ABSTRACT
This paper explores taboos in doctoral socialisation in India. The qualitative study draws on 20 text-based survey responses, 11 online interviews with current and recent PhD graduates and 20 social media snippets collected through netnography. Using the framework of Student Socialisation in Higher Education, the paper reveals three interlinked pathways through which taboos distort the doctoral socialisation process: (1) dysfunctional interactions with primary socialisation agents (supervisors and peers), (2) perverse integration into a culture of silence and submission and (3) the internalisation of hardship as a virtue—what we have called ‘learning to see the PhD journey as Tapasya’. We propose the concept of ‘malignant socialisation’ to describe a process in which students who have negative doctoral experiences are not failing to socialise but are being socialised successfully into a dysfunctional culture. Four properties define this malignancy: self-perpetuation, the framing of harm as virtue: a cultural residue, structural rationality of silence and cultural legitimation. The study contributes to the higher education socialisation literature by reconceptualising taboos from content categories—topics that remain undiscussed—to structural mechanisms through which harmful norms are transmitted, legitimised and reproduced.