Context

• The Delhi High Court’s decision allowing law students to appear for examinations without fulfilling rigid attendance requirements has revived a critical debate in Indian higher education.
• While administrators fear a decline in discipline, the ruling exposes a deeper misunderstanding of how learning occurs.
• Compulsory attendance equates obedience with learning, reflecting a bureaucratic and paternalistic model of education.
• Rather than weakening academic standards, the judgment challenges universities to reconsider whether education should rely on surveillance or on curiosity, autonomy, and intellectual engagement.

The Fallacy of Attendance as a Measure of Learning

• Attendance is often treated as evidence of seriousness and commitment, yet physical presence guarantees neither attention nor understanding.
• Attendance measures compliance, not intellectual engagement. This fixation thrives where classrooms have been reduced to routine delivery of notes and predictable content.
• When teaching lacks vitality, institutions substitute inspiration with enforcement.
• Instead of examining why students disengage, responsibility is displaced onto attendance policies that conceal pedagogical inadequacies.

Pedagogy, Autonomy, and the Role of the Teacher

• Coercive education produces neither depth nor seriousness. Meaningful pedagogy demands confidence in the teacher’s ability to create intellectual value.
• Absence should provoke reflection, not punishment. This view aligns with Paulo Freire’s rejection of the banking model of education, which treats students as passive recipients.
• For Freire, learning emerges through dialogue, questioning, and shared inquiry. Education thrives on autonomy and dialogue, not compulsion.
• Compulsory attendance undermines this vision by privileging discipline over thought.

Exemplary Teaching and the Power of Voluntary Engagement

• The history of education demonstrates that great teachers never relied on enforcement.
• Figures such as Isaiah Berlin, Terry Eagleton, Germaine Greer, Christopher Bayly, and Frank Kermode drew students through intellectual craftsmanship, originality, and passion.
• Their lectures were meticulously prepared, emotionally resonant, and intellectually provocative. Students attended not out of obligation but anticipation.
• Such teaching rendered absence unnecessary by making learning compelling.

Learning Beyond the Classroom

• Transformative learning often occurs when institutional rigidity dissolves.
• Reading Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey within natural landscapes or engaging with Thoreau’s Walden outdoors allows texts to emerge as living provocations rather than static artefacts.
• Students interpret, debate, and reflect independently.
• These experiences reveal learning in its most fundamental form, rooted in curiosity, dialogue, and personal engagement rather than prescribed metrics.

Contemporary Knowledge and the Obsolescence of Coercion

• In an age of digital archives, open-access scholarship, and artificial intelligence tools, compulsory physical presence appears increasingly outdated.
• Leading global universities trust students’ intellectual maturity and rely on pedagogical quality rather than surveillance.
• Their authority stems from confidence in teaching, not monitoring. In contrast, Indian universities have become burdened by bureaucratic overreach and administrative control.
• Mandatory attendance functions within this framework as a tool of pacification, restricting autonomy and critical inquiry.

The Philosophical Stakes of the Attendance Debate

• The attendance debate is fundamentally philosophical. It asks whether universities regard students as autonomous thinkers or as wards requiring constant supervision.
• Institutions that prioritise attendance over engagement betray their purpose of cultivating critical minds capable of questioning society.
• Coercion emerges where pedagogy lacks confidence. The High Court’s ruling challenges this erosion by restoring trust in students’ intellectual agency.

Conclusion

• By separating attendance from examination eligibility, the Delhi High Court affirms a foundational educational principle: Intellectual engagement cannot be legislated.
• Learning flourishes only where freedom, curiosity, and dialogue are central. The ruling compels educators to rethink teaching itself and encourages institutions to replace coercion with creativity.
• If embraced earnestly, it offers Indian higher education an opportunity to reclaim the university as a space of inquiry, discovery, and intellectual vitality rather than bureaucratic discipline.