Insight

Feb - Mar 2009

INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

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Editor Anoop Kumar Editorial Collective Ranjit T, Sandali, G. Novahu, Philip Peacock, Ratnesh Kumar, Dr Ajita Rao, Cynthia Stephen Content Advisors Rajesh Katulkar, Havovi Wadia, Arun Kumar, Braj Ranjan Mani Foreign Head Venkat Morjou Business Head Kishore Chandra Research S Venkatesan Student’s Section Aditi Ranjan Gyanendra Kumar Gaurav Himkar Foreign Correspondents Saurav Arya Rashmi Ekka Insight Representatives Lucknow – Yogesh Kumar Patna – Satyendra Kumar Dhanbad – Subhash Arya Indore – Sevanti Hyderabad – Parthasarathi M. Mysore – Ashokan Nambiar Pune – Diksha Neel Kozhikode – Arun A. Ahmedabad – Taranga Sriraman Bhubneshwar – Nizni Hans Bangalore – Vijay Kumar Chennai – Sherin Legal Advisor – Arun Vidyarthi Cover Design & Illustrations Rajesh Kumar Magazine Design Rajesh Khurana Office : G–1436, Lower Ground Floor, Chitranjan Park, New Delhi-110019 Email : [email protected] Mob. : 0-9313432410, 011-40548382 Website : www.insightyoungvoices.org Printed & Published by : Ranjith T. on behalf of Insight Foundation Editor : Anoop Kumar Printed At : Competent Binders, I/ 10781, Panchsheel Garden, Naveen Shahdara, Delhi-32

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EXPERIENCE

INTROSPECTION

insight

EXPRESSION

YOUNG VOICES

FEB-MAR, 2009

VOL. II NO. 1

Inside Insight Cover Story

On Suicides, Caste and Higher Education Voices Inside Out: On the Scholastic Regimes of Our Time Experiences Past, Present and Future Our Icon Savitribai Phule Chengara Land Struggle Death of a Dream Struggle for a New Kerala Caste Discrimination in IIT Delhi IITs: Doing Manu Proud

K. P. Girija

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Azad

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Rashmi Ekka

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Ratnesh Kumar

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K. K. Koch Sunny M. Kapikkad

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Anoop Kumar

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Interviews

With Prof. Anjan Ghosh Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata

Sandali

31–33

With Suresh Kumar Digumarthi University of Hyderabad

Anoop Kumar

39–40

Remembering Marichjhapi Massacre, 1979 Bihar School Text Books Politics of Syllabus Manual Scavenging and the Legal Discourse Through the Lens of Pollution

Reports

34 Arun Kumar

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Saptarshi Mandal

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Caste Violence in Ambedkar Law College The Caste Ailment Strikes the Calcutta Medical College Hostel Celebrating the Birth Anniversary of M C Rajah Celebrating Dalit History Month: Searching for the Past Dalit Leader Files Case Against IIT Madras Court’s Verdict on Khairlanji: No Casteism, No Molestation, No Rapes; Only Killings ISMU, Dhanbad: Jamadars: 2 out of 2, Sanitary Inspectors: 0 out of 2 INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

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Feb - Mar 2009

Editorial

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he year 2008 has been the year of crisis for the country. Right from the unprecedented violence against Christians, Bihar floods and terror attacks, the country was ravaged both by human-made and natural disasters, losing scores of lives and suffering huge damage to properties. There were terror attacks in almost all the major cities of the country and then there was the Mumbai attack that kept the 'whole' country at stand still for almost three days. All these incidents exposed, in clear terms, the Indian state's insensitivity, inefficiency, and mismanagement during emergency situations. It also exposed the preferences of Indian elites in qualifying the nature of such incidents. The terror attacks, especially Mumbai attacks becomes their obsession but not brutal killings and attack on Christians or flood devastation affecting millions. However, the New Year brought some good news. Many of our readers might be aware of the case of rustication of Dalit students from IIT Delhi citing low academic performance as the reason. In the second week of this month, all the rusticated students were readmitted in IIT Delhi after the court orders. This is one remarkable victory of Dalit students against one of the most powerful and 'sacred' institutions of the country. Despite suffering for more than six months and working with very limited resources, the Dalit students were able to hold their grounds and became instrumental in raising some very important questions regarding the fate of Dalit students in the premier institutions. Recognizing their struggle and achievement, Insight Editorial Collective is proud to dedicate this issue to all those IIT Dalit students who chose not to succumb to stereotyping. Carrying forward the spirit, the cover story of our issue is on the structural tensions faced by Dalit students in Higher Education- the system that allows the entry of Dalits but takes away all the opportunities to be treated as equal. It is very unfortunate that to understand this phenomenon, we are forced to map the trajectories of three Dalit students' suicides. At the risk of being called sensationalist in reading these suicides, we are making some honest efforts to provide a much more conducive environment in higher education spaces for future Dalit students. In this issue, we have also covered two stories that reflect on the state's response to demands made by Dalits Chengara in Kerala and Marichjhapi in West Bengal. In both the cases, the responses have been swift and clear - the Dalits of this country are second-class citizens and dispensable. They can live on government doles of welfare measures but cannot apply their agency and demand decent living. The non-Dalits of Kerala could grab land and later get it legalized but Dalits of Kerala have no business of demanding a few acres of agricultural land for their living. Similarly, the West Bengal government would reach out to 'upper' caste refugees but would massacre Dalit refugees asking for the same treatment. Incidentally, both these responses came from states governed by a communist party that claims to work for the 'people' and believes that caste is only a superstructure. This is not to say that the earlier governments led by the Congress (I) were not guilty. In fact, the communists in both the states were taking forward the anti-Dalit policies of the Congress (I). From both these cases, atleast two things emerge - the state's response differs with the caste of the people involved - the response being much more brutal in the case of Dalits, with the whole state machinery pitched against them. On the other hand, the response of the civil society and the media, which maintain complete silence on the state violence but connive to propagate the justification of the response of the state to the demands made by the Dalits. The year 2008 was also witness to an event that might have large impact worldwide, in the near future, discounting all the media hype surrounding that event. One Mr. Barack Hussein Obama got elected to the office of the President of USA and created enormous curiosity and interest, being the first black to become so. From right before his nomination as Democratic Party's presidential candidate, till his victory in the elections, the Indian media reported diligently about him and the US presidential elections. In tune with the strong tendencies of a wannabe superpower, prevalent among certain sections of the Indian population, parallels were drawn instantly and the search started- who can be India's Obama?! However, the choices before them were limited to Rahul Gandhi to Narendra Modi, depending on the individual's ideological leanings. 'Youth' and 'Development' became the sole criterion, as if these were the two qualities that aroused so much interest in Barack Obama, conveniently forgetting that it was his black skin that was behind this phenomenon. There were some feeble attempts of reading Obama's victory in the Indian context of the issue of caste. Here, the dominant tone was that of Obama's effort to distancing himself from his black identity in order to bridge the gap between the whites and the blacks in America. For us, the message was clear, "In order to join the mainstream, don't raise uncomfortable questions regarding your identity." Therefore, it was not surprising that the Indian media, while covering Obama's march, forgot to tell us about the African-Americans' struggle for equal opportunity, about the civil rights movement, about Rosa Park and Martin Luther King. They want to make us believe that Obama occurred in a vacuum. In this entire hullabaloo, the important question to ponder over for the Dalits in India is, whether we desire for an Indian version of Obama at present or we need more and more Rosa Parks and Martin Luther Kings. One popular SMS that went around after Obama's victory might hold some clue "Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama ran so your children can fly!" Feb - Mar 2009

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Voices

Inside Out On the Scholastic Regimes of Our Time

Translation from Malayalam by Jenny, Smrti by Azad We never made any big revolutions, Just a few mutterings. Still they were so afraid of us. We did not even know any survival strategies. Still they were so afraid of us.

And thus many more proposals of exclusion complete with the necessary words: Caste Religion Marginalization

We, who did not even bother to get organized! Who, we? We who were not looking to come together. Shadows scattered here and there. They knew it so well. And still they were frightened!

Our colours were different but they sniffed out our castes. They tagged it with a nice-sounding political statement called inclusive practices.

As insecurity took root, they kept conglomerating. Now they are busy scripting new strategies of exclusion. And to show us that these were not against us they included some of us in their schemes. Yet we kept falling from the margins of orkut scraps, from the frames of mobile pics. And all the while they were so careful to keep our glasses filled! May be they feel very insecure. When they were drunk We saw them, chanting loudlyPost structuralism Representation Embodied subject Spivak Lacan

They owned the whole world. Every corner was theirs Printing press, publishing houses papers, tv channels, journals. Yet our feeble voices and vague shadows frightened them. They watched in fear every move we make. When resistance thickened, when questions razed their public skies, when voices were raised, they carefully hid their fears. And casually told the world that we were just paranoid. It was so easy for them, and they were so convincing! Thus our words were reduced to nothing. Shallow. Superficial. Irrational. Along with crushed paper cups, Our unscholarly questions were thrown into the seminarroom rubbish-bins.

Even as we were pushed out, They were promoting each other to the power belts of the academic market. And we were wearing out. Many of us lost strength. Looking for other jobs, we left! Those who remained never came to know about Seminars, workshops and book releases. It dawned on us only then who we were! Still we never conducted any serious debates among ourselves about our exclusions. We never prepared common agendas. Wordless we remained Unknown islands! When pain throttled us we went in search of those with the odour and colour of our caste. And as if nothing ever happened, without showing the slightest emotion, they kept on organizing Workshops, Problematizing the Issues of Exclusion! As if they were doing it for us. Just for us. Doing our last rites…

Azad ([email protected]) is an independent researcher based in Mumbai.

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INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

Feb - Mar 2009

Experiences

Past, Present and Future I never told anybody who I really was. By the time I turned 15, nobody asked, because everyone knew. But they often 'forgot'. by Rashmi Ekka

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hat religion do you follow?" asked the curious twelve years old. "I'm a Christian" I answered, "A Roman Catholic." She became bolder, "Are you a Goan or an Anglo-Indian?" "Damn!" I thought. All my life I've had to answer this question. Any moment now and she might get to know the truth. "No, I'm not an Anglo-Indian or a Goan," I said stiffly, "I'm just a normal Christian." A stray thought entered my mind and worried me slightly. "How long will you keep hiding the truth? Or are you hiding from the truth?" I quickly dismissed it. My secret was still safe. I breathed a sigh of relief. Though it was not a very big secret. Many people knew it. Once in a while someone who didn't know would discover the truth. I have seen the faces change. I have noticed the warmth in their behavior disappear. So I never told anybody who I really was. By the time I turned 15, nobody asked, because everyone knew. But they often forgot. In front of me, people would say, "Oh Pramila flunked 5 papers this term, she's really dumb." Another voice would explain, "She's an Adivasi." And that word said it all. I would feel like speaking up for Pramila but never did. I walked away. My secret was that I am an ‘Adivasi’ too. I grew up with people who believed that Adivasis or Tribals were slow, secondary and stupid so much so that I believed them, too. After all, there was no one to challenge that fact! At home I was told time and again, "Rashmi, you are an Adivasi. You will never have the brains or the cunning ways of the others. People will always easily pull you down." At school, I saw almost all, among the very few Adivasi students, falling behind in studies. Ma often used to say, "Tribals always fail. You don't fail my child!" Irritated with all this, I often thought of myself as a nonAdivasi and went on to do everything that an Adivasi could supposedly not do. I excelled inside the classroom and outside. I sang, acted in plays, spoke at important occasions and represented my school in many events. But I had yet to come Feb - Mar 2009

Very kindly but firmly, I told her, “I’m a Tribal and here at my home you won’t be denied food because you are a Tribal!”

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to terms with myself. Living in the city, I hardly ever got the chance to interact much with my own people. With my own people, I would be an outsider because I was not like them. But back with my school friends, I was and remained an Adivasi. In the spring of 2002, when I was cleaning out papa's cupboard, I came across a bundle of letters written by daduji to papa when he was at college. Grandpa had written about the family history of his previous three generations. He had written about how his grandfather had been poisoned to death because he converted to Christianity and how his mother had lost six of her eleven children in infancy. I was crying though these incidents had taken place years ago. I began to get to know my forefathers intimately. I realized that I had inherited their will power, their spirit of good will and their willingness to work hard. The writer of these letters, my grandpa, died 10 years back, but his letters still worked their charm. He had once again reached out to another lost child. That child had finally found somebody who could be her role model. And like her role model she wants to make a difference. She

wants to be that one Adivasi, because of who no one would look down on Adivasis again. I learnt a lot from the letters. And I was proud, proud of my forefathers, my people, for the first time. Don't get me wrong. I have always loved my people and our beautiful culture. We are the only people who welcome our guests by washing their feet. I loved my land, too. The gray hills, the vast stretches of barren paddy fields, the boiled rice drying in the sun on the road, the Sal trees, the red tiled roofs precariously balanced on the mud walls. I loved them all. I loved dancing to the haunting beat of the Nagara and the Mandar wearing the traditional white and red sari, singing our Oraon songs and celebrating Sarhul. But before reading the letter, I had never been proud of them. That summer, my friends had come over to work on a school project. A few of my friends went into the kitchen to get some snacks. One of the non-tribals, Deepika who still hadn't got any food said, "Hey! Pass the chips; I am not an untouchable tribal." Very kindly but firmly, I told her, "I'm a Tribal and here at my home you won't be denied food because you are a Tribal!"Ÿ

Rashmi ([email protected]) has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and is working for the social empowerment and economic upliftment of her people. Themes for next two Issues Issue Vol II. No. 2 (April-May) - Dalit Movement: Patterns of mobilization. Since the last 25 years, a strong wave of Dalit consciousness can be felt across the country and has given birth to numerous Dalit organizations working in different spheres of public life. There are Buddhist organizations, cultural groups, NGOs, employee associations, political parties and even NRI Dalit associations. All such organizations reflect a strong aspiration of the community to get organized and fight against caste discrimination. In the next issue, we aim to explore various patterns that have emerged within the Dalit movement in context of mobilizing the community through different forms of organizations. Issue Vol II. No. 3 (June-July) - Caste, Curriculum and Pedagogy If education has been regarded as means of empowerment for community and of self-actualization for the individuals, it has also been understood as a site for indoctrination. In this issue of Insight, we aim to explore the issue of curriculum and pedagogy in our educational system – both school and higher education. We want to understand how our textbooks and ways of teaching deal with the issue of caste. Firstly, do the content of textbooks – images and the written texts – reflect the diversity of experiences or particular symbols and experiences are shown as representing All? Secondly, how our textbooks and teachers talk about caste in the classrooms?

