In late September and early October, the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in Kolkata became an unlikely battleground. On September 27, students of SRFTI clashed with members of the Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat, an organisation that several reports have described as RSS-linked. The students said they objected to the group's programme on their campus and alleged that outsiders assaulted them. The ABGP told a very different story — it claimed students disrupted its event and disrespected images of Bharat Mata and Swami Vivekananda — but offered no substantial evidence to support that narrative.
A week later, on October 4, members of the Hindu Jagran Manch marched to the institute. Reports said protesters tried to breach the gates and threw stones and bottles toward the campus. The protesters, predictably, gave a different account of how the confrontation began.
It would be easy to dismiss this as just another campus scuffle. But what happened at SRFTI is better understood as a litmus test — a test of whether India's educational and cultural institutions can remain liberal spaces for dissent, artistic experimentation and independent thought. At the same time, it is worth separating the documented facts from the broader political interpretation of what these incidents mean.
Start with what a film school is. A film school exists to question things. Cinema, theatre, literature and the visual arts all depend on the freedom to challenge established ideas — religious, political and social. If students learn that questioning a powerful ideology can bring intimidation or physical confrontation to their gates, the damage goes far beyond one afternoon of stone-throwing. The real danger is self-censorship. Students quietly begin avoiding certain subjects, not because those subjects are banned, but because they fear what might follow. That is why filmmaker Varun Grover described the SRFTI episode as an effort to intimidate institutions that encourage free speech and independent thinking. It is important to note that this is his interpretation, not an established finding about the organisers' collective motive — but it is an interpretation many find persuasive.
Another distinction matters just as much, and it is one the shouting often drowns out: liberal thinking does not mean being anti-religious or anti-national. A liberal educational environment must allow one student to say, "I disagree with Hindutva," and another to say, "I strongly support Hindutva" — with neither position attracting physical intimidation. The fundamental issue, then, is not Hindutva versus liberalism. It is whether disagreement gets settled through argument, protest and democratic debate, or through coercion.
Labels play their own corrosive role. In the September incident, students were reportedly called "anti-national", "urban Naxals" and "terrorists". During the October confrontation, protesters allegedly referred to SRFTI students as "dimagi Naxals" — intellectual Naxals. These labels do more than insult. They transform a disagreement about an event, a poster or a campus policy into a question of someone's patriotism and legitimacy as an Indian. Once disagreement becomes synonymous with anti-nationalism, there is little room left for democratic argument at all.
The location of all this gives it added significance. SRFTI is not just another public venue. It is a national institution built for education in film and television, and it carries the name of Satyajit Ray — a filmmaker whose art depended entirely on the freedom to portray uncomfortable realities and explore conflicting viewpoints. If an ideological group believes certain ideas must never be questioned, while students believe those ideas should not be imposed on their campus, the answer lies in institutional rules and dialogue, not intimidation.
Perhaps the strongest reason to see these incidents as an attack on liberal thinking is the chilling effect they risk creating. If students believe an unpopular interpretation could bring an organised mob to their campus, they may simply choose not to make the film. You do not need to ban a film to suppress creativity. You only need to make people afraid to create it. When political or ideological disagreements at an educational institution are accompanied by intimidation or violence, the institution's capacity to nurture free inquiry is threatened — regardless of which ideology is responsible. That is the deepest impact of this kind of hooliganism carried out in the name of nationalism.
And that is what makes the SRFTI controversy larger than one campus clash. The real question before us is simple and stark: should India's young filmmakers learn to win arguments through films and ideas — or learn that some questions are too risky to ask, and quietly keep quiet and remain happy?
---
*Contact: atanusingapore@gmail.com
Comments