Does political ideology remain confined to elections, or can its shadow enter classrooms, universities, newspapers and cultural institutions? In four months of the new government in West Bengal, five incidents — at Lake View School in south Kolkata, the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Jadavpur University, the Anandabazar Patrika office and the Academy of Fine Arts — appear unrelated. Yet they raise a common question: how far can political power enter spaces meant for independent thought, expression and institutional autonomy? The organisational links between these incidents may not be established. But their cumulative significance cannot simply be dismissed.
History matters here. The Doctrine of Fascism, published in Benito Mussolini’s name in 1932, did not conceive the State merely as an instrument of administration or law and order. It assigned importance to education, art, religion and science, and envisaged the State influencing not only external conduct but also the moral, intellectual and “spiritual life” of individuals. The ambition was therefore deeper than controlling what people do. It was to shape how they think.
That is how the contraction of autonomous spaces generally begins: first institutions, then their environment, and finally common sense — what can be said, what cannot, what is acceptable and what becomes “unacceptable”. Such processes rarely arrive in one stroke. They may begin with a dispute over expression, an administrative power, the appropriation of a symbol, or the removal and rewriting of memory. To call every such incident Fascism would be analytically careless. But we must examine whether they cumulatively narrow the space for dissent.
Fascism does not always arrive first with guns. It can begin by making the question “why?” itself suspect. If asking why produces the label “Dimagi Naxal”; if protest produces “anti-national”; if questioning an administrative decision invites “Whose side are you on?” If disagreement with a newspaper headline is answered by painting its walls in a political colour, the issue goes beyond one party or one incident. It concerns the health of democratic culture.
When Political Power Enters the Classroom
The Lake View School episode in Dhakuria illustrates the problem. According to media reports, the RSS-affiliated teachers’ organisation Akhil Bharatiya Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh objected to photographs of Marx, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh. The school subsequently removed the photographs of Marx and Mao. The stated objection was that the school displayed foreign communist leaders while omitting photographs of Indian national figures. But can removing a photograph remove the history associated with the person?
Teaching Marx is not the same as teaching Marxism; teaching Mao as history is not the same as producing Maoists. An educational institution should not curate history by ideological preference. It should create the intellectual space to ask why Marx, why Gandhi, why Ambedkar and why Vivekananda. Education that fears the question “why” risks replacing historical understanding with obedience.
SRFTI and the Politics of Asking Questions
The SRFTI episode on September 27 is equally significant, though its facts remain contested. A confrontation took place between students and participants at an “awareness” programme organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat. Some students alleged that they were insulted and assaulted and called “anti-national” and “terrorists”. The organisers alleged that students attacked first and damaged their posters. Three FIRs were filed, and the State government constituted a six-member SIT. The question of who attacked first therefore awaits investigation.
But another question remains. If a political viewpoint can enter a film institute, why should questioning that viewpoint become illegitimate? Why was permission granted for a “consumer organisation” programme in the auditorium of a film education institution? And why should students asking such a question encounter hostility? The danger begins when “why?” ceases to be an invitation to debate and becomes evidence of disloyalty. The nation is not the property of a political party, and nationalism cannot be monopolised by one ideological framework.
This is precisely why Mussolini’s conception of the State deserves attention. Education, art, religion and science were linked to a larger moral and political project, including the shaping of individual “will” and “intellect”. The Fascist ambition was therefore not simply to determine what citizens would do, but to construct the framework through which they would see the world. Democracy, by contrast, requires citizens and institutions capable of independent judgement.
Nazi Germany demonstrates how such an ideology could become institutionalised. On March 13, 1933, the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was established, with Joseph Goebbels in charge. In September, the Reich Chamber of Culture was created, with separate chambers for film, theatre, the press, radio, music, literature and the fine arts. Through the “synchronisation” of culture, Jews and politically undesirable people were removed from cultural institutions. In May 1933, nearly 20,000 books were burned in Berlin, including works by Marx, Freud, Brecht and Tucholsky. The sequence was telling: first define “pure” knowledge, then “impure” knowledge, and finally decide what knowledge should survive.
University Autonomy and the Power to Transfer
That history provides a useful caution when considering the West Bengal Assembly’s amendment Bill of September 10, 2026. Section 14A provides for transfers of teaching and non-teaching employees from one State-run university to another. The government cites administrative necessity, balanced human-resource utilisation and the need to deploy experienced teachers where required. Teachers’ organisations fear consequences for university autonomy and job security.
Administrative transfers are normal in governance. The real question is the safeguards around the power: who decides, on what criteria, for what reasons, with what avenue of appeal, and how much weight is given to the university’s own judgement? Germany’s Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 7, 1933 created a legal framework for excluding Jews and politically “unreliable” persons from government employment. Intervention did not begin by dictating what universities would teach. It began by determining who could remain inside them.
The University of Frankfurt offers a stark example. In spring 1933, 128 of its 351 academics lost their teaching authorisation — more than one-third. Jewish and politically undesirable teachers and students were removed. The Institute for Social Research was forced into exile, while Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno lost their university positions and left Germany. The lesson is not that every administrative transfer resembles Nazi Germany. It is that administrative power without institutional safeguards can eventually affect who remains within an institution and, consequently, which ideas remain secure there.