Insight Editorial Collective extends its heartfelt gratitude to Change in Address the following individuals (fellow Indians from USA) for their Contributors and Subscribers financial contributions in support of our magazine:– kindly note that we have shifted Anil Kumar Eravatri Rs 22,000 to new place. Our new address is Soujanya Dongari & Kumaraswamy Mudide Manjula Kavadi & Srini Kandela Jyothi Gatupa & Hari Maroju Indiara Bandi & Sridhar Bandi Dr. Omar Khalidi

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Savitribai Phule

Awake, Arise and Educate; Smash Traditions, Liberate by Ratnesh Kumar

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avitribai Phule (1831-97) was wife and companion of Mahatma Jotiba Phule with whom she struggled and suffered in an equal measure but remains obscure in Indian history due to the castiest and sexist negligence. It is indeed a measure of the ruthlessness of the elite-controlled knowledge-production that India's first woman teacher, a radical exponent of mass and female education, a champion of women's liberation, a pioneer in engaged poetry, a courageous mass leader who undertook on the forces of caste and patriarchy is largely a unknown figure outside the Dalit movement. Savitribai's role in the anti-caste and women's struggle is unique. She emerges as the only woman leader among all social movements in nineteenth century India who linked patriarchy with caste. She opened her own well for the untouchables. She started a women's association, worked for raising women's consciousness about their human rights and other social issues. Being a woman, she easily recognized the double downtroddenness of most of the women as she saw the gender question in relation to caste and brahmanical patriarchy. She campaigned against Feb - Mar 2009

victimization of widows. She advocated and encouraged widow remarriage. She canvassed against infanticide of 'illegitimate' children. She went on to organize a successful barber's strike against the prevailing practice of shaving of widows' heads. She did all this taking grave personal risks. Many of these misogynistic practices have now receded in the background. But in her time, they tormented and destroyed countless women. Savitribai's struggle encouraged and inspired a whole generation of outstanding campaigners for gender justice in Maharashtra - Dr. Anandi Bai Gopal Joshi, Pandita Ramabai, Tarabai Shinde, Ramabai Ranade, and many other have been inspired by her efforts. Savitri was still a teenager when she got involved in the educational activities with her husband, playing an equally important role in founding and running schools for women and Dalits, despite the opposition from the orthodoxy. On her way to school to teach girls, often, stones, mud and dirt were flung at her by those, both men and women, with orthodox beliefs who opposed education for women. She braved this onslaught by INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

wearing an old sari to school, and carried an extra sari to change into after she reached the school. Finally, the pressure on her was eased when she slapped one of her tormentors on the street. Once the opponents of female education realized that the Phule couple would not easily give in, they steeped up their opposition. Intense pressure was brought by the brahmans on Phule's father, Govindrao, to convince him that his son was on the wrong track, that what he was doing was against the Dharma. Finally, things came to head when Phule's father told him to leave home in 1849. Savitribai was only 18 and Jotirao was 22 years old when Joti's father turned them out of their own home. Just imagine two young people in love, taking on the home and world not for their romance but for liberating the shackled and the crushed- with a majestic belief that every woman, every child and every man has a right, a divine right, a natural right, to get educated and to remake their life. What is more remarkable, they kept alive this revolutionary spirit throughout their lives, setting a benchmark in social and political engagement that has few parallels anywhere.

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Savitribai Phule was a top leader of the Satyashodhak Samaj. She headed the women's wing of the Samaj and after the death of Mahatma Phule she assumed the leadership of the Samaj on the request of many Satyashodhaks who reposed their faith in her for her integrity, commitment and long involvement in social activism. She led the Samaj from the front during the famine and plague epidemic of 1896-97. She died on March 10 1897, while she was nursing a plagueaffected child. She got infected while serving the affected people. In her life and her death, she embodied the noble and the sublime. Not grandiloquent words and great ideals in abstract, but her day-to-day public life, her suffering with the suffering people makes her majestic. Few people know that Savitribai Phule was a trailblazing poet of modern Marathi and an intensely committed writer. Her writings give the impression of an ignited mind that wanted to kindle a similar spirit in other people's lives. She edited for publication, four of Jotiba's speeches on Indian History. A few of her own speeches were published in 1892. Savitribai's correspondence is also remarkable because they give us an insight into her life and into women's experiences of the time. In her essay Karz (Debt), she condemned the idea of celebrating festivals by borrowing money and thus being burdened by heavy debts. She also wrote on addiction, explaining how it ruined the lives of the addicted and their familiesthemes that are still relevant in the 21st centuriesŸ Ratnesh ([email protected]) is pursuing PhD from Babasaheb Ambedkar National Institute of Social Studies, Mhow, Indore

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Poems by Savitribai Phule Translation from Marathi: Sunil Sardar, Victor Paul

Mother English Rule of Peshwa is gone

Mother's footfall.

Mother English has come.

Brahman's rule is now in ashes Under the English whips and lashes.

Forlorn and dark our hopelessness Ominous fears of heaven and abyss. In such a dismal time of ours Come Mother English, this is your hour. Throw off the yoke of redundant belief Break open the door, walk out in relief. Learn to read and write, O my dear one Opportune times! Mother English has come. Manu's ways are evil and mean Poor and depressed we have all been. They've cheated, befooled, looted us all They've gone with English

It is all for the good of the poor Manu's dead at English Mother's door. Knowledge is poor man's refuge and shade It's akin to comfort mothermade. In English rule we've found our joy Bad days gone, Mother English abhoy! English is the inheritance of none Persian, Brahman, Yemeni or Hun. We have true Indian blood in our veins Cry out aloud! And shout! Mother English is OUT!

Go, Get Education Be self-reliant, be industrious Work-gather wisdom and riches. All gets lost without knowledge We become animals without wisdom.

End misery of the oppressed and forsaken.

Sit idle no more, go, get education

Throw away the brahman's scriptures fast.

You've got a golden chance to learn So learn and break the chains of caste.

Reference:– Braj Ranjan Mani & Pamela Sardar (ed)‘A Forgotten Liberator: The Life and Struggle of Savitribai Phule’ , 2008 INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

Feb - Mar 2009

Cover Story

On Suicides, Caste and Higher Education No suicide can perhaps be seen only as a result of ‘personal frustrations’,least of all, Dalit student suicides. These personal frustrations have visible connections with the context around them. They are political, cultural and social and therefore need special attention. Hence it becomes important for all concerned to analyze whether these suicides were intrinsically connected to the power structure of the higher educational institutions and the entry of Dalits into it. by K. P. Girija

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ejani S. Anand, a Malayalee student of Institute of Human Resource Development (IHRD) Engineering College at Adoor in south Kerala committed suicide on 22nd July 2004. Senthil Kumar, a Tamil student hailing from an interior region in the state, admitted for PhD in the School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, took his life on 24th February 2008. Ajay Sree Chandra, a Telugu boy and an Integrated-PhD scholar at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, committed suicide the year before, on 27th August 2007. If one were to look for similarities that bind these three disparate incidents, we find that all were doing courses in Sciences and admitted to prestigious institutions. They all were also in the peak of their youth. Rejani and Ajay were both just 21 years olds at the time of their death. Senthil was 27. Their youth might have been mixed with hope and an equal measure of uncertainty about their future. However, the most striking feature, that binds all these deaths, would be the caste of the deceased. All the three students were Dalits. Feb - Mar 2009

No suicide can perhaps be seen only as a result of ‘personal frustrations’, least of all, Dalit suicides. These personal frustrations have visible connections with the context around them. They are political, cultural and social and therefore need special attention. Hence it becomes important for all concerned to analyze whether these suicides were intrinsically connected

INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

to the power structure of the higher educational institutions and the entry of Dalits into it.

Death: The Only Legitimate Protest Death seems to be the only legitimate form of protest for the Dalit students to highlight their discrimination as well as their right for equal share in the higher educational sphere. The 'Dalitness' of these students, in the modern spaces, is yet to acquire a language to articulate the pain and the recurrent acts of injustice meted to them. All the three suicides can be read as statements of protest against the insensitivity of various institutions and discrimination being practiced there. Still, there had been a tendency to depict these deaths as acts of desperation (of course, personal) of the students and their inability to cope with advanced studies, especially in the Sciences. One can see the clear-cut trajectories of these students' lives, which lead to personal desperations and suicides. Could we assess all these as something that happened without any intervention from the world they were situated in?

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From Hope to Death Rejani. S. Anand, Age 21, Engineering Student IHRDE College, Adoor, Kerala Rejani. S. Anand was a student of Institute of Human Resource Development Engineering (IHRDE) College at Adoor in south Kerala . She got admission on 6.11.2002 in the government quota seat under merit. The Scheduled Caste (SC) Department had remitted her fee. On 22nd July 2004, she committed suicide by jumping from the seventh floor of the Office of the Entrance Commissioner (Medical and Engineering courses) at Trivandrum. The sequence of events that could show the immediate trajectory that led her to take her own life is as follows Since her college had no hostel facilities, Rejani was staying in a nearby N.S.S (Nair Service Society) hostel. Her gender and caste together played The government had been paying an amount of Rs 315 as an important role towards the denial a monthly stipend to the SC students that was not of the bank loan sufficient for Rejani to meet her hostel fee of RS 1000 apart from transportation charges, cost of books etc. Her father was a daily wages labourer and was unable to support her education. Rejani and her parents tried to get a Bank loan to meet her essential financial requirements. She first went to Indian Oversees Bank (Puzhanadu branch) for the educational loan. The bank manager was reluctant even to give the application form. Then Rejani and her mother went to the local M.L.A. Thampanur Ravi and asked him to intervene. Then only the application form was given to her. When she presented the application for loan in the bank, she was told to come after two weeks. Later, Rejani together with her mother went to the bank for more than 20 times to enquire about the status of her educational loan application. Finally, she was told that she was not eligible for an educational loan. Her family had no property other than their 2.5 cent land and a hut, and that was not valuable enough for the bank to sanction an educational loan. It seems that her gender and caste together played an important role towards this denial of the bank. In Kerala, a woman going to a bank without her father, brother or husband would be treated with scant attention. Rejani could not afford to take her father along for the necessary ‘respectability’. Her father was a labourer and his daily wages were essential for the family. She had applied for an educational loan, which does not require surety legally. According to the Reserve Bank of India's circular on the educational loans - any merit candidate could avail herself a loan of up to Rs 4 lakhs for one course without furnishing security and without accruing interest on the loan until she gets employment. Here the non-secured 'future' of a Dalit woman might be an obstacle for the bank manager to sanction loan. As a woman, there was no guarantee that Rejani would complete the course; she might have dropped her study if she would get married. As a Dalit girl, there was no guarantee to get a good job even after the completion of the course. These points might be bothering the non-Dalit manager and in that case, how can a bank grant the educational loan? Afterwards, Rejani went to the State Bank of Travancore but here also she was denied the loan. Then her parents approached Thampanur Ravi (the local MLA) for financial assistance. Though he immediately made the promise but never bothered to fulfill it. They went to the Block Panchayat for assistance but were told that it had no such financial assistance programme and funds. They went to Pazhavangadi Scheduled Caste office but were returned empty handed. She could not go to her college for more than two months as her hostel authorities were threatening her to deposit the hostel fees. The last straw seems to be the apparent denial of Transfer Certificate (T.C) from Adoor Engineering College due to the non-payment of the fees. Rejani had got a chance to join Mary Matha College, which had promised her free education and lodging. When she approached her college for a T.C, they sent her off to pay the dues. She was sent to the Entrance (Engineering and Medical courses) commissioner's office. It is here that she committed suicide by jumping out from the seventh floor of that building.

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Feb - Mar 2009

Photo Courtesy The Hindu

When alive, not one of them could politicize their experiences of discrimination and raise it at a macrolevel. Yet, all of them would have experienced caste in its micro formations. The fact that Rejani's primary confidant with whom she shared her humiliations seems to be a woman friend who happens to be a Dalit is crucial. In his diary Ajay writes about "superiority/inferiority" gazes, which unsettle him in his laboratory, clearly suggesting caste humiliations. Senthil was part of Ambedkar Students' Association, a Dalit students' political forum in the University of Hyderabad and might not have been a stranger to the caste debates and its theoretical formulations. Yet, none of them could raise the issue at a collective level. The structure, which accommodated them within it, did it only as a ‘compensatory allowance’. While it provided representation, it definitely

End of Hope: Senthil’s Parents at their House

fee dues, are not sufficient enough to unwrap the caste discrimination. The continuous journey to one particular bank more than twenty times for getting an educational loan to which she was officially entitled by Reserve Bank of India order neither is this enough to prove the denial of a loan to a Dalit student. [From the statements of K.

When alive, not one of them could politicize their experiences of discrimination and raise it at a macro-level did not provide dignified representation and no space to ask for it, either. Thus, while alive, none of them could raise the issue of caste and discrimination in a way it would be heard. It is tragic that only death could bring out the discrimination towards the 'Dalitness' of a student in all three cases.

‘Dalitness’ in Modern Spaces How did these students experience their ‘Dalitness?’ A short examination of the immediate incidents just before their deaths is all that we have. (In Ajay’s case we hardly have that also). The often threatening phone calls received at Rejani's neighbor's house by her or her parents from the N.S.S. hostel, to whom she owed her Feb - Mar 2009

Cover Story

Santhakumari, Mother of Rejani, given before Justice Khalid Commission on 14.05.2005] Yet, we know that the Bank would have denied her loan precisely because of her status as both Dalit and woman though it was not hinted anywhere except in the tedious procedural approach. As a woman, the Bank would not be convinced that she would take up a career. They might not have been confident of her completing her course at all. Also, her coming to the Bank alone or sometimes accompanied only by another woman, her mother, might have destroyed her image as a ‘respectable’ woman. As a Dalit, they would not have read her as ‘meritorious’ enough to gain employment even after the completion of the course and therefore INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

loan worthy. Due to her Dalit womanhood, the student life of Rejani seems to have become an endless knocking at various doors for financial support. The last straw seems to be the apparent denial of Transfer Certificate (T.C) from Adoor Engineering College. Rejani had got a chance to join Mary Matha College, which had promised her free education and lodging. When she approached her college for a T.C, they sent her off to pay the dues. She was sent to the Entrance (Engineering and Medical courses) examiner's office. It is here that she committed suicide by jumping out from the seventh floor of that building. Through the dramatic choosing of the place of her death, i.e. the Entrance examiner's office, the act was charged with layers of symbolic meanings. She, a Dalit, had gained her ‘entry’ into the system by that impossible feat of passing the exam without attending formal coaching classes. Yet, that entry functioned as 'provisional' for her. In fact, with her death, we realize what Rejani would have constantly heard from the system that apparently gave her entry: "No Entry for Trespassers." When Rejani was alive, neither she nor the students union or caste

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The Culprit behind Senthil's Suicide Senthil Kumar, Age 27, PhD Student University of Hyderabad In 2007, Senthil Kumar came all the way to University of Hyderabad, from a village of Salem district in Tamilnadu. He was admitted for his PhD in the School of Physics. He belonged to the panniandi caste, which is traditionally involved in pig rearing and is at the bottom of the caste-hierarchy. Both his parents are illiterate and are devoid of regular income. He was the only person in his family as well as in his caste to register for PhD. After completing his M.Phil from the Pondicherry University, he had to discontinue his studies for quite some time due to financial constraints. Since his graduation days, Senthil had been supporting his parents through his scholarships. On 24th February 2008, just after one year of his admission, Senthil Kumar committed suicide in his hostel room. University authorities immediately claimed that he had died of cardiac arrest. But the postmortem report gave the cause of death as poisoning. Surprisingly, this report was kept as a secret until the Dalit students started demanding an enquiry and compensation for his family. After the political intervention from the Tamilnadu M.L.A. Ravikumar, the University of Hyderabad had appointed an internal fact finding committee under Prof Vinod Pavarala. From the batch of 2007, Senthil was the only student who has not been assigned a supervisor till his death. In this batch, initially four students had not been assigned a supervisor. Out of these four students, two eventually left the programme as dropouts and one got allotted a supervisor. Obviously, all the four students were from the reserved categories. Does it mean something? Was it an evidence of the inability of the School of Physics to accommodate the Dalit students in its culture of hierarchy? Senthil failed in one of the four required courses. He failed the same course in the supplementary exam in January 2008 also. He had the provision of writing the exam again in March to clear this backlog. The students with backlogs, stop receiving fellowships as per the University of Hyderabad guidelines. Hailing from a poor family, the University fellowship was the only source for him to support his family and his own survival. The University changed the rule of curtailing the fellowship to the students who had to clear the backlogs, a week before Senthil's death, but did not make it public. Prof Pavarala committee made very clear in its report that, "All the Physics students that this Committee could meet have reported their sense that the School was acting against the interests of the SC/ST students." Still, there is no culprit who led to the suicide of Senthil Kumar! organizations could bring out any of these exasperating processes as valid points of discrimination. There might have been protests at a personal level in a minimal way. More than protesting, Rejani had desperately tried her maximum to obtain a loan in order to cope with the situation, to continue her education, her only hope for a better future. As far as Senthil was concerned, when he was alive, he could not point out the discrimination in the Physics department, which

