Fulbright Fiasco: Has the Indian Government Been Censoring Controversial Research Topics?

May 30, 2007— -- Over the past two years, scores of American Fulbright scholars seeking to do research in India have been thwarted in their efforts by long delays and rejections. Both Indian and American academics have blamed the Indian government for the problems, claiming the delays and rejections of controversial topics, including Islam and women's rights, amount to censorship. And despite diplomatic efforts to clear the backlog, some worry that the problems will continue.

"Everyone knows that certain topics are blacklisted," Jeff Redding, a research fellow at Yale Law School told ABC News. Redding, a Fulbright scholar, had to return to the United States to find work while waiting to hear if his Fulbright research proposal on Islamic law was accepted. Seven months later, he learned in an e-mail that his topic had been rejected. No explanation was provided.

Redding said he reapplied with a new topic, omitting any mention of Islam and had to wait another seven months before he finally gained clearance. "It's not what I prefer to be working on," he said of the new topic, adding that he is not sure when he will actually be able to go back to India, because he now has a full-time job at Yale.

Criticizing the Indian government for basing approvals on content, Pratap Bahnu Mehta, the director of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former visiting professor of government at Harvard University, wrote in a February op-ed for the national Indian Express newspaper, saying: "Patriotism may or may not be the last refuge of scoundrels. But security-based arguments are often the last refuge of those who want to control for the sake of control. There is something wrong when universities have to seek permission from the government on a routine basis to get clearance for researchers."

Some academics affected by the backlog of pending research projects have given up. Others had to do their research without the Indian government's approval. Sarah Mehta quit her job and delayed law school to study Muslim women's education in India, but her research visa was denied, leaving her distraught and desperate.

"When I tried to reapply, Fulbright told me that I needed to change my topic if I wanted to get clearance," she said. Unwilling to do that, she was forced to forgo the Fulbright grant money and do field work in India secretly. "I didn't want to lie about what I was researching," said Mehta, now a student at Yale Law School. "Despite the lack of funds and Fulbright affiliation, I got to do truly spectacular work with great organizations and am writing up my research now for a law class."