PM Modi’s degree is not important. The truth is

My objective in putting out my BA degree on X was not to boast about my education. It was only to reaffirm the oath that those in public life take: to tell the truth in our election affidavits.

Questions have been raised about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's degrees for years | Photos: X/@BJP4India

Last week, I gained some (familiar for me) notoriety on X.

I chose to post my Bachelor of Arts degree certificate from Delhi University, awarded to me for History (Honours) in 1987. Online chatter exploded immediately. My post was shared, denounced, criticised, and applauded. I got bouquets for transparency and brickbats for flaunting “elitist,” “classist” educational qualifications. Some saw my post as needlessly personal. Others praised my openness.

So why did a journalist-turned-Member of Parliament, someone fortunate enough to have received an education at prestigious institutions like Delhi University and Oxford University, put out her degree in the public domain?

My objective in putting out my BA degree was not to exhibit or boast about my education. My attempt was only to reaffirm the oath that those in public life take: to tell the truth in our election affidavits.

The immediate provocation for my post was that on that very day, the Delhi High Court overruled an order of the Central Information Commission (CIC) asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make his college degree public. But why should such an order from the CIC have been necessary at all?

After all, Modi’s election affidavit shows that he holds a BA degree from Delhi University and an MA from Gujarat University, Ahmedabad. If these details are true, why should they not be publicly verified with proof, if members of the public ask questions?

Taxpayers are owed the truth

Election affidavits are documents that every contesting candidate to Parliament or a state assembly submits to the Returning Officer along with nomination papers. These affidavits provide details not only of the candidate’s educational qualifications but also of assets, income, and properties— including those of the candidate’s family members.

I was elected as the All India Trinamool Congress’s Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament in 2024. My affidavit—made publicly available upon filing it—became a bit of a talking point because of the salary details of my spouse.

Did I consider this chatter an invasion of my privacy? No, I did not. Those who are representatives of the voter and receive an income from the taxpayer are duty-bound to be transparent about their modes of living. Under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act, false election affidavits amount to false declarations and carry a six-month prison term. It can, in some cases, even lead to disqualification of the candidate. It is thus vital that every detail in an affidavit is true and verified.

The truth matters. The truth is important.

Narendra Modi holds the highest executive office in the land; he has been elected by voters and receives his income from the taxpayer. It is the foremost duty of the holder of this high office to be transparent and truthful about the details entered in his election affidavit, whether on assets, incomes, or, in this case, university degrees.

Public life doesn’t begin and end with winning elections. Public life involves constantly winning public trust by upholding transparency in personal and government dealings.

The public must have truthful, credible, and accurate information about those claiming to be its representatives. The clash between the public’s right to information and the individual’s right to privacy is, in my view, weighed on the public’s side when it comes to elected officials.

Oxford University does not publish its alumni’s degrees publicly, but the prime minister of Britain, or holders of elected office, do not have the luxury of concealing education and family details.

Does a prime minister’s university degree fall under the ambit of the right to privacy? No, it does not—particularly as these details are already in his or her election affidavit, available in the public domain. The question is: are the educational details in Modi’s election affidavit true? Or are they fake?

No shame, unless it’s a lie

Modi’s university degree has been the focus of public controversy for over a decade. After allegations that Modi’s degree was false were levelled by the Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, the BJP held a press conference in 2016 in which Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley displayed Modi’s degree certificate, showing a BA from Delhi University. Doubts were raised on how a computer-generated marksheet was available for a degree obtained in 1978.

RTI activists asked for certified copies of the Delhi University register. In the case that followed, in 2016, the Delhi High Court set aside a CIC order that allowed the RTI activist to examine Modi’s 1978 degree. It is intriguing that none other than then additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta appeared for DU, arguing that such information constituted a “breach of privacy” under the Right to Information Act. It is precisely the government’s attempts to withhold information on Modi’s degree that are highly curious. What is so “private” about election affidavit information?

Allegations and counter-allegations have continued. Modi’s MA degree from Gujarat University, showing his graduation in “Entire Political Science” also became controversial; further, the certificate spelt ‘University’ as ‘Unibersity’. No corroborative evidence was produced that a course in “Entire Political Science” exists in any university. So far, no university classmates of Modi have come forward. Modi himself has claimed in speeches that he does not have a formal education beyond the village school. “Meri shiksha nahin hui,” Modi claims in this old video.