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denied him a supervisor. This inability to politically voice his concern happens even though he was an active member of the Ambedkar Students' Association. Failure in a subject in his course work was the determinant of his merit. Through his death, Senthil can be seen to raise doubts about the acceptance of Dalit students into the Science departments. He evokes questions through his death on the formal acceptance of Dalit students in the higher academic studies and its true INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

spirit. The ‘logic’, ‘rationality’, and the ‘merit’ that Science claims for itself need to be questioned if the entry of a Dalit student creates so many ruffles within the system. The structure of the Science discipline was such that Senthil himself, at some point might have believed that he was not competent and meritorious at all to survive in the discipline. The details of Ajay's case are not known. Yet, his dairy notes and his status as a student who got Feb - Mar 2009

Cover Story twelfth rank in the All India Entrance, yet admitted to the institute as a reservation candidate, would have posed problems of the same Dalithood for him also. These Dalit students, or their existence and day-to-day encountering with their Dalitness (this is not as direct expressions of ritual untouchability, but denying access through new meanings of merit, untimely payment of dues, failure in many subjects/course work etc.) was something that could not be translated into a political process for agitation or bargaining for justice, when they were alive. Paradoxically, and tragically, the value of their death is much more than the value of their life to raise the various nuances of institutionalized casteism. As if death is the only elucidation to legitimize the worth of their life!

Refusal to Accept the Direct Meaning of their Deaths There were instances to subvert the political reasons behind these suicides. For e.g., when Rejani committed suicide, there had been a demand to test the virginity of the girl. Lack of virginity, which pointed to the patriarchal world that she was not quite ‘moral’, was accepted as an overriding factor for a woman to commit suicide. But the fact of castebased harassment staring right into everyone's face was not accepted or seen as one. Also, it is strange that one was not thinking of analytically combining these factors - sexuality and caste. Sexuality, like many other categories, can manifest only in the context of other structures like caste. Her lack of virginity, as revealed in the test, assumes the primary importance in comparison to the

obviously biased treatment from all corners that she knocked for help. Gender (together with her Dalitness) has played the role here as if her ‘immorality’ took away her right to protest against the caste-biased nature of the educational structure. Similarly, the University of Hyderabad authorities maintained, even before the post-mortem examination, that Senthil died of a heart attack. The SC/ST employees had to invoke the Right to Information Act to get the post mortem report, which stated poisoning as the cause of Senthil’s death. Ajay's father never got to know why his son committed suicide, when he went to Bangalore to collect his body. He had to wait for a whole month to know the details of the tense situation faced by his son, in the lab in IISc, till the IISc SC/ST employees union took up the issue as one of caste discrimination.

‘Conditional’ Representation in Modern Spaces These cases are examples of how caste functions in a ‘modern’ space like the Higher Educational institution. The structure seems to apparently include Dalits through representational measures like reservations. By this very act of representation, the system claims its neutrality to caste. However, this act of inclusion/representation is coded within certain conditions that are very often invisible and built into the socalled inclusive nature of the system. Paradoxically, these conditions result in the exclusion of the Dalit herself. Dalits have the right to enter the system through reservation, a ‘compensatory discrimination’. Yet, they do not have the right to be

treated as equal with the mainstream representatives of the system in all terms and in all situations. There are various determinants to decide this equality such as merit, performance, articulation etc. There is inclusion through representation and exclusion through different 'assessment' and differential approaches. While the system might claim credit for the entry of students like Rejani, Senthil and Ajay and their very presences might be seen as their inclusion into the system, we can see that their subsequent suicides were also a result of the conditions/ exclusions that this very inclusion threw up.

Science and the Notion of Merit If we measure merit in terms of marks obtained, all the three students got very good marks up to their intermediate courses and began losing marks (their brilliance/merit) after joining for the applied science courses. Does it mean that these students were not capable enough to cope with professional courses or applied science courses? If so, does it also mean that there is something wrong in the environment and attitude (in essence, the structure) of the professional institutions towards Dalit students? Rejani had failed in nine out of the ten courses in her first semester. Senthil too had to clear one paper from his course work, which was understood as a condition to allot a supervisor for him and continue his research in the Physics department. Ajay had problems to cope in the laboratory. His diary shows that he was scared of one or more faculty members.

Dalits have the right to enter the system through reservation, a ‘compensatory discrimination.’ Yet, they do not have the right to be treated as equal with the mainstream representatives of the system in all terms and in all situations Feb - Mar 2009

INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

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Photo Courtesy Tehelka

“Those eyes, they scare me...” Ajay Sree Chandra, Age 21, Integrated-PhD Student Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore On 26th August 2007, Ajay Sree Chandra committed suicide in his hostel room. Ajay had a middle class background, as his father is a faculty at the Government Polytechnic College in Hyderabad. He belonged to the madiga community and hailed from Malipuram village, Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh. Ajay was a second generation literate from a Dalit family and was ‘meritorious’ enough to compete with the normative 'value' of merit. Yet, as a Dalit he had no choice except to commit suicide!

Father of Ajay Sree Chandra

Ajay was meritorious (in terms of marks secured) enough to get a seat in IISc in the general quota. He was one of the top twelve in India, to get into the PhD course in Biological Sciences at IISc, Bangalore. Still he was admitted in the reserved category. Labels are labels and one could not even

symbolically discard them just because of 'merit'! The diary that Ajay maintained was possibly tampered with at the time of his death and it is quite probable that this must have happened at the behest of the Institute with the help of police. The suicide note had disappeared. The only clue of the circumstance that would have led him to commit suicide is given in his diary where he described the atmosphere of his lab in the following words "Those eyes, they scare me, they look with such inferiority/superiority complex @ you. They tell everything (most of the time). Those eyes scare me …those eyes scares me a lot. My legs are paining …" According to his friends at IISc, Ajay was undergoing tremendous mental torture by couple of professors, who were non-cooperative and often humiliated him on caste lines. But according to the Institute, Ajay committed suicide, because of his ‘personal’ stress. When informed by the IISc authorities, Ajay's father came there to receive the body of his son and at that time he did not had any clue about caste discrimination. Later, after quite some time, when the SC/ST union from the Institute informed him of the caste discrimination, he was shocked. As a middle class student, Ajay had all the tools to be a meritorious student, to compete well with the mainstream upper caste students. But he failed, as merit is not the percentage of marks one secures, it seems to be the mark of caste In general, these can be read as the inabilities of the students to cope with the applied science department, which needs ‘talent’ and ‘hard work’. Yet, it also carries the hidden meaning of the inability of the high skilled department to generate a friendly atmosphere to a group of people who are yet to be familiar with its language, hierarchy and protocol. Science seems to see itself as privileging logic and would shun perspective. Rationality is prioritized and this is defined as transcending individual experiences. With this logic, students are supposed to be

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modern individuals who want to become scholars or scientists rather than bringing their other identities like that of caste, community or gender. This rational and logical frame itself places the subaltern as the 'other' in the science department. The attributes of irrationality, illogic and intolerance are not for the mainstream students; those are reserved for the subaltern communities.

Modern Secular Institutions embedded in Caste There is a preconceived notion that INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

our educational institutions are caste neutral. If at all caste is expressed or practiced there in any form, it is treated as existing only because of the insensitivity of certain individuals. In addition, people do not believe that there is such a thing as ‘institutional casteism’. Therefore the cultural democratic space like an educational institution will hardly be questioned until some direct caste atrocities happen in those spaces. Marginalized individuals also do not experience the hegemonic control of the knowledge over them as discrimination and a structural Feb - Mar 2009

Cover Story problem. For them, caste is experienced as an attitudinal problem - either from department heads, economical institutions or from authorities who represent the institutions. One could think about the environment of this higher education as a space where there is a mingling of different kinds of students from different castes and classes and religions. Irrespective of the caste and religious identity, anonymity to a certain extent is possible in these spaces. Yet, within this anonymity, the determinants of caste, religion or region could be 'read' through language, lack of or command over English, submissiveness or assertion, articulation capacities, regional or urban nature, mode of dress, complexion etc. In other words, these determinants of Dalitness or upper casteness are much more practically applied than the details in official records.

Conflict in Dual Representation Dalit students have to carry the mark of their community (not in terms of the name of their jati but in terms of their Dalitness). They are also modern individuals in elite higher educational spaces. In these spaces, they face humiliations at a very personal, individual level, yet those very humiliations happen due to their Dalitness as a community. None of the above mentioned students could communicate their humiliations to their parents. The parents residing in faraway places were not able to give emotional support to their children. To some extent, the parents were not aware of the intensity of the humiliation of the modern spaces. The humiliation for a Dalit student comes in the form of lack of performance or rather lack of merit, not paying the dues in time etc. It never comes directly as caste discrimination. It never acknowledges itself as the inability of the system to Feb - Mar 2009

assimilate some social groups. How to translate these kinds of approaches into caste discrimination and communicate it to the parents who stayed away from the modern institutions would be another painful task. It would be difficult for the children to tell the reality to the parents very often; whose only hope would be these kids. In most cases, the parents/family did not get any hint of the desperation from the part of their daughter/son. Communities could overcome the humiliations in their togetherness in sharing and laughing out, negotiating and sometimes protesting too. Individuals have their own limitations to take the burden of these humiliations. These students tried to negotiate and struggle their best, but after a point they couldn't bear it anymore. Simultaneously, they were forced to shoulder the dual identities - that of a modern, educated individual (as science students, rational, logical etc) and at the same time, as a merit less Dalit. The contradiction was too much for them to bear. Finally it ends in their suicides through which they tried to question or destabilize the structure in whatever little way they could through their deaths. They had all proved that they were ‘capable’ and ‘meritorious’ for this very educational system till their intermediate/degree courses. In that case, would they ever think about turning back and do some menial labour there after coming through the long 12-15 years of education? In their aspiration to become modern educated individuals with better jobs, they fitted neither in the higher educational system nor in their villages. The long and excruciating journey from a remote village to an urban secular space lead them to a nowhere place.

Inherent Structural Tensions Dalits or tribals have entered the system mostly through representational measures like INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

reservations. But, this is seen as an 'excessive' presence and hence 'threatening' presence to the system. That is why a bank manager is reluctant to sanction a loan to a poor Dalit girl for her higher education instead of thinking about the possibilities to grant it. That is why the University stopped the scholarship of Senthil Kumar instead of formulating a new approach to deal the situation. (Even though there is no law of the university which states that scholarship is connected to passing or failing in exams). When the structure has been destabilized or questioned in a minimal way (only) through the death of the Dalit students, immediately it tries to retain its status quo, often using compensatory measures. In Senthil's case, the University had granted an amount of Rs five lakhs to Senthil's family. Here, it was the cost of a Dalit youth's life and hope which was burnt in a University. Another 'compensation' was the immediate allotment of guides to two Dalit students. In Rejani's suicide case, the State immediately enhanced the amount of monthly stipend for SC/ ST students from Rs 315 to Rs 1000. These temporary compensations or welfare measures would pacify the troubled situations. It would also help various institutions to wash their hands off from the crime of pushing the students to suicides. Through compensation or some welfare measures the institution or the State is admitting its inability to assure distributive justice to the subaltern communities. Through these compensatory measures it is also trying to reinstate the status quo by reducing tensions though temporarily. I am ending this article with a poem from an HCU Dalit drop-out, who has written this in the context of the suicide of Senthil Kumar. The poem speaks much more than what I have tried to peel out from my analysis of the deaths of the Dalit studentsŸ

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An HCU* Dalit Drop-out’s Poem To Senthil, I did not know you when you lived. I seem to know you so well after you have gone. Did we not walk the same lonely paths? Paths strewn with little hurtful insults, some obvious most not-obvious humiliations designed to erode our self worth, with the power to shake our confidence in humanity, in our thinking, in our love for life and our search for its meaning. Could we have talked about our shared bewildering experience, of hearing a system stealthily tell us that we are not good enough to seek knowledge? Today, you have chosen to protest in a way that only intensifies my pursuits more lonely, or should I believe that you have instead opened a channel for the rest of us? To make public what until now, is our private pain, pain delivered to us by systems meant to deliver knowledge and uplift mankind * Hyderabad Central University

– From an HCU Drop-out Dalit

K. P. Girija ([email protected]) is pursuing PG Diploma Course in Cultural Studies, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. This article was part of the Short Term Fellowship Programme (2007-08) of Anveshi Research Centre for Women's Studies, Hyderabad.

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INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

Feb - Mar 2009

Photo By Ajilal

A glorious chapter in Dalit Movement

Chengara Land Struggle

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n one of the biggest-ever Dalit uprisings, in the history of post-independent India, more than 20,000 people, demanding land rights for the landless Dalits, Adivasis and other poor, have been fighting against the combined might of the state, hostile media and the apathetic civil society of otherwise 'enlightened and progressive' Kerala. Since more than 18 months now, 5,000 families, constituting more than 20,000 people, have been occupying the Harrison Malayalam Pvt Ltd Estate at Chengara in Pathanamthitta district of South Kerala. They are demanding substantial land reforms, one that includes Dalits, Adivasis and other landless communities as well. In more concrete terms, they demand 5 acres of cultivable land and Rs. 50,000 to be given to each landless family. Their struggle, under the banner of Dalit organization Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi (SVSV), lays bare many bitter truths about the much-touted land reforms in Kerala. By carrying the photos of Babasaheb Ambedkar and Ayyankali, they are also making some telling statements against the patronizing attitude of various political groups and their 'monopoly' on people's issues. However, above all, the Chengara struggle clearly exposes the presence of caste inequalities and discrimination in Kerala making a big dent on the neo-liberal image of 'God's own country'. The struggle has been completely non-violent, although repeated attempts have been made at provoking them into violence by means of physical torture, rapes, starvation and denial of right to proper health care. Trade Union leaders and goons hired by Harrison Malayalam have imposed an economic blockade on the Estate land since August 3, 2008, depriving the protestors both food and water. They have even disallowed entry of outsiders into the Estate land, preventing proper healthcare. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala led by CPI (M) has yet to acknowledge the Chengara land struggle and is treating it as law and order situation, not willing to recognize the grass root, Dalit-led land rights movement. To understand more about the various facets of Chengara struggle we have included articles by two leading Dalit intellectuals of Kerala - K.K. Koch and Sunny Kapikkad.

