The Ashoka University faculty member faces charges of endangering the country’s sovereignty and integrity and promoting enmity between different groups
NEW DELHI — Prominent students’ organisations have come out strongly against the arrest of Ashoka University’s Prof Ali Khan Mahmudabad and demanded his immediate release.
Students Islamic Organisation (SIO) and Students Federation of India (SFI) on Tuesday stated that Prof Mahmudabad was a respected academic and intellectual, and he was penalised for expressing a principled critique rooted in democratic values. They urged the government to stop criminalising dissent and uphold academic freedom.
Defending Prof Mahmudabad’s post on social media platform X, the SIO said it was far from being anti-women or anti-national, which calls for consistency in upholding justice, applauds the armed forces, and also demands equal concern for victims of hate and state violence.
Prof Mahmudabad, Associate Professor and head of the Department of Political Science at Ashoka University, was arrested on Sunday (May 18). The grounds of such arrest are charges of endangering the country’s sovereignty and integrity and promoting enmity between different groups, among others, under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
In a statement, the SIO said: “The distortion of his words into misogynistic propaganda is a shameful misuse of power, aimed at silencing voices that challenge the dominant narrative.”
This arrest is not an isolated incident but part of a systematic assault on academic freedom, critical thought, and democratic dissent, it said. “The targeting of a professor for a social media post reveals the state’s deep insecurity and its increasing intolerance toward truth and reason. SIO stands in resolute solidarity with Prof Mahmudabad and demands his immediate release, the quashing of all false charges, and an end to the political persecution of intellectuals. We will not allow the classroom to become a courtroom,” it said.
The SFI, in its statement, said that the fact that Prof Mahmudabad praised the restraint exercised by the Indian armed forces in most of the same social media post has gone unnoticed/unacknowledged.
“The Students’ Federation of India, as an organisation that believes in upholding democratic dialogue in the academic landscape, strongly condemns such stifling of democratic voices of constructive criticism towards the government of a sovereign state. Furthermore, this only adds to our anguish of losing out on some of the bravest academic brains of our nation to arbitrary prosecution, just because they critique the government.
It is bothersome how constructive criticism of the government has now come to attract such dire consequences. Moreover, for a state like Haryana, where the state women’s commission has persistently failed at positively influencing atrocities committed against its women and children on a daily basis, this crackdown is preposterous”, the SFI statement said.
The central executive committee of the SFI demanded immediate withdrawal of all complaints against Prof Mahmudabad, and a public apology from the state women’s commission of Haryana. “It is our solemn duty to uphold independence and democracy in the academic institutions of India”, the SFI said.