When Politics Enters the Press and Cultural Institutions
The press presents another warning. On September 1, 25–30 saffron-clad people protested outside the Anandabazar Patrika office and painted two white entrance pillars saffron. The protest followed the newspaper’s headline “Saffron hooliganism” on the Jadavpur clash. The authorities later restored the pillars to white. The BJP said the incident was not a party programme; there is therefore no basis for attributing the protest to a direct party instruction. Yet the question remains: when a newspaper’s editorial position is disliked, are argument, protest and counter-writing not preferable to symbolically appropriating its physical space?
Before 1933, Germany had around 4,700 daily and weekly newspapers reflecting diverse political views. Under Nazi rule, opposition newspapers closed, central directives over news increased, and by mid-1941 the Nazi press controlled more than 80% of German newspaper circulation. The 1933 Editors’ Law also subjected entry into journalism to racial and political conditions. Press control thus went beyond deciding what could be printed. It changed who could become a journalist, who could own a newspaper and under whose instructions news would be produced.
At the Academy of Fine Arts, the symbolism was similarly stark. A roughly 200-square-foot room changed from terracotta to saffron, then white, and again saffron within a month. Around 50 BJP workers, led by an MLA, arrived with saffron paint and repainted it; “Jai Shri Ram” and “Vande Mataram” slogans were raised. The question is symbolic but fundamental: when the wall of a cultural institution becomes a canvas for political identity, whose cultural space is it?
Nazi Germany answered that question through the Reich Chamber of Culture. Art, theatre, literature, film and music were brought within a framework of political acceptability. The “Degenerate Art” exhibition established the State as judge of what was “German” and what was “degenerate”. After the 1933 book burnings, the preliminary list of banned literature in 1935 contained more than 3,500 titles.
The Shrinking Space for Dissent in West Bengal
The recent West Bengal incidents therefore converge around a larger issue: what may be remembered in Dhakuria, what may be said at SRFTI, who may remain within a university, how freely a newspaper may speak, and which symbols may occupy a cultural institution. The questions differ. The underlying concern is the shrinking space for independent judgement.
India’s present indicators make the concern harder to dismiss. Scholars at Risk’s Free to Think 2026 describes India’s academic freedom as “severely restricted”; its Academic Freedom Index score fell from 0.16 in 2024 to 0.14 in 2026. Reporters Without Borders’ 2026 World Press Freedom Index places India 157th among 180 countries, with a score of 31.96, compared with 151st in 2025.
There is also a broader ideological lesson. Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto described communists as the “most advanced and resolute section” of the working-class movement; Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? (1902) developed the idea of an organised revolutionary party. Organisation can produce political consciousness. But when any “vanguard” begins to regard itself as the sole owner of truth, it can become an instrument of authority. Democracy must therefore build institutions in which no party is beyond question.
Four months after the BJP formed the government in West Bengal, this is the larger test. On May 9, 2026, Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as Chief Minister. The BJP won 207 of 294 Assembly seats, ending 15 years of Trinamool rule. Expectations were high: industry and investment, corruption-free administration, better healthcare, teacher recruitment, employment, citizen security and administrative transparency. The government has promised industrialisation, health and education infrastructure, administrative reform and action against corruption.
Four months are insufficient for a final verdict on governance. But questions are legitimate. How much actual industry has arrived alongside investment promises? Has administrative transparency improved? How much of the expectation around teacher recruitment has been met? What does the citizen experience in healthcare say? Has security improved? Most importantly, is the new government creating a different administrative culture, or merely replacing one political colour with another?
Changing street names is easy. Changing syllabi is relatively easy. Painting walls saffron is easier still. A transfer of power can be written into law. The harder tasks are removing fear from teachers, protecting students who question, improving hospitals, assuring investors, punishing corruption with evidence and protecting journalists’ freedom to ask uncomfortable questions.
That is the real democratic test. A government may change names, colours and political loyalties. But if “Sanatani” becomes merely a new label for replacing old symbols with new ones, it is not institutional change; it is a change in the costume of power.
Democracy is tested by the ability to tolerate dissent, criticise one’s own supporters, preserve university autonomy, accept headlines one dislikes, allow artists to choose their colours, and teach students Marx alongside Gandhi. Its strength lies not in establishing a universally “correct” opinion, but in defending the right to contest an opinion through reason.
The danger of a fascist culture is therefore not necessarily visible in one spectacular act. It may emerge through the gradual monochroming of intellectual space: today a photograph, tomorrow a colour, then an event, a transfer of power, and eventually the language of the newspaper. None of these, taken alone, need constitute Fascism. But if each contributes to shrinking the space for questioning and dissent, the danger lies not in the individual event. It lies in the culture.
First comes: “We are correcting the system.” Then: “We are deciding who will remain.” Then: “We are deciding what may be said.” Finally, nobody needs to issue an instruction. People learn for themselves what is safe.
That is when trust is out, and fear is in.
And the greatest danger to democracy is neither saffron, nor red, nor white. It is the day when citizens no longer look the State in the eye and ask the smallest, most important question:
Why?
