On September 27, the Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat (ABGP), a consumer awareness organisation with links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), held a State-level meeting in the main auditorium of Kolkata’s Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI).
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The students alleged that the auditorium was rented out to the organisation without prior notification to the student union for ₹15,000. They noted that there are ample alternative venues in Kolkata, aside from an educational space, which could have hosted an organisational meeting of this nature.
“Nothing of this sort has happened before at SRFTI. As students, we have a right to know what is going on on our campus, as well as the right to exercise our free will and peacefully protest against it,” Aindrila, a student at SRFTI, said.
Placards at a demonstration by students at SRFTI, on September 28, 2026. Photo credit: Prantik Ali
Following the protest, violence erupted on campus as outsiders clashed with students, leaving several protesters and a few faculty members injured. Classes have been suspended at the institute for 11 days as of October 12, 2026, with students protesting for better campus security.
Students have also levelled allegations against the administration, accusing it of enabling a culture of diminishing creative freedom.
A student of animation at SRFTI, Appu Soman, said that the newly introduced education policies have been adverse for filmmaking students. “Several of our courses have been clubbed together, or left out altogether, which severely affects the way one gets acquainted with the language of cinema. The institute is trying to compromise the quality of education by filling up batches with more students, and churning out graduates in large numbers.” He also alleged that infrastructural and institutional negligence had systematically crippled the institute’s academic output.
Appu recalled the pushback he had faced during the making of a short animated film titled Da’Lit Kids. It was set to be screened at AniMela, an international animation film festival in Mumbai, in February 2026. However, it was removed from the lineup after failing to secure a certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which functions under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. “When a film — made in a national institute on taxpayers’ money — faces censorship from the state, it raises an important question: why does it not want young artists of the country to engage with what makes us uncomfortable?” he asked.
Students across film institutes in the country have raised allegations of academic and infrastructural deficiencies, reports of intimidation, and mob violence.
India’s third and newest national film institute, the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) Itanagar, located in Arunachal Pradesh, was founded in 2019. It has been at the centre of controversy ever since it admitted its first batch of students in October 2024. Students have complained that the infrastructure remains incomplete, and the institute is under-staffed, leading to disruptions of the academic year and coursework.
FTII Itanagar students lodge a protest against administrative negligence on September 17, 2026. Photo credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“We lack the basic amenities one would expect of a national film institute. To stage our performance, we had to travel all the way to Kolkata’s SRFTI, since we do not have a working preview theatre,” Ashish, a student in the acting department, said.
“Our institute has been functioning without a proper Internal Complaints Committee for the past one and a half years. It is also very concerning that during student protests, there were complaints of students being harassed by unknown men who had entered the campus premises due to untrained and inefficient internal security,” another female student from the first batch at FTII Itanagar alleged. “In a space as isolated as this, it is bewildering why adequate safety measures have not been adopted yet.”
“The student body has flagged repeated security issues on the campus and pushed for the deployment of CISF personnel, a request that has, to date, not been met. On September 16, three students were attacked, unprovoked, not more than 500 metres away from the campus. A two-time National Award-winning faculty member who had tried to intervene was also beaten up,” Ashish added.
Long delays
A student from Dada Lakhmi Chand State University of Performing and Visual Arts (DLC SUPVA), located in Haryana’s Rohtak, complained of administrative and infrastructural deficiencies, like confusion over a constantly changing syllabus, and long delays in the completion of academic projects and work, resulting in four-year courses often being extended to eight.
“Our first batch was in 2011. Since then, only seven batches have passed out. The students have not had a working syllabus since 2024. A course that should ideally wrap up in 6 months takes over a year and a half, sometimes even two,” the student alleged.
Recently, a Rohtak civil court ordered SUPVA and the State Institute of Film and Television (SIFTV), also located in Haryana, to pay ₹1 lakh each to nine students whose three-year film and TV degree took six years to complete. The two institutions were found guilty of not even having decided on the degree’s name when the course began. Moreover, the court observed that an inconsiderate amount of time had been taken to set up the roll list and declare results, hence causing the delay.
The student also alleged that the college has, in the past, granted space to RSS-linked organisations like Cine Foundation Haryana and Vishwa Samwad Kendra, with the Vice-Chancellor presiding over such events.
