Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani has suggested that it is unjustified to read caste discrimination into the ferment at Hyderabad Central University, following the suicide of Rohith Vemula. But this reading is inevitable, given the recent history of the university.

Consider, first, that the university had a professor in its mathematics department who, not too long ago, had a well dug up at his residence because he believed the municipal water supply would dilute his "Brahminical purity".

Nor is it that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, has ever demonstrated tolerance for the food habits of other social groups. Back in 2006, long before the cow acquired new national significance, Dalit students took permission from the Dean of Students Welfare to open a beef biryani stall during the university’s cultural festival.

But the ABVP objected and complained to the authorities, who did a U-turn and issued a verbal order for closing down the beef biryani stall. Refusing to relent, Dalit students demanded a written order from the authorities. As the atmosphere on the campus became tense, they proposed to the authorities to suspend the cultural festival until the contentious issue was resolved.

In turn, the university authorities suggested a convening of the General Body Meeting to decide on the issue. Dalit students agreed but subject to a condition – should the meeting decide in favour of the biryani stall, then beef would thereafter be served in the mess, canteen and guest houses as well. This prompted the authorities to drop the idea of a general body meeting, fearing that should the Dalits win the vote on the issue, beef would have to be served regularly on the campus, sullying its purity.

Quota’s Children

These two anecdotes have been quoted from “Quota’s children: The Perils of Getting Educated”, a chapter in Beyond Inclusion: The Practice of Equal Access in Higher Education, edited by noted sociologist Satish Deshpande and academician Usha Zacharias. The author of “Quota’s Children” is N Sukumar, who teaches political science at Delhi University.

Before reading “Quota’s Children”, Irani should acquaint herself with Sukumar’s education background – he entered Hyderabad Central University in 1991, did his Masters, MPhil and then enrolled for PhD, leaving the campus in 2001. Three years later, he was back at the university for another two years, during which he completed his doctoral thesis. Thereafter, Sukumar has continued to visit the university to collect data for a mega-project which seeks to study social exclusion on the campuses of Madras University, Bombay University, Delhi University and HCU.

It is precisely why Sukumar’s description of what life is for a Dalit student on the HCU campus is graphic and disturbing. For instance, take the plight of Dalit students who are admitted to university but fail to get a seat in its hostel. They take to illegally living with their friends in the hostel, as most of them are first-generation learners whose parents are too poor to pay for their stay outside the campus. A good many of them before they came to HCU, claims Sukumar, did not have the privilege of even having two square meals a day regularly.

Called non-boarders, and denied a mess card, these students cook rice in the rooms they stay in. They then go to the TV room adjoining the dining hall, where they wait for the last of the diners to leave. On their departure, the Dalit non-boarders collect the daal and vegetables left in utensils on the table.

Writes Sukumar,

“I have personally witnessed a few of the non-boarders (Dalit students) eating the food left in the serving utensils when cats and dogs were also licking the plates. Many ‘upper caste’ students demanded that the mess hall be kept locked citing security reasons.”

If Irani were to read the account of Sukumar, she would have to be inordinately insensitive if she is not be horrified.

Callous discrimination

There are other incidents which display the callous attitude of higher caste students. Take this incident involving a Dalit girl who was in a relationship with a boy from the Reddy caste. He refused to marry her citing her low caste. In 1995, the Dalit girl committed suicide. Her postmortem report revealed she was pregnant at the time of her death. Yet the authorities did not act against the boy, who was deemed to have sexually exploited the girl.

But what is shocking was the response of her hostel-mates. As Sukumar writes,

“Unfortunately, on the day when the body of the Dalit girl was kept on the lawns of the ladies’ hostel after the post-mortem, the upper caste girls of the same hostel continued celebrating a birthday party.”

Not only this, the boy taunted the deceased girl’s friends that they could do no harm to him. Two years later, shocked and provoked at the temerity of the boy to come to campus to distribute his wedding card, Dalit students beat him up. Their reaction, condemnable though it was, underscores what French writer Jean Genet once said,

“The arrogance of the strong is always met by the violence of the weak.”

However, the same university authorities invoked the principle of gender to punish a Dalit boy who was in a relationship with an upper caste girl. They had an evening out together, after which the boy dropped her at the hostel. However, next morning, the girl complained to the authorities, alleging sexual harassment.

