Little will change until institutes recognise the experiences of Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students.
An Indian student during a protest rally against the government’s recommendation for 50% reservation for backward classes in education and government jobs, in this photograph from Bengaluru in May 2006.
The University Grants Commission’s updated rules to address caste discrimination in higher education institutes have sparked outrage among Savarna commentators and students. They claim that they will become victims of false complaints and that the provisions will be weaponised against them.
But this reflects a continuing refusal to listen to experiences of caste discrimination on campuses, something I have witnessed closely since 2022 when I became the first elected student representative of the Equal Opportunity Cell at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
As part of student committees and through my research on caste injustice, I have seen how the claim that Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students misuse guidelines against general category students is invoked when a caste discrimination complaint is filed. This negative framing favours the student or professor accused of casteism and rarely accounts for the humiliation or insensitive behaviour faced by the student making the complaint.
Over the past few days, Savarna students have framed themselves as potential victims of the UGC rules, issued on January 13, recentering the issue of casteist discrimination around their anxieties. On January 29, the Supreme Court stayed the new rules after hearing a public interest litigation which claimed that the guidelines were vague and could be misused.
Akhil Kang, a queer Dalit scholar who has extensively written about “upper-caste victimhood”, argues that claims of upper-caste victimhood are not about actual harm. Instead, they are about preserving moral innocence in the face of caste accountability.
Illustrating Kang’s observation, upper-caste students are floating hypothetical situations in which they could be victimised by the UGC guidelines. For example, one Instagram post claims that a general category female student is now afraid of being accused of caste discrimination if she rejects the advances of a male student from the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe category.
Such claims displace attention from the everyday experiences of discrimination of Dalit and Adivasi students, who remain unacknowledged in classrooms and are rendered invisible on campuses where merit is routinely read through caste.
Caste on campus
As part of a meeting called by the National Task Force set up by the Supreme Court on January 12, I highlighted three crucial observations based on my experience of observing casteism on campus. The meeting was attended by anti-caste intellectuals, academics, activists and student representatives from universities in Delhi.
First, caste is seemingly invisible and so it is difficult to prove that it exists. But the discriminatory effects of caste are primarily experienced by Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students.
For example, a professor may make a student wait outside their office hours every day just to address one concern or speak to them. The student could wait for days on end, often feeling humiliated. But this will not be recognised as “casteism”.
This same professor could ask about the student’s rank in the entrance exam – using the phrase “hawa kya hai?”, or what’s the AIR, or all India rank. Ambedkarite student collectives across the IITs have stressed that asking a student’s rank should be counted as caste discrimination. Rank indicates whether a student was admitted in the general or Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students.
The student might then be labelled incompetent and underperforming, and the professor could suggest that they be expelled from IIT Delhi for not being meritorious.
The student could find their admission and place at the institute being attacked and so end up writing to the administration and Equal Opportunity Cell, or SC/ST cell, seeking legal recourse. The Equal Opportunity Cell registers the student’s complaint, and thereafter, a committee is set up to inquire into caste discrimination. This illustrates how faculty and resource persons in an institution refuse to listen to a student who feels neglected or socially excluded.
Congress workers protest against the death by suicide of doctoral scholar Rohith Vemula, in this photograph from January 2016. Credit: AFP.
Second, caste reveals itself through networks and support systems.
A general category student might instantly feel a sense of belonging in the classroom while a Dalit, Adivasi or OBC student may continuously invest energy in proving or defending their merit.
As a student representative, I have observed that the network of Savarna scholars does not easily offer support to Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students and often has preconceived notions about who is meritorious or deserving.
Savarna students travel easily through these networks, receiving guidance on scholarships abroad, building academic connections, seeking funding and finding opportunities to get published. But Dalit students have to hustle merely to get signatures on recommendation letters.
Even if students have got admission on merit, they are always made to feel inadequate. “No matter how I perform, I feel invisible in the classroom,” a Dalit BTech student told me off the record on campus. “The Savarna professor never acknowledges my greeting.”
Such an environment attacks the confidence of Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students. The demoralisation shows itself in lesser grades, poor progress reports and lonely or isolated students in campus spaces.
It is a challenge to define this experience of being made to feel invisible, but what can be defined are broader actions – the implicit or explicit bias on the campus.
Many Dalit and Adivasi scholars report feeling depressed, which I believe is a result of an uncaring institutional structure that does not provide motivation, appreciation nor respond to their efforts properly.
In 2022, I emailed the IIT-Delhi mental health team asking why caste-based trauma was missing from the counselling options of gender, LGBTQ+, violence, relationship problems and campus problems. It was aimed at making the institute recognise the reality of the trauma of caste. IIT-Delhi positively implemented this, by adding “caste-based trauma” as an option on its YourDost website, which provides counselling to enrolled students.
The third observation was the challenge Dalit Adivasi students face to “prove” casteist discrimination. Students resort to methods such as recording verbal encounters with the perpetrators. Committees view this suspiciously, furthering the narrative that the complainant has “misused” their freedom as a student. I highlighted this concern to convey the need for camera surveillance inside hostel lobbies, as deaths often occur in hostel rooms.
The unheard testimony
The refusal to acknowledge casteism is a structural response to Dalit assertion, an indignation sparked by outspoken Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students. Students who file caste discrimination complaints are seen as “troublemakers” rather than lonely, isolated individuals who had no other recourse.
Listening demands acknowledging the testimony of the narrator. But the benefit of the doubt is largely given to the accused student in these instances since it is assumed that the perpetrator was “unaware that their behavior was casteist”.
Despite the complainant narrating that they were made to feel socially excluded or discriminated against through certain actions, words, or behaviour, the perpetrator is likely to dismiss such claims.
The events that follow the filing of such a complaint are rarely discussed.
Social redressal largely depends on the equity committee and how it is formed. The UGC had told the Supreme Court that 90% of caste complaints were “resolved”, but it does not state what the resolution entails. Committees often bargain to ensure that the accused apologises to the survivor, recognising discrimination. There are many instances when the complainant never receives an apology and the case is closed.
Finally, caste consciousness may differ among students as well: based on friendships or other ties, Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students can also disagree about whether an incident counts as caste discrimination.
Together, it shows how ending caste discrimination on campus is an enormous social challenge.
But until individuals and institutions embedded in caste privilege are willing to listen and extend care through listening, caste will continue to reproduce itself through denial and deepening divisions in universities.
Any equity policy, including the UGC’s latest guidelines, will do little to eradicate casteism unless there is an institutional commitment to listen to testimonies of discrimination without suspicion or dismissal.
Shainal Verma
Shainal Verma is a sociologist trained at IIT-Delhi, researching gender, labour, and caste, and was a former student representative of the SC/ST Cell.
Courtesy : Scroll
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