By Maya Pramod, TwoCircles.net
It was on January 17, 2016, that research scholar Rohit Vemula committed suicide in his hostel room at the Hyderabad Central University. His demise sowed the seeds of nation-wide protests. It can be stated clearly that he was not the first victim of the Savarna and caste-class politics in the higher education field. Because those who left before him embraced the social boycott forced upon them by the public academic society with their silent death, or still, the Savarna Brahmin caste politics concealed the realities of their death.
Those who had to resort to suicide due to the caste Brahmin torture in the higher education field in recent years were:
Ajay Sree Chandra, a student of Biology at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The reason for death – mental stress due to caste torture.
Dr Bal Mukunda Bharathi, MBBS student at AIIMS. Chuni Kotal, a tribal woman working at the Social Welfare Department. The reason for death – caste torture.
Dr Jaspreet Singh, a student at the Chandigarh Government Medical College, had written on his suicide note that Prof Goel was the reason for his death. However, that death too was soon lost in an oblivion and the inquiry also died; Prof Goel later became head of the Department of Community Medicine.
Several other bright students such as Madhuri Bala, Manish Kumar, Prashant and Srikanth Malapula put an end to their lives due to casteist torture. Rohit was not the last in the list. But the reason for his death to trigger nationwide protests was that till the day before his death or till his final breath he was fighting against the Savarna-Brahmanic power with his knowledge and mental strength. Through social boycotts, they could only silence his brain which was ripe with the invasion of thoughts. Then Najeeb Ahmed, a student of M.Sc Biotechnology at the JNU, went missing in October 2016. Even after three years, the government is not interested in looking into what happened to him. The reason is the identity crisis in the name ‘Najeeb’ – denying the basic right of his family to know whether he is alive or not, and the might of power that the rights of his family can be violated any time. In 2017, the same casteist Brahmanic politics hung Rajani Muthukrishnan (from Tamil Nadu) at JNU, the ‘brain’ of knowledge-production in India.
The new generation of a community, marginalized in the Indian social conditions, overcomes the inadequacies of their intellectual environment and backwardness by nurturing their creativity and intelligence along with continuously fighting against the Savarna Brahmin ideas. When they are in such a process to achieve their educational and cultural capital, they mainly have to face the persistent questions of caste, religion, reservation and identity crisis as well as mental torture.
We have lost yet another bright student who wrote that ‘Dad, my name itself is a problem’. Fathima Latheef was a smart student who got admission to the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at the IIT securing the first rank in the entrance exam. The classes began in July only. The death of Fathima has almost been confirmed as suicide. The reason too is clear from her suicide note–it tells that Sudarshan Padmanabhan is the reason for her death. Not only communalism and casteism but several types of exploitations are present in the professional education field where internal assessment is an important factor. It has been quite some time since the seeds of Sangh Parivar politics began to appear in the IITs, the educational centres with the highest standards in the country. However, it is yet to come out in detail how far communal feelings have worked in this particular case. Fathima’s father Latheef continuously mentioned the communal angle. The family and society have lost Fathima.
Though it has been more than 70 years since IITs were established, as far as I know, there has not been a single non-Brahmin as a director. My friend Dinu Veyil, who dropped out of the IIT Madras, says that in order to understand how the Dalit and minority students experience such an atmosphere, you have to know how many of the staff (teaching and non-teaching) come from these communities. IIT Madras is an institution that has built separate spaces for Brahmins and non-Brahmins to wash hands. It is also understood that there is nothing left to wonder with regards to the Sangh Parivar connections of the alleged professor.
However, there have been about five mysterious deaths in the IIT Madras in the past one year – Shahal (student of Ocean Engineering from Malappuram, Kerala), Ranjana Kumari (PhD scholar from Jharkhand who died in 2018), Gopal Babu (first year MTech student from UP who died in December 2018), Athidhi Sinha (assistant professor from Karnataka who died in January 2019). This shows the terror of student torture in a prominent educational institution in the country. It is high time that the general public responds to this. The silence of the students at the death of a fellow student is indeed alarming. These deaths have a common reason – they were from the Dalit-Adivasi- minority communities. However, students will again secure admission in these institutions with the brightness of their own power and abilities, with high dreams. But if this is what the higher academic world presents to these enlightened students, the question becomes more relevant as to what is the kind of law prevalent in the country we live in.
This is not the story of an IIT which is the best example of the Indian educational excellence, but rather this is the reality of every university which is the centre of academic excellence in each state. They will even carry out social boycotting by creating fear in order to prevent students from the Dalit-backward and LGBTQI communities from entering these institutions.
Those who commit such crimes and attacks do exploit and treat their caste, identity and representation rather than their circumstances. The representation of the Savarna-Brahmanic community exists in our society and administrative levels as power, symbol and system. Hinduism had created distinct work structures for each caste in the society made up of layers under the discriminative Brahmanic hegemony. Dalits, tribals, minorities and backward classes nurtured their knowledge and creativity in the academic and higher education fields by demolishing those work structures. It is against this that they carry out social boycott, thus forcing the student into social death. That social death happens by the social boycotting from the academic spaces and centres of knowledge-creation.
Another factor is that their caste, identity and class etc are made to perform as negative capital here. Once they begin to question these problems, they tend to cease to be among the majority. Considering these alternative voices as thoughts on nationalism, the people following a particular religion or caste are moved aside as representing that religion or caste, doubts arise on nationalism and get explained as intrusions into the private lives of people.
The Savarna-Brahmin culture is now using the concept of ‘new casteism’ against this. This is a method by which justice is denied or delayed for the traditionally oppressed social groups with the help of ideas that appear to be highly modern. This observation is important to understand and explain the caste discriminations in Kerala. Several types of discriminations existing in the universities and higher education centres in Kerala and India do deny or delay justice and equality for Dalits, tribals and minorities. Such ‘new casteism’ delays scholarships/fellowships or deny the utilization of academic knowledge for Dalits, tribals, minorities and sexual minorities, thus driving them to social death. In order to face this, they have to fight incessantly in their society and create their own social and cultural space, thereby amassing capital. May each community be able to create good days of freedom and knowledge creation instead of restrictions, by creating their own comprehensive history as well as socio-political and cultural spaces.
Maya Pramod is a Dalit activist, research student and a recipient of the Bluestone Rising Scholar Prize. The article was originally written in Malayalam and translated by Najiya O.