Universities are guardians of the Republic, not factories of credentials: Congress MP Abhishek Singhvi

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi has called for enacting strong legal protection for academic freedom and autonomy and said varsities should not merely prepare students for employment, but for engagement. Singhvi said if democracy is to endure not just as a ballot-box ritual but as a way of life, then its "beating heart' must lie not in Parliament alone, but in universities. He made the remarks speaking to a gathering of vice chancellors of Japanese universities, administrators, diplomats, professors and members of civil society in Tokyo in a lecture on 'Universities of the Future.'

The Minister of Education of Japan also attended the lecture. "It is there that the grammar of inquiry as much as of dissent is learned, the alphabet of citizenship is practised and the poetry of pluralism is composed," the Rajya Sabha MP said, according to a statement he issued on Saturday. Singhvi, who is also a high profile lawyer, lamented that campuses that once echoed with Socratic inquiry now risk being reduced to soulless factories for credentialism.

"The rise of misinformation, the corrosion of academic freedom, and the narrowing of intellectual bandwidth into vocational silos has turned many campuses into echo chambers or, worse, tombs of thought. "A university cannot be told to behave, not to inquire. A democracy that fears its students has already begun to fear its future. The silencing of questions is not neutrality, it is complicity. Authoritarianism does not descend with jackboots, it seeps in through silences," he opined. Singhvi called for the need to rethink the university as a guardian of "the Republic" as well as a temple of knowledge.

Also read Jaipur Police arrests student leader from Rajasthan University; Cong slams government

Education beyond job readiness

He urged every university to release an annual Social Influence Report or Social Institutional Responsibility, or SIR, card that measures civic influence, public service and democratic engagement. This alone can go beyond mere citation metrics and job placements, he stressed, likening SIR, with corporate social responsibility. Singhvi said this new pedagogy should not merely prepare students for employment, but for engagement. "We must enact strong legal protection for academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

These are not luxuries, they are preconditions for intellectual honesty," he said. Singhvi said India must embrace global academic partnerships, particularly in Asia. "An Indo-Japanese democratic education consortium can become a beacon for the world. Let us imagine campuses where Tokyo and Thiruvananthapuram meet to teach AI ethics, civic tech and constitutional jurisprudence. "Eventually, the health of our democracy will not be measured merely in GDP figures or global rankings. It will be measured by whether the Indian campus remains a place where it was safer to ask dangerous questions than to offer convenient lies," the lawmaker said.