Feb - Mar 2009

INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

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Death of a Dream by K. K. Koch K. K. Koch is a well-known literary figure and Dalit activist from Kerala. This is a translation of his article that appeared in Mathrubhoomi, a Malayalam weekly (April 6-12, 2008). Jenson Joseph, a PhD scholar, from University of Hyderabad, has translated it in English. V. S. Achutanandan, the Kerala Chief Minister, who came to the power with the image of a ‘saviour’, has been making derogatory remarks against Dalits and Adivasis in the Chengara land struggle. The latest being his allegation that the people fighting for their land rights in Chengara are leading a ‘luxurious life’. On the contrary, the people are suffering from acute poverty and lack of medical aid. It is the inherent anti-Dalit mindset of the CPI (M) that is behind such responses. The malicious propaganda, against the ongoing land struggle in Chengara, carried out by the Chief Minister Mr. V. S. Achutanandan together with the Marxist publications and TV channels in the state, underlines this fact. In 1964, Achutanandan became very popular as the leader of agitating agricultural labourers under the banner of CPI (M). In Kuttanad and Thrissur, many labourers lost their lives during these agitations. Of the 70 people killed then, 52 were landless Dalits. However, these agitations helped Achutanandan to gain the confidence of the Dalits in Kerala and their support made him a ‘great’ leader, a ‘saviour’ of Dalit, other poors and marginalized and finally the Chief Minister of Kerala in 2006. It was the resolute support of the Dalit community that also let

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Achutanandan overcome the intraparty bickering before becoming the Kerala CM. During 2006 Assembly elections, CPI (M) Polit Bureau denied him the party ticket for contesting elections but it was forced to overturn its decision due to the huge protests led by the Dalits in favour of Achutanandan. According to Kairali and Kairali People (both Left-owned TV channels), 67 per cent Dalits voted for CPI (M) led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in that elections. The Leftists also gained lots of mileage together with Dalit and Adivasi votes by screening video clips of the police brutality against agitating Adivasis (at Muthanga on 19th February 2003) during the previous Congress led UDF regime. However, the euphoria of ‘proDalit’ and ‘pro-poor’ Achutanandan becoming Kerala CM was short-lived and dreams of Dalits in Kerala for better life were brutally shattered as the Chengara struggle plainly laid bare the true nature of Achutanandan, as well as the innate anti-subaltern/ Dalit nature of the Communist party. On July 4, 2007, around 300 activists of a Dalit organization Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi (SVSV) encroached 6,000 acres of land owned by Harrison Malayalam Plantation Ltd. The land had been taken on lease by Harrison Ltd. for 99 years from Chengannur Mundankavu Vanjipuzha Matom. On expiry of the lease period, the Matom INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

had issued eviction notice to the company. The agitating Dalits, led by SVSV, are demanding the Kerala government to confiscate the land, now illegally held by Harrison, and distribute it among the landless. The struggle began by setting up around 100 plastic huts by the agitators, in the estate, battling poor sanitation facilities and scarce availability of drinking water. Despite the poor media coverage, soon, a huge number of landless people from south and central Kerala gathered at Chengara, demanding lands for cultivation. There are now 20,000 people who have built their hut at Chengara estate and have joined in the protest. Who are these ‘people’ stepping in the Chengara protest, paying no heed to the adverse conditions under which the struggle is taking place? Almost 80 per cent of them belong to Dalit, Dalit Christian communities, including pulayas, parayas and kuravas. People from all other communities (except Brahmins) as well as Muslims and Christians, constitute the rest. For the last few generations, these people were living in 3, 5 or 10 cent of lands in various colonies or on the roadsides, from where they could be evacuated at any moment. It was this awful living conditions, entirely neglected in the contemporary neo-liberal celebrations about Kerala, that has made these people, including women, children Feb - Mar 2009

and the aged, to enter the site of the land struggle and become ‘violators’ of the law. It is also a telling statement on how the much-touted land reforms of Kerala had bypassed the real proletariats – Dalits and Adivasis. The land reforms in Kerala, initiated on December 8, 1957, by the first communist government in Kerala and ‘completed’ on January 1, 1970, with the official abolition of feudalism, had given land-ownership only to the non-Dalit tenants who were middlemen between the landlords and the labourers. Dalits, at the bottom of the caste structure, were given the rights only for habitation, and were driven to margins. Sixty five per cent of the land available for redistribution was declared as cash-crop farms and was excluded from the ambit of land reforms. Moreover, the frequent modifications introduced in the land reform Bill made sure that the feudal land ownerships smoothly transform to capitalist land ownerships. The first land reform bill, introduced in 1957, stated clearly that 50 per cent of the excess land should go to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. However, a study by Dr P Sivanandan indicates that only 30 per cent of the land was given to them. As a result, according to official records, almost 85 per cent of the Kerala’s SC & ST population lives in 12,500 ‘Harijan’ colonies, 4,082 ‘Adivasi’ colonies and on the roadsides. Apart from the faulty land reforms, another major reason for the ongoing Chengara land struggle is the issue of (internal) migration large-scale internal migration, mostly by ‘upper’ caste Christians, to areas like Wayanad, Idukki and Attappadi happened between 1940s and 70s. In 1956, the satyagraha led by, the then prominent Left leader, A K Gopalan and some major interventions by Fr Vadakkan, legalized these internal migrations. Feb - Mar 2009

Kerala CM VS Achutanandan

Then, Mathew Maniangadan Committee recommended these upper-caste migrants to be given permanent ownership of the land they had encroached, completely neglecting its consequences like deforestation and the large scale uprooting of Adivasis. Instead of introspecting about the failed land reforms and correcting the historical wrongs, the present communist government and its cronies are indulging in vicious propaganda to discredit the whole Dalit led land struggle. One of the main propagandas, against the protestors, carried out by the mouthpieces of the ruling Communist Party is that they own 3, 5 or 10 cent of lands and houses provided under People’s Planning Program. When Dalits argued that this is not the land ownership but just the right to habitation, these Left media gave a very castiest argument that Dalits cannot have land ownerships outside the Harijan colonies/ghettoes. And of course, some of the leaders in this struggle own small pieces of land. But if Achutanandan considers this as a disqualification for them to support the struggle by the landless, then he must also denounce those who supported the land reforms, including Mr. A. K. Gopalan. INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

The agitators at Chengara are carrying the photos of Ayyankali and Dr. Ambedkar. In another words, they are openly rejecting the myth of ‘patronage’ that dominant Communist parties like CPI (M) have always been imposing on Dalits and Adivasis. It is the racist desire to bring back the struggles like Chengara under the Communist Party’s patronage that has made V S Achutanandan to denounce the Chengara land struggle. For them, Dalits coming together to fight for their rights, without under communist leadership, is simply unimaginable and they are also aware of their own history of existence. The land reform movements, calling for a fundamental change in the land ownership, had a significant role to play in transforming Kerala into a political society. In 1906, when Indian National Congress began its operations in Malabar (now North Kerala), there existed a powerful tenancy system that benefited the rich agriculturists. The Congress movement declined to address this tenancy system but the dissident Congress Socialist Party, out of which the present Communist Party was born, took up the issue. The agricultural labourers’ movements in Malabar played a major role in helping the Communist Party grow as a major force in the region. During this period, one of the greatest Dalit leaders, Ayyankali was leading a movement, before the Raja of Sreemoolam as well as in the public, demanding ownership of land for Dalits. At the same time, another great Dalit leader Poyikayil Appachan was demanding that the Dalits be given five acres of land and monetary support for undertaking agricultural production. At the time of Land Reforms Bill, the Kerala economy relied heavily on the cultivation of cash crops. Hence, the argument that the

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cash crop farms had to be kept out of the purview of the Bill, in order also to prevent any development that would adversely affect the agricultural labourers, could be justified. But the situation has changed now. The cultivation of all cash crops, other than rubber, has now become unprofitable. The government can import any cash crops at much cheaper rates. The agricultural labourers have become jobless as the cash crop farms are being closed down. As per the agreement between the state and the central government,

in 1964, the statutory rationing system was introduced keeping in view the export of cash crops. But now, since around 67 per cent of the population in Kerala falls ‘Above Poverty Line’ (APL), the food distribution system of the centre has stagnated. Under these conditions, the lack of political will to bring the estates under the purview of land ownership reforms smacks of a conspiracy to protect the interests of the land mafia. (The estate at Cheruvally, which was given to Harrisons Malayalam Ltd on lease, was sold to K P Yohannan, an associate of the company, for Rs 325

crores. The same company also owes Rs 500 crores as it has failed to pay the lease amount since last many years.) When possibilities of collective action declined and when autocracy gained strength in old Soviet Russia, Vladimir Mayakovky had chosen the path of suicide to expose the tyrannical rule of Stalin. Today, the denial of justice from the neo-czarists, who rule the present Kerala, stand exposed and the protestors at Chengara, including women, children and the aged, threaten to commit suicide unless justice is delivered Ÿ

Struggle for a New Kerala Excerpts from the speech made by leading Dalit activist Sunny M. Kapikkad, at a night-vigil organized in support of the ongoing Chengara land struggle in Thiruvananthapuram on 7 March 2008. The speech has been translated into English and posted on http://kafila.org by J. Devika. by Sunny M. Kapikkad

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he ongoing struggle at Chengara is undoubtedly one of the major land struggles in Kerala's history. Ten years back, such a struggle would have been unthinkable. Ten years back we all thought that there was no scope for another land struggle in Kerala, that there was no land to be redistributed in Kerala. Even social activists thought that all the land that could have been legitimately redistributed had been exhausted. It was the Adivasi land struggle in 2001 that revealed to us that this notion was false and that there is arable land in Kerala that may be redistributed. During that struggle, for whole

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of forty-eight days, the Adivasis laid siege here, in front of the Secretariat where we have now gathered, and in front of the Chief Ministers' House. Political leaders of both the ruling and opposition parties were united in opposing the Adivasi struggle. They proclaimed that Adivasi leader C K Janu and her group were being propped up by funds from abroad! It is only natural that a political party thought that way. The parties may have assets worth crores, but they lack the ethical will to support 500 people for 48 days in this city. As someone who had actively participated in that struggle, I can tell INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

you that it was the Dalit colonies in Thiruvananthapuram city that made it possible for the struggle to survive for so long. It was from these Dalit colonies that sacks of rice used to arrive at the cooking shed here. A jeep used to go around for that purpose and each Dalit house would contribute handfuls of rice to make sacks full. I am saying this because the Kerala politicians were proclaiming that the struggle was supported by foreign hand! It was this struggle that taught the people of Kerala that arable land was indeed available for redistribution. It is in the context of this struggle that landless people of other communities entered the land struggle at Chengara. However, the majority of such people happen to be Dalits and Adivasis. It is something that needs to be examined historically. It is not enough to understand Chengara struggle as merely a struggle for land by the landless people. However may we idealize the Kerala land reforms, it has been proved beyond doubt that they failed Feb - Mar 2009

to distribute lands to some social groups in Kerala. The crux of the land reforms that were put forward by the government in 1957, which were implemented on 1 January 1970, was the fixing of ceilings on the amount of land that a family could possess, and the promise Photo By Ajilal that surplus land would be taken over by the government and redistributed among the landless. However, the plantation sector was exempted from land ceilings. Once the plantation sector was exempted, all that was left for redistribution were some paddy lands towards the west, some lands in the midland areas, and some fallow fields that belonged to the Nilambur royal house. Moreover, the land reforms actually gave full ownership rights to tenant cultivators only. The Dalits and the Adivasis, who could never even become a tenant within Kerala's traditional caste system, did not benefited at all from much-touted Kerala land reforms. The fact is that millions of Dalits and Adivasis in Kerala had to live outside the ambit of land reform laws. Many frauds were also perpetrated as part of the implementation of the land reforms. In 1968, the government had estimated that some 8,75,000 acres of surplus land would be available for redistribution. However, till date, the government has been able to acquire just 1,24,000 acres. The rest has all been usurped through underhand practices. Trusts had been exempted from ceilings. Overnight, hundreds of Feb - Mar 2009

trusts were formed in Kerala. Through creating trusts and registering deeds in false names and other ways, all this land was spirited away. Out of the roughly 1,25,000 acres acquired only 96,000 was redistributed and the Dalits, the Adivasis, and the coastal

A Graffiti at Chengara

people, did not gain anything, not even a cent. These are now the people who have become the focal point in the struggle like Chengara. It is the Dalits and the Adivasis who, historically, have been excluded from land reforms, that have come forward with claims upon land today. We need to take very seriously the fact that even though this section of society has waged a struggle since the past seven months and a half, the democratic government in Kerala has not bothered to invite them for talks. Land has always been a major issue in Kerala. If there were a dispute over title deeds in the hilly areas of Kerala into which migration has taken place from the plains, both the ruling party and the opposition would surely pitch in heavily. It would grow into a fiery issue. Why is it, then, in this 'politically-enlightened' Kerala that the powerful lack the democratic ethics towards responding to Chengara struggle waged by landless INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

people from particular social groups? Here we need to see deeper. In a particular part of Kozhikode district, around 200 families have occupied some land, and have been staying there. The High Court of Kerala ordered their eviction in clear term; instead, Kerala government stepped forward to protect their right to stay through a special order. There's something in this. These people have occupied land under orders from a certain church in Pala and belong to different socioe c o n o m i c background. Neither the LDF nor the UDF have any problems about offering them protection. But the very same ruling class would never respond justly in case of Dalits, Adivasis claiming their rights. Our second experience of state's response towards Dalit and Adivasi rights comes from Muthanga. In 2001, the then Chief Minister, A.K. Antony had signed an agreement with the struggling Adivasis that land would be distributed to them, and that the constitutional provision for Adivasi self-government would be recommended. However, in 2003, when the Adivasis started agitating for the implementation of the very same agreement, this Chief Minister deployed thousands of policemen against them, leading to the police firing on Adivasis, never caring to find out why the struggle had been re-kindled. Four days before the firing, all the four major political parties held a joint protest in Wayanad district demanding the

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eviction of Adivasis from Muthanga. Now it is very clear for us that this enlightened Kerala, this Kerala which is considered the very home of political alertness, has a legacy of turning away from the legitimate demands of Dalits and Adivasis. Recently the members of the Chengara Land Struggle Solidarity Committee (CLSSC) met the Kerala Chief Minister, Convener of the Left Democratic Front and the CPM State Secretary with the demand that the government should redistribute land to the struggling families and bring their struggle to an end. I was a member of that group. All the three people told us that ours is not a genuine struggle but illegal land grab. They said, "We have plans to give land to the landless and we will indeed give. But we will not countenance your struggle; we will not accept it". This is a very important statement for us to ponder over. Through their land struggles, the Dalits and Adivasis are trying to create a dialogue with the Kerala government and are trying to exercise collective social agency, within a democratic society. But the government is telling us that, "You aren't social agents. We are here to do all these things, and we will do them. This is illegal struggle". Kerala government is saying that we have to be evicted because the occupation of Chengara estate's land is illegal. In that case, Harrison Malayalam must figure above us. It has not paid a pie as rent on the Chengara Estate since 1994. And so, the lease agreement is invalid now. The government, which ought to use the strong evidence against Harrison to take back the estate, is accusing us of illegal occupation! The same company sold 3500 acres of leased land held by it in the Cheruvally estate at Kottayam to an individual for 126 crores; it has sublet leased land at an estate in Thrissur.

