Ch.. ch...chamaar" was a taunt that followed Manish Kumar through the corridors of IIT Roorkee, a constant reminder of his caste tag. The young man's body was found on campus three and a half years ago, his death shrouded in mystery. The case bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Aniket Ambhore, a young dalit student who died under, what his parents call, "fishy" circumstances at IIT Bombay last week. They now talk of the barbs he faced in college for having taken admission under the SCST quota.
What pushed these promising young men over the edge? "A casteist comment here or there is not enough to break a student. People are not so fragile. What breaks them is the structural discrimination embedded in the system," says Anoop Kumar, a researcher who works on empowering dalit students in Maharashtra's Wardha district.
Kumar believes that dalit students who walk into elite institutions are instantly made to realize that this is not their space. A student of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore talks of the "mainstreaming of Brahmin culture" on a campus that has often been nick-named the Iyer-Iyengar Institute of Science. "Many faculty members wear strong caste symbols such as ash on their forehead. Students who wear similar caste marks are viewed more favourably," alleges the student.
An IISc student recalls how a classmate once spoke of how the Game Theory could be used to prove how good the caste system was. "Students often talk against reservations on campus, not caring if the person they are addressing belongs to the reserved category," says a non-dalit student who is routinely asked which caste he's from whenever he defends reservations.
Dalit faculty members are not spared either. Students have occasionally snickered about the talents of a professor whose name is Ambedkar, never mind that he is named after the architect of India's constitution.
At conferences, even noted dalit academician and scholar Kancha Ilaiah recalls moments when he's in a room with only Brahmin academicians, and finds them getting into a huddle, leaving him out.
The evidence isn't just anecdotal. A survey of freshmen at the IIT-Bombay campus earlier this year showed that 56% of reserved category students felt discriminated against. Some years ago, a report on the differential treatment of SCST students at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences prepared by a committee chaired by former University Grants Commission chairman Sukhadeo Thorat showed that 72% of such students said they faced discrimination, while 88% reported various forms of social isolation.
What is held against dalits the most is the 'merit' argument. But Kumar busts the merit myth in his report on caste discrimination at IIT-Delhi. Merit has been reduced to marks at the Joint Entrance Exam to IITs, which can supposedly to be cracked only by the brightest minds. But the "brightest minds" are invariably manufactured by a billion-dollar coaching industry, points out Kumar. "Better off students from the upper castes can afford coaching, while many dalit students crack the JEE on their own. And yet, because the cut-offs are lower for dalits, this feeds into the myth that they are not meritorious." According to the Thorat committee report on AIIMS, 76% of reserved category students said their papers were not examined properly. The percentage of those who felt discriminated against during practicals and viva was even higher at 84. As many as 76% said they were asked about their caste while 85% said they got less time with examiners than higher caste students.
Ilaiah believes that much of the caste discrimination on campuses has to do with the attitudes of faculty members towards reservations, which percolates down to a section of students.
Dalit students, many of whom come from non-English medium schools, often struggle to follow lectures in English, and this further feeds into the view that they are weak in academics. Remedial English at premier institutions is either absent or sorely inadequate, show reports. Many dalits who follow English are discriminated against on the basis of their accent, which gives away the fact that they haven't been speaking the language for long, says Santosh, a former IITian.
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