About a month ago, on March 30, a report based on responses to Right to Information queries from the University of Hyderabad (UoH) pointed to alleged caste discrimination in the institution’s PhD admission process. The report analysed PhD candidates’ marks and found that in some departments, SC, ST, and OBC candidates were marked much lower than those from unreserved category in the interviews, despite scoring similar marks in the entrance exam. As a result, the academic council of the university agreed to take a few steps suggested by students to address the alleged caste bias.
Over the years, many students and faculty members have highlighted caste discrimination in Indian academia, based on statistics and lived experience. The Union government recently revealed that over 19,000 SC, ST and OBC students had dropped out of all central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) between 2018 and 2023. Since Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemula’s death by suicide at UoH in 2016, there have been demands for a law called Rohith Vemula Act, to address this discrimination. Yet, Dalit and Adivasi students including Dr Payal Tadvi and more recently, Darshan Solanki, continue to lose their lives to alleged casteism in Indian higher education institutions.
The prevailing caste discrimination and exclusionary practices in Indian academia are rooted in the prejudices of the existing social order in Indian society. It is evident that caste hierarchies are pervasive in elite institutions such as IITs IIMs, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), All India Institute Of Medical Science (AIIMS) and other central universities. Lowered castes or oppressed castes comprising OBC, SC and ST students tend to experience a hostile campus climate in higher education institutions. For these students, survival in academic spaces involves a daily struggle of psychosocial conflict.
This article examines the domination of privileged castes or oppressor castes in Indian higher education institutes, and challenges the manufactured notion of meritocracy in academics. It argues that adequate representation of lowered castes in Indian academia is the only panacea to curb structural inequalities.
Caste also functions as an important form of social capital, and caste identities dominate the consciousness of Indian society, from educational institutions to marriage to the institution of marriage. Often, students from lowered castes are perceived and treated with stigma in college campuses. As the chief architect of the Constitution of India Dr BR Ambedkar wrote in Annihilation of Caste: “Caste is a notion, it is a state of the mind… You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality.” Today in Indian academia, caste is reinforced through institutional practices and nuanced structural praxis.
Over the past couple of decades, the significant entry of lowered caste students into higher education institutes has been perceived as a threat to the privileged castes' cultural, social and historical hegemony. According to a 2017 report from a student politics workshop conducted by the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and the Germany-based Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) foundation, one of the major concerns raised by student leaders was the prevalence of discrimination in Indian universities towards Dalit and Adivasi students.
Many scholars in the social sciences argue that caste is engrained in the mindset of Indians — including Gandhians, leftists, rightists, linguistic nationalists, Dravidians, democratic liberals, constitutionalists, conservatives, radicals, and feminists — regardless of their political views. Therefore, in the Indian context, when assessing how progressive an individual is, we must consider their anti-caste practices and their actual outcomes in terms of fulfilling the objectives of caste annihilation, rather than merely heeding their political association with progressive groups.
In the last five years, more than 19,000 SC, ST, and OBC students dropped out of Union-government funded institutions, Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar told the Rajya Sabha on April 2. These huge numbers indicate that dropping out of college is not an individual issue — it's a social issue, caused by deep-rooted casteism. These dropouts could’ve been avoided, or at least alleviated to some extent, if faculty members from SC, ST and OBC communities were adequately represented in these institutions. The faculty members could have mentored the students, and extended the counsel and support that they needed in order to graduate, as former chairperson of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) SS Mantha, and former Education Secretary Ashok Thakur have argued in the Indian Express.
Caste discrimination and systematic subjugation continue to be perpetuated in academic and administrative structures, reinforced by the monopoly of oppressor castes in these spaces. Although no one really asks about one’s caste directly, people figure it out with their astute methods. In an educational ecosystem, the practice of casteism is a subtle quotidian affair, manifesting in convoluted ways. This makes it difficult to substantiate in every instance the caste discrimination by professors, colleagues and administrative staff in campuses. These people seldom demonstrate their casteism bluntly, as that would provide the victims with concrete incriminating evidence.