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The great Marxist leader EMS Nambutiripad, who owned tens of thousands of acres of land, could speak for the landless but his followers could not accept a Dalit, Laha Gopalan, who owns one and a half acres, to do so The government's own enquiry commission discovered that Harrison had amassed crores this way. Yet the government's ire is not against such persistent law-breakers, but against the struggling landless poor. The other day, Mr Balan (SC/ ST affairs Minister, Kerala) said that we should not occupy the land as part of political action. These people ought to realize that India itself was born out of massive civil disobedience. It can happen only that way and that is how history is. I do not claim that we are not breaking the law. We are indeed the law-breakers. But he very conveniently forgot that he represents a movement (communist) that was born out of the successive waves of law breaking initiated by many different groups of people in Kerala in their fight for rights. Another accusation against the protestors is that these struggling folks are actually landowners. Laha Gopalan, the President of the Sadhujana Vimochana Samyukata Vedi, has land, they say. Laha is leading the struggle of landless Dalits and others. He is not trying to communicate his domestic wants and lacks to the government. The great Marxist leader EMS Nambutiripad, who owned tens of thousands of acres of land, could speak for the landless but his followers could not accept a Dalit, Laha Gopalan, who owns one and a half acres, to do so. This is what I call the Dalit issue. Finally the government now says that it will give land only to the Adivasi. This is a strange defense, indeed. In 2001, when the Adivasis were protesting on the streets of this city for full 48 days, all these politicians said that they wouldn't be INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

given land. Seven years hence, when all the landless - Dalits, Dalit Christians, Muslims, and all others joined together to struggle for land, these politicians now say that only the Adivasis need land. This move is a well-planned one. By ignoring the demands of other landless groups and trying to pit against the Adivasi claims, the ruling class is trying to scatter the political action that is building up at Chengara. But someday the government will have to concede; it will have to accept the claims of these landless groups also. Today we need such pressure that will force the government to deal with the issue democratically, to redistribute land to the landless without causing any loss of life. That is the only way this struggle can succeed. But today no such pressure exists. Kerala failed to react to the terrible state violence at Moolampally. Now in Chengara where thousands of people are on the brink of self-sacrifice Kerala is looking away. It is hard to be proud of this Kerala. We need to see Chengara as a struggle for a new Kerala, one that dismantles the old. This new Kerala would be one in which the social agency of all marginalized groups including Dalits and Adivasis are recognized. A major task has been initiated at Chengara, one that exceeds the amount of land the occupants get. Our actions in solidarity need to be attentive to this fact. I end my words, with the plea that we need to think of the various forms of activism possible, and that individuals and organizations should take them forwardŸ Feb - Mar 2009

Caste Discrimination in IIT Delhi

IITs: Doing Manu Proud The dismal representation of SC/ST students in IITs demands some serious questioning from all who believe in equal opportunities and social justice. Even after 40 years of their existence, most of the IITs have also singularly failed to recruit faculties from these communities. On the top of it, there are various instances that indicate towards the prevalence of caste-based harassment of Dalit students. Recently IIT Delhi was in news due to the termination of 12 Dalit students together with the allegations of caste-based discrimination. In the wake of this incident, the author here has tried to map the experiences of Dalit students within IIT Delhi structure.

by Anoop Kumar

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n May 2008, 12 Dalit students (11 SC & 1 ST) were terminated by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, citing their 'low academic performance'. Eleven of these students were from the first two years of their undergraduate courses. After receiving the termination letter, some of these students filed a petition in the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes (NCSC), alleging caste-based harassment in IIT Delhi and demanded annulment of their terminations. According to the students, many IIT Delhi faculty members harbour deep prejudices against students admitted through reservations and they receive very poor grading despite performing well in the exams. The NCSC immediately summoned the Director of IIT Delhi, and asked him to investigate into these allegations and also to review the terminations. Later, in July first week, the IIT administration submitted a one-page report to the NCSC stating that, it has decided to revoke the expulsion of 2 Dalit students by giving some relaxations in their grade requirements. It also informed the Feb - Mar 2009

NCSC, about the IIT review committee, constituted in response to the summon issued by the NCSC, to inquire about the prevalence of castebased discrimination. The report further stated that 'no case of caste discrimination was brought out by the students in their meeting with the Review Committee'. The last paragraph of the report reiterated that , “'IIT Delhi is very sensitive to the special needs of SC/ST students and faculty members spare no efforts in helping them, and indeed all weak students, to come up to our higher academic standards". However, the Dalit students countered this report by claiming that the members of IIT review committee did not entertain issue of caste discrimination at all. The members only inquired about their academic performances and refused to take up questions related to the caste discrimination. Later, the Dalit students took out two rallies, demanding the re-admission of remaining 10 Dalit students and also sent their representations to the HRD ministry. As a last resort, some of these students also filed a case against IIT in Delhi High Court. INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

In the first week of this year, after six months of their continuous struggle against one of the country's most powerful institutions, finally there was some good news. The court passed an interim order for readmission of the six Dalit students and one more Dalit students was readmitted by IIT administration itself in the same week. As for now, nine Dalit students have been readmitted in IIT Delhi.

IITs and SC/ST Students Every year, all the seven IITs jointly conduct an entrance exam, considered to be one of the toughest, to select candidates from all over the country and offer around 5500 seats for its various undergraduate (B. Tech and Integrated M. Tech) courses. IITs are autonomous institutions under Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) and are completely funded by the Government of India. The IITs provide 22.5 % reservation for SC/ST students as per the constitutional norms. However, many reports suggest that, close to half of the total seats reserved for SCs and STs remain vacant and that of those admitted, a

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significant proportion, perhaps up to 25 %, is obliged to drop out. (The IIT Story: Issues and Concerns', Frontline, Vol. 20-Issue 03, Feb 01-14, 2003). Now, if we do some simple calculations, we can very easily conclude that the SC/ST community, on average, looses about 773 undergraduate seats out of the total 1237 seats reserved for them every year, due to both, unfilled seats at the time of admission and subsequent drop outs. This amounts to a massive loss of 62 %, every year, of the total allotted seats for the SC/ST students. Except IIT Guwahati (founded in 1994) and IIT Roorkee (included as IIT in 2001), all the other 5 IITs are at least 45 years old. I would like my readers to just imagine the magnitude of the loss suffered by the SC/ ST community in all these years and also to critically analyze the impact of such losses for the communities, that has been suffering the inhuman exclusion in every sphere of their life and whose only life line has been the provision of reservations in education and in government jobs. Therefore it becomes utmost important for us to ponder over why even today, about half of the seats for SC/ST students remain unfilled in the IITs at the entrance level and the reasons for such a high dropout rate. To many, the obvious answers, for both the phenomenon, will be that the SC/ST students are 'weak in studies'. It means that, on an average, the SC/ ST student cannot compete with general category students, both in the entrance exam as well as during his/her stay at IIT. Before probing into the 'weakness' of SC/ST students, I would like to point out that:–

• The cut-off marks at IIT entrance exam as well as passing marks in particular subjects in IITs are not fixed.

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• The cut-off marks for SC/ST

students in IIT entrance exams, in any year, are normally 10 % less than the general category cut-off in that year.

• The IITs follow relative grading in course work. There is no fixed minimum passing marks. Even if any IIT student has scored 60 % in any particular subject, there are chances that he/she might be declared failed, if the average score of other students is slightly higher. Or he/she might not be failed, as there are no fixed passing marks. To pass students, who have scored less than the average, becomes the prerogative of individual faculty members. I came to know about the termination of 12 Dalit students from IIT Delhi in the second week of June. While interacting with these students and listening to their stories, I became aware of how the IIT administration deals with the Dalit students. To have a better understanding, I decided to interact with more Dalit students from IIT Delhi as well as some of its exstudents. While interacting with IIT Delhi's terminated Dalit students, three questions came to my mind. • Were these students 'weak' in studies and were not able to cope up with the rigorous studies in IIT Delhi? • Or/ and did they just didn't apply themselves and study hard? • Or were there other factors

involved that might be beyond these students? The truth that emerges out is shocking, to say the least. Dalit students who are admitted in IITs are marked as 'weak' and 'nonmeritorious' from the very beginning and their stay in IITs are made as painful as possible. Such behaviour has been institutionalized and has been perfected into a fine art by many faculty members. According to the IIT INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

administration, all SC/ST students entering into the IITs are 'weak', as they come through reservations (just refer again to the last paragraph of IIT review committee report, mentioned at the beginning of the present article, that correctly reflects the IIT administration's assumption towards the SC/ST students). Therefore many IIT faculties take it as their pristine duty, both in the class and outside, to constantly remind the students of the fact that 'all general category students are meritorious whereas SC/ST students don't deserve to be in IIT'. However, the truth is that most of the Dalit students, entering into the IITs, are often toppers of their respective schools. They are, mostly, second generation literate and hail from lower-middle class, rural or semiurban backgrounds with non-English medium schooling. In comparison, the general category students are invariably from upper-middle class, urban, upper-caste, and from English medium schools. Not only are there marked differences in the backgrounds of the students from these two categories but also their routes to IITs differ immensely. And I would like to argue that this is where the 'merit' is constructed.

Construction of 'Merit' via coaching centres A recent study conducted by ASSOCHAM reveals that private coaching centres, that train students to crack the entrance exams for the admission in IITs and other prestigious engineering colleges, mint Rs.100 billion ($2.30 billion) a year - an amount that can fund 30 to 40 new IITs (IIT coaching classes, a Rs 10K crore Industry? The Times of India, 3rd July 2008). In fact, the city of Kota in Rajasthan, which boasts of the best coaching centres in India, is flocked by aspiring IIT candidates from all over the country. One particular coaching centre in Kota, in Feb - Mar 2009

fact, claims publicly, through its advertisement, that 1 out of every 4 IITians is their 'product'. As we all know, these coaching centres are not cheap at all. On an average, a student spends more than Rs. 1 lakh for 8 month coaching during his/her preparation for IIT entrance exam. As a response to the impact of the coaching industry and the undue advantage that it gives to their students, IIT has recently made changes in their admission procedure by fixing the number of attempts for IIT aspirants and has done some modification in the examination pattern as well. However, these cosmetic changes have not been able to restrict the number of students flocking to the coaching centres. Now, the question is, who are those students who flock to these coaching centres to crack the tough IIT entrance exams? The answer is not that difficult if one interacts with the IIT students. The majority of the Dalit students have cleared the IIT JEE exam, through self-study or by taking private tuitions, as they were not in the position to pay huge fees for the coaching centres. In comparison, it is very rare to find a general category student, who had not studied in one or the other big coaching centres. Due to which, the general category students are much better equipped for IIT JEE exams and this reflects in the merit list of the general category, which has higher cut-off marks than SC/ST list. Still, many SC/ST candidates are able to score higher and reach to the general category list. However, the lower cut-off marks for SC/ST students, becomes the first indicator towards the assumption of 'SC/ST students are weak'. There is not even a single voice in our civil society or in the media, which opposes the coaching centres and the undue advantage they provide to the rich, urban, upper-caste Feb - Mar 2009

students in comparison with those who, without money, are left to do self- preparation. The IIT JEE exam is one of the toughest exams. Why? 'To attract the best minds in India' is the stock reply. If this is so, then what are these coaching centres, with Rs.100 billion annual turnovers, doing? They are, in fact, manufacturing 'best minds' from those who have deep pockets in this country and are aiding in the unequal competition between students from different backgrounds. However, nobody wants to acknowledge this fact, as these coaching centres are boon for 'upper' caste families, for they help them in their claim of being 'meritorious'.

Manufacturing ‘weak’ students as English language becomes another marker of ‘Merit’ Majority of the Dalit students, entering into the IITs, are from the non-English medium schools, whereas the medium of instruction in IITs is English. Once admitted, these students find it very difficult to follow the classes taught in English, which results in their low performance in initial years, as compared to other students. Since all the SC/ST students, on being admitted in IITs, are already marked as 'weak', the initial low performance of non-English medium Dalit students feeds into this stereotyping and they easily become the poster boys of 'quota students' in the highly prejudiced IIT campus. A few Dalit students, who are from relatively better backgrounds (read English medium) are able to escape such ignominy, getting an opportunity to pass off as a general category student, leaving behind these hapless students to suffer the punishment of being 'quota' students. Instead of acknowledging the difference in background and the problem of medium of instruction, the INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

IIT faculty members, due to their castiest prejudices, quickly brand these students as 'undeserving', 'not up to the mark' and 'forced into the IITs through reservation'. Rather than supporting students to cope up with English and gradually come at par with the other students, they are hostile or at best indifferent to their plight. On the pretext of their low performance in IIT, many faculty members humiliate and demoralize these Dalit students, by making remarks on their academic capabilities implying, "since you don't deserve to be here, now you suffer". It is their way of retaliating to the reservation provisions, and since they cannot stop these students from entering into the IITs, they try to punish these students for that 'crime'. To counter reservation provisions, there is a strong urge to prove that Dalit students are weak, and what better way to do it than targeting those who are already little handicapped in the IIT environment! The rigorous IIT schedule from the day one does not make things easier for these Dalit students either. By the time they are in a position to cope up with the IIT culture and rigours, they are already under heavy backlog of many courses and find themselves on the verge of being terminated, due to their 'low academic performances'. Many of these students, drop out, by the end of their 1st or 2nd year, and those who some how pass, barely manage to get their degrees in stipulated 4 years. They take another 1-2 years to get their B. Tech degree, their stay being further marked by demoralization, stigma and huge alienation. More than 90 % of the children in India, those who are fortunate enough to pass 10th std., do their schooling in Hindi or other regional languages as their medium of instruction. Yet IITs, that claim to be the institutes of 'national' importance

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and teach in English, have failed to develop a proper mechanism to counter the problems faced by these students, once admitted in IITs. Is it due to the incompetence of the IITs or they are simply not bothered, as they might believe that the 'best minds fit for IITs' can only be found in urban, English-educated, upper caste students? I believe both reasons to be true besides it gives them a big stick to beat the reserve category students with. Engineering colleges in India have copied their entire syllabi from the knowledge produced in the west. The faculty members teach from the western texts and techniques, which they had learnt from there in the 196070s. The academic research and development of syllabi is in such a sorry state in this country, that there is hardly any innovation in teaching, both in texts and techniques. Many IIT professors teach in the class, through their old notes (known as kharra in Hindi slang), promoting only rote learning and discouraging any discussions in the class. Apart from their incompetence, IIT faculty members are also not interested in developing any mechanism to resolve the question of language, as it does not affect their caste and class interest. The knowledge of English gives them the sense of superiority vis-à-vis the lower caste, which they don't want to lose at any cost. Like Sanskrit earlier, now English has become the marker of their 'merit' and 'knowledge'. If IITs remained true to their real objectives of promoting research and development in sciences and technology for the country, it could never have afforded to create an environment that promotes rote learning and found the 'best brains' in a very small segment of the country, branding others as 'merit-less' and 'incompetent' Ÿ

