An example (please see below) of India's "high intellect Foreign Service members."
>"Sibal [Kanwar, Foreign Secretary (2001-2002)] seeks here to discredit an academic [Francesca Orsini] with a well-established reputation through insinuations that are not supported by any empirical evidence." By: Christophe Jaffrelot* [**Christophe Jaffrelot** is Senior Research Fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s College London, Non resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Chair of the British Association for South Asian Studies.]* Published in: *The Wire* Date: November 7, 2025 Source: https://thewire.in/rights/deporting-a-foreign-scholar-studying-india-is-contrary-to-indian-interest "The third type of comment that deserves even more attention is particularly well represented by the words of Kanwal Sibal, Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University since 2023. In one of his posts, he says of Francesca Orsini <https://twitter.com/KanwalSibal/status/1980980166252958102>: 'It would seem she has been engaged in political activism and, for instance, supported the anti-CAA agitation etc. That will not be surprising as many Western India experts take anti-government positions on democracy and minority issues etc. The SOAS where she is a professor has the reputation of being a left-leaning radical university.'” Sibal seeks here to discredit an academic with a well-established reputation through insinuations that are not supported by any empirical evidence – 'It would seem…'– and engages in equally unfounded generalisations as Western academics do not form a monolithic bloc . More importantly, how can one say that some of them are motivated by a desire to be hostile to the government? There are no answers to these questions, but we can deduce a new idea from these statements: foreign researchers may be denied entry to India because they are believed to have anti-government aims. Such statements may pose another threat to academic freedom. But there is more to Kanwal Sibal’s posts, which more fundamentally express reservations vis-à-vis the very idea of Western intellectuals studying India: “The issue is whether we need foreign scholars to educate us on our civilization, interpret it for us, and help us understand our own heritage. <https://x.com/KanwalSibal/status/1981765053780308343>” This is a rejection of intellectual dialogue that can be explained in two ways – but other hypotheses are undoubtedly possible, as we are now entering the realm of speculation. Firstly, this stance may reflect a certain discomfort with discussing one’s own society with a foreigner, who can only be seen as lecturing the locals and not as an alter ego of the 'sons of the soil'. Secondly, and this is not contradictory or exclusive, this attitude may mean that only an Indian can understand Indian civilisation."
