Communal politics around the SMVD medical college expose the dangers of turning educational institutions into ideological battlegrounds.
The controversy surrounding the derecognition of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence (SMVDIME), Jammu, is not merely about regulatory compliance. It is a cautionary tale about how education becomes collateral damage when institutions are dragged into political and communal contestations.
SMVDIME was conceived as a modern, infrastructure-rich medical college meant to strengthen healthcare and medical education in Jammu and Kashmir. In its maiden MBBS batch, 50 students were admitted through the nationally standardised NEET process. Forty-two of them happened to be Muslims, many young women from Kashmir. This demographic outcome, driven purely by merit, triggered an agitation by groups linked to the Sangh Parivar, which openly objected to the religious composition of the class.
What followed was deeply troubling. Instead of insulating an academic institution from street politics, sustained protests normalised the idea that admissions could be questioned on religious grounds. While the agitation did not disrupt classrooms directly, it created an atmosphere in which an educational institution was put on trial in the public square, not for pedagogy or outcomes, but for who its students were.
The National Medical Commission (NMC) subsequently withdrew the Letter of Permission, citing serious deficiencies in faculty strength, clinical material, infrastructure, and patient load. Regulatory oversight is essential, and no medical college should function below the prescribed standards. However, the sequence of events raises legitimate questions. The same regulator had approved the college after inspections only months earlier. That such “gross” deficiencies surfaced suddenly, and only after prolonged communal mobilisation, inevitably fuels perceptions that regulation was entangled with politics.
The larger loss is institutional. Educational institutions, especially professional ones, must remain secular spaces governed by merit, standards, and law, not faith, identity, or donor sentiment. The argument that a shrine-run institution should privilege students of a particular religion strikes at the constitutional idea of education as a public good. Donations to a shrine do not convert a medical college into an exclusive preserve; once established, it serves society at large.
Equally worrying are scenes of celebration over the closure of a medical college. In a region starved of advanced healthcare infrastructure and medical seats, shutting down an institution is not a victory. It forecloses future capacity, denies opportunities to generations of students, ironically including those from the very region where protests were strongest, and weakens public health systems.
The government’s decision to relocate admitted students to other medical colleges may protect individual futures, but it does not address the structural damage done. Once education becomes an arena for religious mobilisation, every institution becomes vulnerable.
The lesson from SMVDIME is stark: politics played on education ultimately impoverishes society. Institutions must be regulated rigorously, but defended fiercely from communalisation. Education cannot, and must not, become another front line of ideological conflict.