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Experiences of Dalit Students in IIT Delhi I interviewed about 20 Dalit students from IIT Delhi to document their campus experiences and to understand the nature and extant of prevalence of caste discrimination in the campus. Interacting with them had been a great learning experience for me as I had to spent lot of time with each of them to break the ice. Initially, most of these Dalit students stated their ignorance about prevalence of caste discrimination in the campus and were reluctant to talk on caste, but after some rapport building between us, they were very forthcoming about their experiences. I have compiled some of their experiences below without revealing their identity. There are many narratives, which I could not include as the nature of the incidents might clearly betray the student's identity, even if I do not reveal their names. Needless to say, these incidents were much more overt in nature. - Author Student No. 1 (Final Year B. Tech) Professors in IITs are undoubtedly better than the rest in the country, but there are some who need to be corrected, who believe that all SC/ ST students are weak in studies and all weak students have to be SC/ STs. In my first semester, the Physics professor was taking my viva and I was not able to answer, on which she became very annoyed and asked me, "Are you from quota?" I said, "No." Then she explained, "Quota means SC/ST." I again answered, "No." She was asking the same question to the general category students, if they were not able to answer in the viva. Throughout her classes, I had the fear that she would do something wrong in my grading. So, I was quite nervous and never went to her for any help or to clarify my doubts. Student No. 2 (IInd Year, B. Tech) I was doing a course in Biotech department. Due to my illness, I didn't appear for one of the exams in that course. There is a rule that if the student has not appeared due to medical reason, he/she is allowed to sit for the re-exam, after submitting the medical certificate. When I asked for my re-examination, the professor immediately replied, “You come through reservations in IIT and then don't even sit for exams.” INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

I could not say anything because here students don't speak anything before the professors as our fate lies ultimately in their hands. They may fail us if they wish. However, I kept on requesting for reexamination. Later, he agreed but I was failed in that exam. Student No. 3 (IInd Year, B. Tech) Last year, I was attending a course and by then, I was already in the Students Review Committee list. When one of my professors got the list, she told me, "SC/ST students are very poor and if I ask something from you, I don't think you will be able to answer that". When I protested on her statement, she said, "Oh! So you want to fight with me!" After that she became very hostile to me. Whenever I went for some clarification, she used to get angry and rebuke me for not being able to understand 'simple' English and always made very discouraging comments like, "Are you always sleeping in the class? Why did you join IIT if you don't know English?" However, unlike other students, I persisted in meeting her, as I needed continued support. One day, she got very angry and told me, "I think you are mad. You should get medical check-up." Feb - Mar 2009

Then I realized that it was getting tough to cope up with her. I called my father and then both of us went and met the professor. She was very rude to both of us and told my father that there was something wrong with me and I must consult a doctor. My father tried to talk to her but in vain. The professor did not budge from her point that I am mad. At the end, I failed in the subject. I paid the price of asserting myself and asking guidance from the professor. Student No. 4 (IIIrd Year, B. Tech) Standing Review Committee (SRC) is supposed to monitor the student's performance and help them to improve. But, in practice, it does nothing. In its meetings, the members are least interested in listening to student's problems. Normally, only your past examination marks are asked and then you are grilled / ragged for that therefore not many students willingly attend the

meetings. Before the SRC meeting, we are supposed to fill a form stating our problems. In the meeting, one of the professors sits with all the records, and briefs other faculty members about the concerned student. In one such meeting, I filled up the form where I mentioned all my problems. When I went inside, one professor showed my records to the two neighbouring professors and said in a hushed tone, "SC student". Then one of the professors said, "Ok, let him go". Student No. 5 (IIIrd Year, B. Tech) Here in IIT, we cannot form any group. One of my Dalit seniors tried to contact IIT administration to organize an orientation programme for SC/ST freshers. Immediately, a letter was sent to his parents stating that, "your son is involved in politics". Pravin Togadia and Ashok

Singhal can come and speak in the IIT hostel (they came in the tenure of the previous IIT Director) but the students cannot organize Dr. Ambedkar Jayanti in the campus. Since the last few years, the SC/ST Employees Association is organizing Dr. Ambedkar Jayanti, but when Dalit students tried to organize, they faced stiff resistance from the IIT administration and were categorically asked the rationale for celebrating Dr. Ambedkar's birthday in IIT campus! One funny incident that reflects the prejudices and ignorance of IIT faculties happened few years back. On Dr. Ambedkar Jayanti, the SC/ST Employees Association invited IIT Director as the chief guest. When asked to speak, he just said one sentence, "In IIT, there is no caste discrimination" and went back to his seat!

Institutional Mechanisms at IIT Delhi If the Dalit students admitted in IITs, through Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), are so ‘weak’ that it results in such a high dropout rate, has the IIT Delhi administration devised any mechanism to support these students to come at par with others? Let us examine: English Remedial Classes - In the first semester, IIT Delhi offers one course in English language for students coming from non-English medium schools. It is of 3 credits and 10+2 level English grammar is taught in this course. It usually has 1-2 classes per week, totaling about 1820 classes in that semester. IIT Delhi, with all its innocence, expects these students to become proficient in English, and come at par with other students having at least 10-14 years of English medium schooling, by attending those 18-20 classes, spread in less than 6 months. The interviews with students revealed the nonseriousness of such ‘ambitious’ Feb - Mar 2009

efforts. Students regard this course as absolutely ineffective, as the teacher concentrates only on the English grammar, which anyways they have studied in the schools. The students allege, that, even this is not taught seriously. The students just try to secure passing marks in this course so as to get the credits. According to the students, major problems that engulf the first year undergraduate non-English medium students are, their inability to comprehend the textbooks in English, unfamiliarity with the science-terms in English, together INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

with the accent of the faculty members. From the point of view of the students, it is clear that, what is important for them, here, is the ‘language’ of science and not English grammar per se and its remedy is not, just one course of XII std English grammar. The remedy lies in individual faculty members identifying students and supporting them, by giving some extra time and promoting an atmosphere, where the students feel confident to interact about their language problems. But the most important is, not to treat such students as ‘weak’ and victimize them.

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However, given the level of studentfaculty interaction in IIT Delhi (it is one sided), insincerity and incompetence of IIT faculty members, asking for this is really a very tall order. SC/ST Cell - Under UGC guidelines, most of the Indian universities and colleges in the country have a special SC/ST cell to monitor the implementation of reservation as well as to redress the grievances of the SC/ST students. But IIT Delhi has probably never heard of it or they have given themselves the clean chit of being a caste discrimination-free campus! Hence, it has no such mechanism and the SC/ST students have no space, where they can share and interact with the administration on their specific problems. Given the tendencies of IIT faculty, to hurl castiest abuses and indulge in discriminatory gradings, such mechanisms are absolutely necessary. Course Adviser -According to the IIT prospectus (page 17), “A number of measures exist for helping students belonging to SC and ST categories. A senior faculty member is appointed as adviser to SC/ST students for advising them on academic and non-academic matters.” However, the truth is that not even a single Dalit student was able to tell the name of the Professor, who was supposed to look after the problems of SC/ST students. The students were aware of this provision but never came across any information or notice regarding it, ever. In the academic complex, there is no trace of any SC/ST students’ advisor office or even a notice board. Standing Review Committee-This committee consists of some faculty members, including the Dean for Under-Graduate students, and is supposed to identify students with weak performances so as to guide/ support them for their improvement. However, one would hear horrifying

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stories of how, in SRC, instead of patiently dealing with the student’s problems, the faculties literally rag them and create an atmosphere where the student feels, in the words of one Dalit student, ‘like a criminal in front of the police officials’. Getting one’s name in the SRC becomes another marker of being a ‘weak’ student. The list is sent to the faculty members and that information is used by many of them to humiliate the Dalit students, as then it is ‘officially proved’ that these students are ‘undeserving’ and ‘not fit for the IITs’. Counselling Service- IIT Delhi runs a Student Counselling Service under the aegis of Board for Student Welfare. This was created for ‘assisting students in sorting out their difficulties and dilemmas in an environment where they can talk freely and in confidence about any matter which is troubling them.’ (IIT Delhi prospectus). The staff includes psychologists, a psychiatric, and is also drawn from faculty and student volunteers. Many IIT faculties believe, this student counselling service to be the panacea for all ills. So, if a student is facing some difficulty in the course, the professor would suggest, “to visit the counsellor and get your mind checked”. During the interaction, the Dalit students gave mixed reactions on the efficacy of the counselling services. Many of them were of the opinion, that, they visited the counsellor for the problems that were purely academic in nature and hoped that these were conveyed to the concerned faculty members. However, all the students were unanimous in its ineffectiveness in dealing with the caste problem. More over, the counsellor also treated them as ‘weak’ students, as one incident narrated by an ex-student would reveal. In 2002, when this student went to the counsellor with his INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

problems, he was categorically told, that, he was having such problems due to his reserved category background and would never able to cope up with the IIT atmosphere! SC/ST faculty -Since IITs are ‘institutes of national importance’ (as defined by the Indian Parliament), they have been exempted from the provisions of SC/ST reservations in faculty recruitments. None of the IIT Delhi Dalit students were able to name even a single faculty member from these two communities, which together constitutes one fourth of the Indian population. However, later, we were able to identify one SC professor, who had retired 6 years back. It is indeed shocking that, in more than 45 years of its existence, the IIT Delhi has failed to recruit more than one faculty member from the marginalized background. This itself is a testimony of the type of exclusion practiced by the IITs. Orientation Programs - It is a common practice in most of worldrenowned educational institutions to organize specially designed orientation programs for students coming from non-mainstream background (like ethnic or racial minorities) to ease the transition of such students from schools to college/university. This is done in order to acclimatize these students with the campus environment and to deal with the problems that might occur due to their ‘lack’ of ‘cultural capital’. Since early 60’s, most US universities and top institutions run special orientation programs for both blacks and women. Some of these efforts are intense and extensive, lasting up to six weeks. The goal of all of these programmes is to ease these students’ transition to college life, to familiarize the student with his or her new surroundings, and to introduce these students to other students who will have similar Feb - Mar 2009

adjustment experiences. However, it is to be noted that these programs are not organized to make these students to ‘come at par’ with others. Their background is no indicator of their ‘weakness’ but might point towards little lack of exposure. Coming from a different background, Dalit students could benefit immensely from such programs. It would help Dalit students to understand the IIT structure and provide them the confidence in IIT administration. There are hundreds of studies available that had proven the efficacy of such programmes for students from marginalized communities. However, there is no such program in IIT Delhi for SC/ST students at any point of their stay, not even at the time of their admission.

Support Systems-The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) , USA, on which IITs are said to have been modeled, have plethora of recognized student bodies for different minorities (for example, a very strong Black Students’ Union) and run various programmes that provide the much needed space for these students to interact with each other, to articulate their problems and to negotiate with the MIT administration. However, IITs believe that there are only two types of students – general category and ‘weak and thus undeserving’ students. Hence, they copied every thing from MIT but forgot to replicate the democratic institutional spaces provided by MIT to the students from different backgrounds. IIT Delhi does not allow the

formation of any students’ groups in the campus, other than those that are run by the administration itself for ‘extra-curricular’ activities. In the past, some of the Dalit students tried to organize themselves informally, but were unsuccessful. Studies on the problems faced by SC/ ST students-It is interesting to note that, despite the heavy dropout rate of 25 % for the Dalit students, IITs have never bothered to carry out even a single systematic study of the problems faced by the Dalit students. One look at the website of MIT will tell you, about the number of studies, by the institute, on the problems faced by the women and the African Americans students and the measures taken by them to increase their representation, especially in sciences Ÿ

“I knew I was stigmatized” Rakesh Bawani did his B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi, MA in International Relations, M. Phil in Sociology from JNU, New Delhi and currently pursuing his PhD in Anthropology at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA. Here, he narrates his experience of IIT Delhi. During my first year, I was attending one Chemistry class in which some students tried to bunk through the back door. However, one of them (with surname Srivastava) got caught. The professor got very angry and started scolding him and asked the names of other students who had run away. There were 5-6 students. One of them had surname ‘Meena’, which is a Tribal surname. As soon as the professor heard his name, he became angry all the more and started making comments like ‘I know how they come here’, ‘these SC/ST students don’t deserve to come to IIT’ and ‘they are ruining the IIT atmosphere’. He spoke for more than 15 minutes giving a ‘discourse’ on how ‘unteachable’ SC/ST students were. I was sitting in the class listening to him. Now when I look back and reflect about my four years of stay in IIT, I can understand how that one particular incident had marked my student life there. How could I trust the IIT professors when they had already passed the judgment on me? I could never draw courage to reveal my caste identity to my friends in IIT. I knew I was stigmatized. Since I knew English, I tried to pass off as non-Dalit. But that was not a happy solution. I had to hear many derogatory remarks about Dr. Ambedkar, Mayawati and about other Dalit students within my friend circle but I could never reply. After graduating from IIT in 2003, I worked for six months and then joined Jawaharlal Nehru University for my post-graduation. Here, things were far better. I came in touch with the Dalit students’ group working there and slowly became assertive about my identity. I started appreciating my background.I belong to khatik caste. My forefathers used to take out the skin of dead animals. My family had migrated to Delhi long back and both my parents have raised me by working in tanneries, skinning dead animals. Why should I be ashamed of my parents, my identity? Now, I am very much comfortable about my identity and in fact feel proud about my parents. Feb - Mar 2009

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Brand IIT: The Myth and the Reality The ‘upper’ caste IITians - both faculties and students - bemoan a lot about the reservation policy for SC/ ST students, claiming that it downgrades the quality of Brand ‘IIT’. However, the truth is that these IITs, themselves, are products of the largesse of the developed countries. These countries, in the name of ‘aid in development for a Third World Country’, not only, provided them technical and financial support to start with, but are still helping them to upgrade and to remain at par, through liberal scholarships and various other assistance, so that the Indians could run such ‘institutes of excellence’. IIT Bombay, founded in 1958, was set up by UNESCO and the erstwhile Soviet Union. IIT Madras was established in 1959, with the assistance from the Government of the erstwhile West Germany. IIT Kanpur was also established, in 1959, by the US government and a consortium of nine US universities helped to set up the research laboratories and academic programmes there. Similarly, IIT Delhi was established in 1961, by the benevolence shown by the former colonial masters United Kingdom. Till now, not even a single IIT has been able to stand on its own in terms of research, cutting edge technology, training, even after guzzling huge amount of money from the Indian exchequer and huge financial aids from various other sources including foreign countries.A large number of today’s meritmongers (the IIT faculty members) benefited from these foreign scholarships together with an opportunity to study in liberal foreign campuses. It would have been interesting if the citizens of these countries had opposed these opportunities provided to Indians, arguing that such efforts were diluting

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the ‘quality’ of their campuses and taking away opportunities from their own deserving candidates! In the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s academic Ranking of World Universities (2006), IIT Kharagpur was the only engineering college from India listed among the top 500 universities worldwide and that too among the lowest bracket (below 400). The purpose of this ranking by the Chinese university was, “to find out the gap between Chinese universities and world-class universities, particularly in terms of academic or research performance.” This ranking is an honest attempt by the Chinese to improve their universities and technical institutes. In contrast, nobody has ever heard of such an attempt from India. Except one, no other IITs figured in the list of top 500 institutes worldwide. It is intriguing that the IITs, monopolized by much ‘meritorious’ upper caste community, are not able to compete with foreign institutions, even after years of continued support and assistance from many reputed institutions and at the expense of huge public money, the budgetary allocations for IITs for the year 2005, being a whopping 650 crores! Many efforts are being made to cleverly create a façade of IITs as great, ‘quality’ institutions, producing ‘brilliant’ researchers, engineers, etc. Why this façade is being created? It is to hide a very important fact. The Indian Parliament envisioned that the IIT system would “provide scientists and technologists of the highest calibre, who would engage in research, design and development, to help building the nation towards self-reliance in her technological needs.” A Central statute, the Indian Institute of INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