If the Prime Minister’s affidavit claims he has both a BA and an MA degree, why is it so difficult for the highest office in the land to produce verified proof? Why has the BJP, since that 2016 press conference, adopted this cloak-and-dagger approach on Modi’s degree, as if it has something to hide, as if the government has something to hide? Why does the PM’s education have to be shielded by the courts? Why doesn’t Modi break his silence and set the record straight?

There is no shame or embarrassment in stating that Modi has not been to university and does not possess a degree. What would be shameful, deeply embarrassing, and indeed scandalous, is if Modi, India’s Prime Minister, has lied in his election affidavit.

 

What happened to Satyameva Jayate?

It is this growing opacity, this culture of secretiveness, this constant drive to somehow manage media headlines instead of sharing the truth with the people, that lies at the heart of Modi’s degree row.

This secretive doublespeak of the Modi regime, the hiding of the truth, the perpetual concealment and cover-up, the projection of glossy fiction over hard facts, the fudging of figures, the refusal to come clean—these are the hallmarks of an administration that appears mortally terrified of the truth.

The glaring lack of truth-telling, and refusal to honour the high standards of transparency in public life, is the reason why Modi has never held an open press conference in the last 11 years.

It is “more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth,” wrote MK Gandhi in what was a visionary philosophical formulation. Satya is God. Telling the truth is an act of worship. For Gandhi, the struggle for India’s freedom was a “satyagraha”—a struggle for truth. For Gandhi, public life was about the pursuit of truth. The truth, says historian Timothy Snyder, is key to democracy: “If nothing is true then no one can criticise power because there is no basis on which to do so.”

Yet almost every decision of this government is beset with a sidestepping of the truth and a crippling secretiveness. Secretiveness is the mark of a tyrant. It is a situation where the State recedes into darkness and opacity, even as high levels of transparency are demanded from its citizens.

Citizens must make Aadhaar cards, personal details, and records public, while VIPs recede into aloofness and unknowability. VIPs become as mysterious as the gods, suddenly appearing as quasi-divine visions to hurl verbal thunderbolts, then disappearing again into the mists of inaccessibility.

During the pandemic, a new PM CARES fund was suddenly set up. Until today, we still do not know who all the shadowy donors are. When RTI details were sought, they were stonewalled under the specious argument that the fund was a private body. Since when did a PM’s fund, with members of the government involved in its setting up, become a “private body”?

Last year, it required active intervention from the Supreme Court for the donors to the Electoral Bond scheme to be revealed.

Four years after the pandemic, it was revealed that Covid deaths had been undercounted by lakhs.

There are still no official figures on how many died during the migrant workers’ exodus of 2020, when a bizarrely sudden lockdown was announced without warning. All public transport was unexpectedly stopped and migrants took to the streets to walk back to distant homes, many dying of exhaustion or accidents. How many died? We don’t know.

In the Monsoon Session of Parliament, the Constitution (130th Amendment Bill) was introduced without warning, without giving the House time to study it. Convention dictates that Parliament is given 48 hours’ notice before bills are introduced.

The abrogation of Article 370 on the special status of Jammu and Kashmir was again brought in through secrecy, not open consultation. The J&K state government was kept in the dark. No prior information was provided that a full-fledged state was about to be downgraded overnight to a Union Territory. Former Kashmir governor Satyapal Malik has said he was informed of the decision only 24 hours earlier.

A high-handed Election Commission secretively, stealthily, and unilaterally announced the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise for voter rolls earlier this year. No dialogue was held with primary stakeholders in the voting process—namely political parties.

On Operation Sindoor in May, aircraft losses suffered on both sides became a matter of leaks and interviews to the international media. Citizens were not taken into confidence, nor were any details provided to Parliament. In the absence of true facts, speculation and rumours abounded.

The Modi government brandishes its secrecy as a heuristic device—an exercise in showing off state power with a James Bond-style flourish, or a mysterious Zeus wielding flashy thunderbolts.

This culture of secrecy in the Modi dispensation shows that a democratically elected government is refusing to honour its duty to be accountable to those who have given it all its power.

The controversy about Modi’s university degree is not about insisting on “elitist degrees” or a classist obsession with prestigious institutions. It’s about demanding that governments, their high functionaries, and all public representatives honour our national motto: Satyameva Jayate: Let the Truth Triumph.

Sagarika Ghose is a Rajya Sabha MP, All India Trinamool Congress. She tweets @sagarikaghose. Views are personal.

(Edited by Asavari Singh)