“The school auditorium is regularly rented out to organisations for events with no academic focus, mirroring the incident that took place at SRFTI. These have increased in the last 1-2 years. A few months back, the ABVP had rented the central auditorium on our campus for a conference. The following morning, we found walls and electric poles in the vicinity plastered with calls to join the ABVP,” they said.
At India’s oldest national film institute, FTII Pune, the situation was no different.
Shreshtha Kovvali, a student, claimed that the adoption of University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines had added a layer of rigidity to the course structure. “Factors like equipment availability, shooting schedules, and the nature of our artistic work mean that there has always been a level of flexibility required in the administration’s approach to negotiating schedules with us. A three-year course might stretch to three and a half years due to time and resource constraints. However, UGC guidelines have made it such that the administration finds itself under pressure to ensure that the courses are finished within the stipulated time period, even at the cost of students’ learning experiences,” she said.
Allegedly, the number of coordinated projects has also decreased. “The foundation course, meant to expose students to arts and sciences that would aid their learning, has been removed completely. Departments that earlier benefited from tailored structures now find their agency stripped under the guise of providing more common modules, and even electives have been removed,” Shreshtha added.
Mob violence: a recurring event
At SRFTI, a week after the ABGP event, members of the Bangiyo Hindu Jagaran Manch (BHJM), a right-wing outfit, organised a protest and demonstrated in front of the gates of the campus in large numbers. Students alleged that bottles, stones, and other objects were hurled at them, leaving at least two injured. “Is it not the responsibility of the administration and the State to protect its students?” Shubham, a representative of the SRFTI Students’ Association, asked.
Members of the Bangiyo Hindu Jagaran Manch (BHJM), a right-wing outfit, staging a protest and demonstrated in front of the gates of the SRFTI campus. Photo credit: Hazmil Hussain
“We had knowledge that a demonstration had been scheduled to protest supposed “anti-national” activities at SRFTI, on October 4. Anticipating an attack, we had submitted a formal request to the police asking for protection, a day prior to the march. The V-C only asked the students to stay in the hostels inside the campus space, to avoid any tension,” he added. Calls made to the office of the SRFTI Vice-Chancellor, to record his statement on these incidents, went unanswered.
On January 23, 2024, a half-day break had been declared across State institutions to mark the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. To protest, students in FTII-Pune had gathered for a reading session on campus. In the afternoon, members of a group allegedly stormed into the campus, raised slogans such as “Jai Shree Ram”, burnt posters, installations, and banners. Videos recorded by students and later uploaded on social media by the student union allegedly showed security personnel, as well as the police, not intervening to stop the violence.
Two former FTII students, Sayantan Chakrabarti and Ritagnik Bhattacharya, who were left with serious injuries after this assault, said that a day after the incident, a complaint was lodged under Sections 295A (acts intended to outrage religious feelings) and 153B(1)(c) (acts threatening national integration) of the IPC, against them by the alleged attackers. The legal cases are still in effect, more than two years on, said Sayantan. “The police had turned up at my doorstep, months later, alleging a probe was in effect.”
Less than a month later, a similar event played out at the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), situated less than 300 metres away from FTII. On February 11, a Kashmiri-Hindi language docudrama titled “I’m Not the River Jhelum”, written and directed by Prabhash Chandra, was screened at the NFAI as part of a film festival in collaboration with Pune International Centre and the International Federation of Film Critics-India Chapter.
As the director interacted with the audience after the screening, members of the organisation Samast Hindu Bandhav Sanghatana entered the premises in hundreds, alleging that the film showed the Indian Army in a “bad light”, and rallying for his arrest. “I was locked up in the auditorium for hours, too scared to step out. When the police reached the campus, I was informed that the Deccan Police Station had been surrounded by thousands of men, all demanding action against me — for the simple reason that a film, screened at an institution as reputed as the NFAI, did not align with their views,” Chandra narrated.
Following this incident, the director did not consider it safe to screen the film anywhere in India.
“These incidents are not spontaneous, but orchestrated and planned in advance. It is the same blueprint everywhere, whether in SRFTI or FTII, with educational spaces being loaned out without prior notification to the students,” Ritagnik said.