Скачать или смотреть Nivedita Menon on the erosion of academic autonomy and surveillance on campuses

In this episode of SpeakEasy, senior journalist Amit Baruah is in conversation with academic and activist, Nivedita Menon, following her retirement from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Drawing from decades of teaching, writing, and institutional engagement, Menon reflects on what universities once represented and what they are rapidly becoming in today’s India.

Menon speaks about the systematic dismantling of public universities after 2016, especially at JNU and Delhi University: the erosion of academic autonomy, ideological faculty appointments, surveillance on campuses, and the hollowing out of democratic processes. She offers a sharp critique of the National Education Policy, arguing that it combines saffronisation with neoliberal precarity, producing compliant labour rather than critical citizens.

Menon also addresses Hindutva’s drive to manufacture a Hindu majority, argues for understanding India as a country of multiple minorities, and explains how the language of “decolonisation” is being deployed to legitimise a Brahminical recolonisation. She reflects on the present, where institutional decay coexists with everyday resistance, and why dissent remains indispensable.

Highlights:
What has changed inside JNU and public universities since 2016
Ideological control, surveillance, and the remaking of academic power
Why India has no single “Hindu majority”
The politics of “decolonisation” and Brahminical recolonisation
Resistance, disenfranchisement, and the crisis of institutions

Perfect for:
Viewers interested in higher education, democracy, and academic freedom
Students of politics, gender studies, and social science
Those tracking the ideological remaking of institutions under Hindutva

Credits:
Host: Amit Baruah
Camera: Dipesh Arora and Deepanshu Chhabra
Editing: Razal Pareed
Creative Assistance: Vedaant Lakhera and Vitasta Kaul
Producer: Mridula Vijayarangakumar

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