went a step further and decided that the mere use of its acronym was an indiction that the hallowed institution was participating in a march to protest the NEP. Notably, the institution’s logo or any other trademark indicator of its ownership of the acronym was used in the single poster offered for evidence.
Regrettably, it is this reasoning that the court appears to have upheld.
Relying upon a pamphlet entitled ‘Parliament-March’ with the slogan ‘Save India, Reject BJP’, the court said that it was “clear as sunshine” that the march was politically motivated and upheld the finding of the committee that he had “created an impression in general public that the politically motivated protest and views were the views of the Respondent/institution TISS.”
The court further held: “This has brought disrepute to the Institute in its view. Petitioner can have any political view of his choice, but so does the Institute. The Petitioner has full freedom of expressing his political view; but to do so under the banner of Respondent Institute is what is objected to by the Institute.
Ramadas’s mere participation in the protest against the government’s education policy, despite a palpable lack of evidence of any speeches or statements against any particular institution, was enough for the court to maintain that he had violated an honour code (signed by students of TISS upon admission). The order said: “As per clause (9) of the Honour Code, which is signed by the every student of the Respondent/Institution, the student undertakes that he will not malign the name of the Institution by presenting views on any platform, tarnishing/damaging the name of the institution in public domain. Therefore the Petitioner has violated the student code.”
In the order, the judges actually rejected a perfectly reasonable and well stated guideline of the University Grants Commission on freedom of expression for students:
Clause 6 of the Guidelines for Students’ Entitlement reads:
As democratic citizens, the students are entitled to freedom of thought and expression within and outside their institution. The college/university must allow space for free exchange of ideas and public debate so as to foster a culture of critical reasoning and questioning. College/university authorities must not impose unreasonable, partisan or arbitrary restrictions on organizing seminars, lecture and debates that do not otherwise violate any law.
Incidentally, the January 2024 march was peaceful and the name of the institution didn’t even figure in the media coverage of the protest. But that appeared to have cut no ice with the committee, much less with the court. Clearly, a dissenting voice needed to be curbed and a message sent out to other students that even minor transgressions would not be tolerated, careers and studies be damned.
Read the order here.