The university promptly instituted a committee to investigate the complaint, in sharp contrast to the earlier incident in which the Dalit girl had committed suicide. Writes Sukumar,

“The committee was unable to prove the case after a detailed examination of the two involved parties. Nonetheless, the Dalit boy was rusticated for two years whereas the upper caste girl was not even issued a warning letter.”

The boy quit his studies and took up a job in the education sector.

Caste prejudices

Dalit groups often found posters scribbled with such humiliating remarks such as “pigs”, “son of god”, “government’s son-in-law”, etc. In 2002, no less a student than one doing PhD, by which time boys are supposed to stop being boys, scribbled the word “Bastard” on the poster of Dr BR Ambedkar, whom Dalits consider as a veritable deity.

Sukumar alleges, as so many have done in the past one week, that casteism on the HCU campus is rampant because of the prejudices of the authorities, who seem shocked at the changing social composition of the university. The 2008 suicide of Senthil Kumar, who was doing PHD in Physics at HCU, bears this out. That year he had completed his MPhil from Pondicherry Central University and shifted to HCU as it was implementing the University Grants Commission programme to provide fellowships to PhD students who successfully pass its National Eligibility Test.

Kumar cleared both the written examination and interview of HCU. He was granted admission, but discovered a new obstacle in coursework which the Physics and English departments had introduced for PhD scholars. It is alleged Dalit students are marked low or failed because their supervisors, harbouring caste prejudices, plot to deny them the fellowship.

Kumar failed to clear the coursework twice and his fellowship was consequently stopped. Belonging to the pig-rearing community of Tamil Nadu and too poor to finance his studies, this first-generation learner committed suicide. His body wasn’t discovered for two long days, suggesting his complete isolation from his neighbours in the hostel.

Was Kumar’s isolation because of his personality or was there a caste angle to it? Judge it from this – 16 days later, the Ambedkar Students Association called a meeting to condemn the brutal behaviour of the Physics Department. To it came eminent lawyer Bojja Tharakam and human right activist Dr K Balagopal. Missing from the scene, Sukumar says “were the ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ faculty, students and authorities.”

Case after case

In case the reader thinks Sukumar is needlessly reading the angle of caste discrimination into the suicide of Kumar, as Irani has in the case of Rohith, then read what Sukumar writes of his own experience:

“How can I forget that my esteemed Brahmin teacher gave me four marks out of 20 in an internal assessment of ‘Political Theory’? I went on to teach the same paper in the University of Delhi.”

In another case, an upper caste student abused a Dalit junior who was pursuing painting at HCU. Sukumar accompanied the Dalit student to the Vice Chancellor to lodge a formal complaint. The senior student’s appointment as a guest faculty was deferred for a year, after which he was absorbed as a permanent faculty member in the Fine Arts Department (Painting). “One can only guess at the plight of Dalit students who are part of this department,” Sukumar notes bitterly.

Indeed, Sukumar’s piece is strewn with graphic descriptions of the discrimination encountered by Dalit students, including one in which the HCU authorities lodged criminal complaints against 10 Dalit students. HCU hired some of the best and most expensive lawyers in the city to fight the case in the High Court, which, however, quashed it. During the pendency of the trial all 10 Dalit students courageously continued their studies, ultimately carving out lucrative careers for themselves.

Sukumar’s narrative also brings out how affirmative action has degenerated at HCU, as also in other universities, which often treat it as a formal imposition which they must accept. This attitude is the reason why universities don’t conduct remedial classes, or seek to improve the skills of Dalits in English, which is the language of learning in higher education. Nor is an attempt made to flatten the caste hierarchy on the campuses. The authorities instead use the threat of stopping fellowships to Dalit students to silence those who wish to protest the various forms of caste discrimination, which appear quite severe on the HCU campus.

It is possible Irani and many others might think Sukumar’s narrative reflects his paranoia, leading him to read in the trials and tribulations of his own life and those of the others the debilitating impact of caste and discriminations based on it. Perhaps it is pertinent for them to ask: Did Sukumar not come across a single upper caste teacher who was impartial, showed empathy, and strove to secure the rights of Dalits?

Yes, Sukumar did. To quote him,

“The humane attitude of a few teachers of the department (political science) needs to be acknowledged who provided…students with confidence and courage to penetrate the domain of knowledge. Their empathy towards Dalit students was ridiculed, they were considered as anti-establishment and accused of diluting the academic standards.”

It is time Irani and others in her party realise that a denial of reality doesn’t quite change the harshness of it.

Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, has as its backdrop the demolition of the Babri Masjid. It is available in bookstores.