Technology Act, 1956, & 1961, declared the IITs to be “of national importance”, thus paving the way for huge financial support from the government as well as for the conferring of a higher degree of autonomy. However, instead of providing scientists and technologists for the country, IITs have turned themselves into institutions for providing lucrative jobs, both in India and abroad, for the kith and kin of urban English speaking upper caste/middle class, and in the process, completely sidelining their basic objectives. That is why, the ‘quality’ of IITs is being marked in direct proportion to the pay packages offered to the students by the multinationals and not by any technological innovations. This is the precise reason behind so much hostility against SC/ ST students in these campuses, as their entry into these institutions would shrink the lucrative job opportunities for the ruling class. Hence, all the chest thumping of ‘merit’ and IIT being the ‘Centre of excellence and quality’ becomes necessary in order to hide the fact that the IITs, rather than preparing students for research and development (the reason for their creation), have completely metamorphosed themselves into institutions that cater only to the interests of the parasitic upper caste/ middle class and the multinationals companies. If the IITs remained honest towards their basic objective of facilitating the development of the country through research, they would have gladly accepted the entry of students from the communities that have been directly involved in the production processes like Dalits and Tribals, instead of stigmatizing these students as inherently ‘weak’, based on their performance in entrance exams Ÿ Feb - Mar 2009

Interview

“The Need of Cultural Revolution in West Bengal” Dr. Anjan Ghosh teaches Sociology in Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSS), Kolkata. Here, he interacts with Sandali on various issues in context of caste in West Bengal. There are two major trajectories of discourses around caste - one in which caste system has been seen as a system of stratification, and the other, where caste discrimination has been foregrounded. Since Dalits constitute a large part of the population of West Bengal, what has been the nature of discourse around caste here? Apart from these two discourses that you have suggested, there are multiple discourses of caste. Beyond that, the Dalit question has been looked into through these two particular lenses that you mentioned- basically, in terms of caste inequality or in terms of caste subsumption- that is inclusion within the ritual fold; for example, Michael Moffat's study on Dalit groups in Tamil Nadu, where he talks about how hierarchy is extremely strong among Dalits. It is there among brahmins, 'upper' caste groups but also among Dalits. This has meant that the question of caste, as has been looked upon by sociologists, have in a sense been sidetracked or bypassed by Dalit activists, because they have felt constricted by these two positions. Their basic position has been that there should be recognition of the Dalits as Dalits and that they should not be socially and culturally oppressed and effaced from social recognition. It means that their approach is mainly in terms of identities, rather than in terms of classes, or status groups. They are concerned with sociological discourse only in so far as those bring to the fore socially oppressive mechanisms and ways of outcasting, marginalizing, stigmatizing Dalits. These modes of distinction have been discussed quite a bit in the traditional and anthropological literature in gazetteers, caste manuals, etc. But that is not what sociologists in modern India have been concerned with so much. They have been concerned with the power dimension of inequality- in terms of economic exchange, political authority- how political, social authority is exercised in the village and the city neighbourhoods. Whereas Dalit activists today are much more concerned with recognition, identity and symbolic representation. Dalits constitute a large part of the population of West Bengal. But caste does not feature in the political discourse Feb - Mar 2009

of West Bengal. It does not mean that caste does not exist. It is very much prevalent in rural, urban or semiurban, small-town communities. And yet, there is very little public articulation about caste. Caste articulations are more in the domestic sphere and in the sphere of marriage alliances. For instance, sweepers are not allowed to enter into the household. People who clean the bathrooms will never be allowed to enter into the living rooms, let alone the kitchen, since sweepers, by virtue of their caste occupation, are considered to have a polluting influence. This is of course transparent, something that is quite evident to a degree. So, though caste discrimination is recognized and practiced in the social sphere, it does not get any articulation in the political sphere. This is partly due to the hegemony exercised by the Bengali bhadraloks in the public sphere. They have been the principal ideologues of the nationalist movement, through which they have hegemonized their position. Their understanding of caste as an issue is that caste is regressive; it is traditional, backward-looking and, therefore, not modern. It is a premodern institution and not something to be coveted. Consequently, it does not figure into the political discourse, which is all about modernity, advancement, industrialization and so on. Secondly, in terms of political organization, people are mobilized on class affiliations and not on caste, primarily, because it is thought that caste divides. In West Bengal, the nature of discourse around caste has been displaced by a discourse of Tribal identity, which can be found from Jharkhand to the Rajbansis in north Bengal. Then, there is the minority discourse of dissent. Muslims were so far very close to the Left, since the Left had taken a very strident, secular stand. But that is dissipating, as one can see from some of the movements like the one in Nandigram. That kind of whole-hearted support that they enjoyed earlier is getting fractured by several issues like those of madarasa education, illegal border traffic, social conservatism, and so on. So, the caste issue has not featured significantly here. It does have a small resonance in the border district of Nadiya (district

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adjacent to Bangladesh) where a large number of the Namasudras (a Dalit caste) had built up a movement in the 1950s. Is caste discrimination prevalent in West Bengal? What is its nature as compared to other states where caste is 'visible'? What do the following indicators speak about the prevalence, nature and extent of caste discrimination in the state- practice of untouchability, access to places of worship, land holding, access to education, and proportion of Dalit students in higher education? As I mentioned just now, with regard to access to places of worship and domestic spaces, restrictions still exist. With regard to land holding and access to drinking water, etc., these are not so severely practiced. Land-holdings partly because we have had a long history of peasant movements, which has enabled 'lower' caste groups to atleast get some rights over land, as tenants and marginal farmers, even if they have not got ownership of land. As far as access to education is concerned, there is no actual debarring of education but there are various kinds of discriminatory practices in terms of sitting, eating with the 'upper' caste children during the mid-day meals etc. These have affected the lives of Dalits in different ways. There are examples of people who have succeeded, even though they hailed from very modest backgrounds, like Meghnad Saha. There have been some such examples of 'lower' caste people, who have succeeded by dint of their own efforts. But that does not mean that there has been any kind of state support for their uplift. Amongst the 'untouchable' groups, very few people have been able to access education. As a result, they have not been able to uplift themselves through their own efforts; they have to depend on others. And that makes them more vulnerable. Secondly, in terms of livelihoods, they have to depend on labour. They can rarely send their children to school because they cannot afford the opportunity cost. Children's labour is important for household expensesone major reason why 'lower' caste groups stay out of education. The Bengali bhadralok is the leading class of the Bengali intelligentsia and has been dominanting the sociopolitical life of West Bengal. Who constitutes the bhadralok? Is it a 'cultural' category/ construction or a caste category? How flexible is this category? Bhadralok is not a caste category, it is a cultural category. It is a status group, as some people have mentioned. J. H. Broomfield wrote a book called 'Elite Conflict in Plural Society- Twentieth Century Bengal', where he tried to classify the bhadraloks. They are an elite group but are mainly confined to the three caste groups of Brahmin, Kayastha and Vaidya. Vaidyas and Kayasthas are basically Sudra castes. So, bhadralok as a caste category is not

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convergent with class positions. Many people who constitute part of the bhadralok come from relatively 'lower' caste groups, especially the trading castes. With the arrival of the British, a number of 'lower' caste groups- traders, businesspeople- were able to, through their association with the British, enhance their status. While efforts were made by the society and the state to integrate the 'upper' caste refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) into West Bengal's socio-economic fabric, Dalit refugees were thrown out of West Bengal by forcing them to settle in inhospitable areas of MP and other states. Both Congress and the CPI (M) were party to that. When the Dalits opposed, they were massacred in Marichjhapi. How do you look at that? Marichjhapi happened in 1978, after the Left Front government had come to power in West Bengal. 'Lower' caste refugees from Bangladesh were sent off to Dandakaranya in Madhya Pradesh for rehabilitation, primarily because they could not be accommodated in and around the city of Calcutta or anywhere in the state. Most people, who went to Dandakaranya, had come to India after the 1964 riots. They were directly sent-off from the border to these places. Secondly, Dandakaranya was a forest area which could be cleared for cultivation. However, it turned out to be an extremely rugged land, where cultivation was difficult. The government could not provide much assistance. They did provide coal, etc. but it was difficult to survive in such harsh conditions. And given the shift that the people had to make from lush, alluvial soil back home to this water-scarce, extremely rocky soil conditions, it became extremely difficult for them to sustain cultivation. The 'upper' caste refugees were also not provided with land by the state but they managed to grab land. They settled around the areas like Dum Dum, Jadavpur, and Garia in Kolkata. The area around Santoshpur was all swampy land. The 'lower' caste people, eventually, had to inhabit these marshy areas. What has been the position of the CPI (M) state government vis-à-vis Dalits of West Bengal? How democratic is the structure of CPI (M) with respect to the inclusion of Dalits in the decision-making in the party? To be fair to the CPI (M), in one sense, it has allowed for the emergence of a certain section of the Dalits in their leadership. I shall illustrate this. We know that politics cannot be done without funds. And for an individual Dalit, who aspires to fight elections, it is difficult to mobilize funds. This creates a certain kind of dependency nexus. On the other hand, being a party of the working class people, the CPI (M) sponsors all its candidates. This has allowed a certain number of people to emerge from the grassroots to at least become regional- district, provincialleaders. It works like this - all the CPI (M) MLAs have to

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Interview contribute most of their salary to the party fund. All party functionaries are given stipend/ living allowance from this fund. People within the party are sponsored, regardless of their caste, class. This enables greater number of less privileged sections to emerge as leaders. For instance, one can find a number of people from SC and BC communities in the different ministries. This phenomenon could, however, be also looked at from a different perspective. CPI (M) could be using these people as tokens- as representatives of these sectionsbut not holding much decision-making power. Here is a slippery kind of a problem. Land reforms, for example, have benefited many of the bargadars, a number of whom are SC/ ST. They have not been benefited as SC/ST people, but as bargadars, as tenants, as sharecroppers. Yet, in terms of statutory regulations, West Bengal has fared pretty badly, both in education and employment. The human development report will illustrate this. It is a very elusive situation, because people have benefited in certain ways but they have not been able to assert their identity, dignity and respect. In other words, cultural recognition or cultural revolution has not happened. The Chengara movement has exposed the much-touted Kerala land reforms. It has highlighted that 80-90% of the Dalits and Tribals are landless, despite the land reforms. The Dalits in Chengara are now charting a new, independent movement, foregrounding their identity, on the same issue of land that the Left had always espoused. In this context, what is the situation of land reforms in West Bengal? In West Bengal, quite a sizeable section of people have got land, though it has not brought about much substantial changes. This has happened because though land was available for people, they did not possess the means of production to deploy on that land. Secondly, most of the time, the land was not in one piece; it was scattered. So, though people got land, in practice they were not always able to cultivate it. This is the reason why land reform in West Bengal has been unable to take account of its own successes. The kinds of contradictions that have arisen from land redistribution have not been addressed. It was thought that if the landless got land, they would have the means to uplift themselves. Do you foresee any kind of Dalit movement/ assertion happening in the near future in West Bengal? I do not see a Dalit assertion in West Bengal like the way it has happened in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and UP. But

one does find the articulation of a different idiom of politics which has taken account of, not simply the 'lower' caste or Tribal groups as such but 'people on the streets'. In other words, one finds the incorporation of the popular masses into West Bengal's institutionalized politics, which had so far been dominated by the Bengali bhadraloks. And this is clearly epitomized by Mamata Bannerji's rise. This is completely distinguished from any kind of Dalit movement. The Namasudra movement has not succeeded in establishing Namosudras as leaders. Infact, the Namosudra movement has been transformed from a movement for cultural recognition to a religious sect (the Motua sect). Then, the Bahujan Samaj Party has some kind of presence in the state but not that much. Consequently, they have not been able to make headway. The Dalit movement, however, has begun to make its presence felt in the cultural sphere, in terms of publications and literature. And it is in this sphere that the struggle for self-recognition is happening. Last but not the least, what is the status of the implementation of Reservation policy for SC/STs in CSSS? Our approach is that we nurture bright students who come from marginalized sections. We believe that there should not be any distinction between students belonging to the SC/ST/OBC communities and the mainstream. We have had some very good experience in the past. I should mention with confidence that some of our students coming from these sections have done extremely well. I think that though a person belonging to, say, the SC community might want to assert his cultural identity; he might not like to be labelled as a person who has gained entry into academics through the quota. I am saying that, in the public mind, there is this kind of association between quotas and academic capabilities. So, if we can circumvent this association and yet nurture them, it may allow them to enhance their capacities, so that they will never be identified as an SC/ ST person- in their professional fields. For example, I might be proud of being a Dalit Christian or a Dalit activist. It does not mean that I want to advertise the benefits of reservation. This is the association that is there in the public mind. When they are going to go out in the world, they will be excluded, demarcated as quota people. If they are able to work at par with the others in terms of their own capacity and academic potential, then they can avoid being identified as quota people Ÿ

Sandali([email protected]) is pursuing Research Training Programme (RTP) at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata Feb - Mar 2009

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Remembering Marichjhapi Massacre, 1979 Thousands of Dalit refugees were killed by the West Bengal government, in one of the biggest human rights violation in post independent India. Due to the conspiratorial silence of the Bengali civil society not much is know to outsiders. Below are the excerpts from an article, “ Refugee Resettlement in Forest Reserves: West Bengal Policy Reversal and the Marichjapi Massacre” written by Ross Mallick, published in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Feb. 1999).