Various empirical studies suggest that educational institutions in India are conscious of the caste discrimination perpetuated in their campuses. From the 2007 Thorat Committee report on discrimination towards SC and ST students in AIIMS Delhi, to the report of the people’s tribunal on caste discrimination at University of Hyderabad in the wake of Rohith Venula’s death in 2016, these studies evince the prevailing casteism in college campuses. The recent report of UoH’s Ambedkar Students' Association based on RTI data found that in a recent round of PhD admissions, SC, ST, and OBC candidates were marked much lower than those from unreserved category in the interviews in several departments, with some of them even receiving zero marks. This was despite all of these candidates receiving similar marks in the entrance exam. This data is a manifestation of the caste bias of faculty members, and prevalent structural discrimination on campuses.
Even among ‘well educated’ persons, a common misconception about caste discrimination is that it is only advanced through steps such as affirmative action, as if it was non-existent before these policies were brought in. There is a flawed argument, sometimes repeated by certain academics as well, that reservation perpetrates caste and dilutes merit. Such concerted, weaponised propaganda, often unleashed by privileged castes in the ‘merit discourse’, is not backed by any scientific evidence. Renowned sociologist Satish Deshpande argues that merit is a conversion of centuries-old caste capital into modern-day social capital.
In 2022, in Neil Aurelio Nunes vs Union Of India, the Supreme Court observed that “reservation is not at odds with merit but furthers its distributive consequences,” and that “merit cannot be reduced to narrow definitions of performance in an open competitive examination.”
But there is no conducive environment, even in leading social science campuses in India, to debate or discuss the discrimination, structural violence, segregation, humiliation, exclusion, dehumanisation and graded inequality encountered by lowered caste students. Moreover, there are very few empirical studies on caste discrimination on campuses, and a dearth of good research on the experiences of lowered caste students.
According to educational theorist John Dewey, social justice measures must challenge the social structure built upon the prevailing dominant culture in the name of neutrality and values.
The idea of representative democracy is codified as the cornerstone of India's constitutional democracy. And reservation is a cardinal social justice instrument to ensure representation of historically underrepresented oppressed castes in higher education. Professor G Mohan Gopal, an Indian constitutional law expert, calls the Indian concept of ‘merit’ a big deception, with no clear definition.
In any valid framework for merit, an individual’s social identity and lived experience must be taken into account. Acknowledging the historical oppression of Black people, the United States government has implemented affirmative action policies in educational institutions, and mandated non-discriminatory practices in hiring and employment. Even in China, affirmative action programmes for persecuted ethnic minorities have been implemented broadly, including education and employment opportunities, and interest-free business loans, as well as political representation. However, India’s premier institutions fail to implement reservation policies in student admissions and faculty recruitment. Several media reports and RTI responses reveal that even constitutionally guaranteed seats still need to be filled in many government-funded institutions, including IITs and IIMs, and authorities seem reluctant to do it.
Back in 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court judge in the United States, gave a speech at the University of California School of Law at Berkeley, in which she said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who has not lived that life." Diversity, equity and inclusion can transform our educational institutions into spaces of democratic learning and social integration. A study published in 2000 by researchers Daryl Smith and Natalie Schonfeld concluded that diversity acts as a catalyst to enhance social engagement among different groups and inculcate a vibrant democracy.
As more and more lowered caste students manage to access higher education despite many odds, we need more institutional mechanisms, laws and policies in place to foster diversity and enrich the campus climate of higher education institutions in India. The University Grants Commission (UGC) must enact a law that makes caste discrimination in educational institutions a criminal offence, as they did for ragging and sexual harassment.
In addition, the Union government must initiate holistic pedagogical strategies, grievance redressal mechanisms, caste annihilation workshops, diversity-building training, and affirmative action policies to cultivate inclusive and diverse campuses. As Dr BR Ambedkar once said: “Equality may be a fiction, but nonetheless, one must accept it as a governing principle.”
Prakash Raj is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hyderabad. Views expressed are the author’s own.