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he events leading up to the refugee massacre revealed a trail of communal and class conflict that had its roots many centuries earlier. The gap between the Muslim and Untouchable tenants was arguably not as great as that between the Untouchables and upper-caste landlords, and in the colonial period Untouchables and Muslims were political allies in opposition to the Hindu-landlorddominated Bengal Congress Party. In the colonial period, the East Bengal Namasudra movement had been one of the most powerful and politically mobilized Untouchable movements in India and in alliance with the more numerous Muslims, had kept the Bengal Congress Party in opposition from the 1920s. The exclusion of high-caste Hindus from power led to the Hindu elite and eventually the Congress Party pressing for partition of the province at independence, so that at least the western half would return to their control. With the partition of India it was the upper-caste landed elite who were the most threatened by their tenants and who had the wherewithal in education and assets to migrate to India. Even those not as well off had the connections to make a fairly rapid adjustment in India. The first waves of refugees were traditional uppercaste elite. Those who lacked town houses and property in India squatted on public and private land in Calcutta and other areas, and resisted all attempts to evict them. The failure of the Congress government to grant them squatters' ownership and its attempts at eviction provided the Communist opposition with a ready following among the refugees, who gradually came to be organized by Communist-front organizations. Faced with this resistance and the public sympathy they generated among their relatives and caste members, the Congress government acquiesced in the illegal occupations. Later refugees came from the lower classes, who lacked the means to survive on their own and became dependent on government relief. Lacking the family and caste connections of the previous middleclass refugees, they had to accept the government policy of dispersing them to other states, on the claim that there was insufficient vacant land available in West Bengal. However, the land the Untouchable refugees were settled on in other states were forests in the traditional territory of Tribal peoples,

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who resented this occupation. The crops and agricultural works of the refugees were periodically destroyed or harvested by Tribal peoples. While the upper-caste squatters were getting their colonies legalized and services provided, the Untouchables became exiled to other states where they faced often hostile local populations. In this period the Left-dominated opposition took up the case of the Untouchable refugees and demanded the government settle to them within their native Bengal rather than scatter them across India on the lands of other peoples. The sites mentioned in West Bengal for resettlement were either the Sundarbans area of the Ganges delta or vacant land scattered in various places throughout the state. In 1977, the CPI (M) led Left Front defeated Congress in the assembly elections and formed government in West Bengal. Having sold their belongings to pay for the trip, 15,000 refugee families left Dandakaranya only to discover that Left Front policy had changed now that the coalition was in power, and many refugees were arrested and returned to the resettlement camps. The remaining refugees managed to slip through police cordons, reaching their objective of Marichjhapi island, where settlement began. The state government was not disposed to tolerate such settlement, stating that the refugees were "in unauthorised occupation of Marichjhapi which is a part of the Sundarbans Government Reserve Forest violating thereby the Forest Acts". When persuasion failed to make the refugees abandon their settlement, the Left Front West Bengal government started, on January 26, 1979, an economic blockade of the settlement with thirty police launches. The community was tear-gassed, huts were razed, and fisheries and tube wells were destroyed, in an attempt to deprive refugees of food and water. At least several hundred men, women, and children were said to have been killed in the operation and their bodies dumped in the river. "Out of the 14,388 families who deserted [for West Bengal], 10,260 families returned to their previous places ... and the remaining 4,128 families perished in transit, died of starvation, exhaustion, and many were killed in Kashipur, Kumirmari, and Marichjhapi by police firings" (Biswas 1982, 19) Ÿ

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Photo Courtesy ICM School, Khuduhuriah

Bihar School Text Books

Politics of Syllabus Brahmanism is trifle subdued in School textbooks in Bihar as compared to textbooks from other states, but it is definitely not absent. This is despite the fact that the State has been ruled by the non-Congress, self-styled champions of social justice, for almost two decades now. by Arun Kumar

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ducation as an integral part of state system is roughly a four centuries' old phenomenon. Prior to the rise of the nation-state, education by and large was a private affair, managed either by the raja or the gurukul, the priest or the prince, or at times by both in a partnership. The market and nation-state entered the classroom later. Nation-states call for a citizenry that conform to their image and interest. That may explain why states all over the world keep such a tight control over education of their young minds. No wonder, changing school textbooks and syllabi today are seen as nothing less than tinkering with the past, present, and the future of the nation itself, thus rendering it undesirable. Feb - Mar 2009

No wonder, then, that 'the past' gets re-constructed every time a change is attempted in 'the present'. No wonder, then, that school textbooks are replete with lessons on patriotism of a particular kind. And, no wonder, then, that the call to sacrifice oneself at the border of the nation-state is propagated as the greatest of all virtues. Therefore, there is nothing hidden about the agenda of the education system in India. As we can well imagine, a conformist agenda rewards internalisation of confirmation and punishes questioning, criticality and change. Democracy and equality, for instance, can be taught as concepts, as long as there are no suggestions for democratising them for all. INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

Philosophically speaking, and this is true of not only Indian education system but education systems almost everywhere, a privileged part is taught as the whole – Brahmanic history gets projected as the Ancient Indian history; the Indian National Congress (INC) becomes the Indian national movement; the political freedom from the British under the hegemony of the INC becomes the Freedom Movement. In other words, all other movements that fought for political freedom and economic, socio-cultural emancipation fail to get their due. The nationalist, the 'General', in other words, becomes synonymous with the 'upper' caste, privileged, propertied male. The onus thus is on the 'less than General', the Scheduled,

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Hindu/Brahmanic universals are a trifle subdued in Hindi textbooks in Bihar as compared to textbooks from other States, but they are definitely not absent. Birsa, for instance, gets mentioned as Bhagwan; but there is not even a reference to the fact that he was an Adivasi the marginalised, Dalits, women and children to recast education and the society that exists today. Social Science textbooks in Bihar are no exception. This is despite the fact that they are better textbooks than those from several other states of India which are ahead of it in the realm of education. This is also despite the fact that the State has been ruled by the non-Congress, self-styled champions of social justice of one variety or another, for almost two decades now. They are at best tokenistic in nature when it comes to correcting age-old biases in favour of 'upper' caste, middle class male. The sovereignty of abstract nationalism and patriotism is kept intact; the need to familiarize (and thus prepare to challenge) socio-economic inequalities is missing, just like in textbooks of other states. The Preface of a textbook for Standard III announces the book to be child-oriented and committed to children's overall development with special focus on their 'moral, national (what ever it means) and human qualities'. The focus supposedly is on 'a balanced individual development' so that the children can become 'responsible citizens' and 'work for the prosperity, freedom, secularism and integration of the country'. How exactly these 'responsible citizens' are to make sense of the real world they live in and confront on a daily basis remains unclear. History textbooks appear to be on the right track, as for the first time subaltern heroes (those from the marginalized communities) and their voices find a place in the narratives of freedom movements. But these history textbooks still have some

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distance to cover, for they appear as addendum and not as a corrective measure to the mainstream, 'upper' caste, upper class Congress saga of the Independence movement. So, it's highly encouraging, for example, to see Battakh Mian Ansari of Champaran (he saved Gandhi's life before the latter could become Mahatma) being taught along with the known and the familiar elites. However, there is no critical engagement with why he was left to suffer the wrath of the British alone, why the Gandhi-led congress didn't come to his rescue, why the mainstream history (the practice of history) and History (as a knowledge system) both developed a studied amnesia towards his contribution and subsequent ruin. Hindu/Brahmanic universals are a trifle subdued in Hindi textbooks in Bihar as compared to textbooks from other States, but they are definitely not absent. Birsa, for instance, gets mentioned as Bhagwan; but there is not even a reference to the fact that he was an Adivasi. Similarly, there is a lesson on Siddhartha- who saves the swan wounded by his brother- without any mention that it was this Siddhartha who went on to become the Buddha. Brahmanism also cripples Hindi textbooks through the selection and rejection of words. Hindustani makes it first tentative appearance in standard IV. Till then the books, for instance, teach "prayatn", and then explain that it means, "koshish" (effort). Why a State where Hindustani has deep roots in its lingua franca would do so is difficult to comprehend. Or, may be not. In the beginning of the 20th INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

century, controversies with regards to the nature of Hindi tilted in favour of purified, Sanskrit-based Hindi, 'necessitating' purging out words of Arabic, Persian and Urdu origins. This linguistic tussle was in a way a reflection of the 19th century politicocultural Brahminical propaganda, known as Shuddhi and Sangathan, which in turn had a direct bearing on the national movement led by the INC. The 'victory' of the nationalist Congress in the political realm resulted in the domination of a Hindi that was closer to the Brahmanic India and removed from the nonBrahmanic castes and communities. To illustrate the problem of Brahmanism crippling Hindi textbooks, some examples can be cited. A chapter called "Eid" opens up with dialogues between Radha and Razia. Razia shares: 'Ramzaan humlogon ka nauwan mahina hota hai.' 'Humlogon ka' is for Muslims who follow the Islamic calendar. Children are expected to know that Razia is a Muslim. The term 'Muslim', however, is never used in the text. That is some confidence in diversity! The erasure of the Dalit and other marginalised sections of society, we can notice, is done with numbing obstinacy. Spare a moment for the Chapter on Kabir. Maintaining correctly that not much is known about Kabir's biological parents and their religion, the text slyly turns them, and Kabir, into Hindu. Neeru and Neema, Kabir's parents, who found and brought him up, were julahas (weavers). But, notice the politics of language: 'Ve ek bachche ke liye pratidin Ishwar se prarthana kiya karte the'. Pratidin Ishwar se prarthana? It hardly leaves any ambiguity about the religion of Neeru and Neema, does it? It sounds as if they Feb - Mar 2009

were Hindu. In any event, is there confusion about the religion of julahas in the Benaras region where Kabir grew? There is a story that upon the death of Kabir his Hindu and Muslim followers fought over his last rites. When the kafan (shroud) was taken off his dead body, as the myth has it, there were only flowers, and no body, which the followers divided among themselves. The text, duty-bound, as it were, reports this myth. But look at the question it asks: 'What followed the death of Kabir?' In answering this question, we can imagine, the mythic tale will become a truth of sorts. What will get ignored is that it was just a myth after all. Another chapter 'Jangal ki Lok Kathayein' (Folktales of the Jungle) is

seen any civilised society other than their own. There are even such weird communities who still live in naked or semi-naked condition) One may ask, what is this backward state in which the naked and the half-naked Adivasis are said to be living in? Which is this supposedly 'other civilised' society, if it is not of the non-Adivasis, the society of the editors of the text that the tribals have not seen and known? A society that imposes nudity on its women for entertainment finds the nudity among adivasis 'strange'. At least nudity among adivasis is not gendered; both men and women use scanty clothes. The lesson redefines the height of condescension when it calls the adivasis 'vanphool' (flower of the forest).

[after the abolition] satisfied)! This gets really confusing for children. If zamindari is bad (hence the need for its abolition in the first place) then why pay compensation to the bad guys? Clearly, the textbook editors do not find it confusing. Nor do those who can see through the text the class politics, the leadership of Bihar Congress, the caste and class locus of the protagonist and so on. This also highlights the fact that the interests of Congress elites and 'antiCongress' Socialist elites (under whose regime these books were prepared) do not necessarily differ when it comes to structural issues like zamindari or land-holding. One of my favourite texts is lesson 15 / Bal Bharati IV. It is an experimental text; it weaves and blends the story of Balram and The meaning of Brahma is given as the one who created Krishna into a modern setting the world. Whose world? Does this world include Muslims, where every one is in harmony with everyone; tillers or the Christians, Dalits, and Adivasis as well? Or, is it only the ruler, all work. One wonders, world of Brahmans, which is then assumed to represent however, if such a picture would everybody's world? create conflict with what children actually observe in a rather sad sample of half-baked The class bias of the people everyday life. What if it does? How political correctness. It is reminiscent managing the education system in is the teacher going to explain the lack of parroting a jargon in vogue without the State becomes clear in the of harmony, the rupture, and the really understanding it. Or, it could be Chapter: 'Bihar Vibhuti Dr. Anugraha inequality in society? about learning something new without Narayan Singh'. It mentions that The same could be the concern unlearning the stereotype that actually Anugraha Narayan's father was a with the lesson: 'Suman Ek Upavan goes against the grains of the new 'prosperous zamindar', that Anugraha Ke'. It is a good poem to teach plurality learning. The lesson commences with Narayan played a central role in and diversity at young age. But, what how we ought not to view the 'zamindari unmoolan' (abolition of if the students question the text itself, Adivasis, that they are not uncivilised zamindari system), but the text as the reality they witness runs and barbaric. One begins to wonder if conveniently omits to tell the children contrary to the message of the text? this indeed is a clean departure from who is a zamindar, or, what is There is no mechanism suggested for the past. But, alas, the joy is dashed in zamindari? the students and the teachers of the the very next moment: Since, the protagonist's father text as to how to deal with the gap 'Lekin phir bhi kuchh samaj was a zamindar, children might assume between experiential reality and what abhi bahut pichhadi dasha mein hain that it's a good thing. But, then, why is prescribed for learning and jinhon ne apne alawa kisi doosre would the protagonist play a role in teaching. unnat samaj ko nahin dekha hai. abolishing it? The text, however, Bal Bharati V introduces Aise ajeebogharib samaj bhi hain jo carries some honesty when it says, additional scourge. Parochialism and aaj bhi nagn athwa ardhnagn 'uchit muaawada [sic] ki vyavastha jingoism are taught as patriotism. 'We awastha mein rehte hain.' (But there kar unhon ne zamindaron ko are the best', the lesson 1 beats its are a few communities that are still in santusht rakha' (with proper chest aloud. Our nation gives the very backward state and have not compensation, he kept the zamindars message of equality; it wishes no one Feb - Mar 2009

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suffered ever; every living being is equal and so on. Is it about time the import of humility was registered? How a Dalit girl would relate to such pronouncements is anybody's guess. Veer ras pervades the text, calling for war, sacrifice and martyrdom (Veer Abhimanyu, Sher Shivaji, Jhansi ki Rani, etc). The problem of innocent looking, but actually dangerous and divisive Hindu universal is especially acute in this book. The meaning of Brahma is given as the one who created the world (lesson 2). Whose world? Does this world include Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and Adivasis as well? Or, is it only the world of Brahmans, which is then assumed to represent everybody's world? What about the world of a nonbeliever? But, that would be too distant a world for the editors to comprehend, I presume. Consider yet another example. 'Paropkari Vriksha' (Benevolent Tree) is supposed to be a text on environment. And this is how the significance of trees is underlined: 'Dharmik granthon mein vriksha lagana punya aur katna pap mana gaya hai' [Religious texts consider planting of tree to be pious and cutting it down to be a sin]. Yet another one: Hamare granthon mein kaha gaya hai ki vriksha manushya ke putra ke saman hain (ibid) [Our scriptures consider trees to be like sons of Man]. Whose ‘dharmik granth’ (religious scripture) is the book talking about? The Adivasis who live in jungles and depend on the produce from trees for their survival have no granth. The shudras have no granth. The Qur'an does not say that trees

are like our sons (daughters are out of question, of course!). The Vedas and the Puranas become the generic 'ours'/hamare. The Brahmanic worldview gobbles up the rest. The champions of secularism were fast asleep when these textbooks were being produced, it seems. 'Sher Shivaji' is a reproduction of history inspired by Hindutva's ideology. Shivaji relentlessly and incorrectly continues to be made the symbol of 'Hindu' resistance against 'Muslims' oppression. Nothing could be farther from truth. He fought Aurangzeb, not because he was championing the cause of 'oppressed Hindus'. He fought because Aurangzeb was willing to grant him mansabdari of 5,000 and not of 7,500, the amount he was willing to settle for. Shivaji, the so-called symbol of Hindu gallantry, actually wanted to serve the Mughals. The quarrel was not over ideology or religion but salary; both were feudal kings who thrived on looting the peasantry, at times in unison, at times with an eye

on monopoly to do so. 'Bihar Kesari Dr. Shri Krishna Singh', has 'Harijan Mandir Pravesh' (temple entry of harijans) as one of his major accomplishments, but no space is provided for discussions on this aspect in the exercise. Would the children ask, why the so-called harijans were not allowed to enter a temple? Can they not also wonder why some are still not allowed to enter a temple? And, could they also enquire about other caste-related issues, like, untouchability? How long we can shy away from the question of caste and why is what we need to ask the educationists/editors concerned. How exactly is the teacher trained today to address these questions? But, that is another story for another time. A child from Dalit or any marginalized background suffers double assault; first because of the prevailing social inequalities and secondly, in school textbooks where she is forced to accept what is contrary to her real life experiences as education. The real life experiences eventually make such children see the project of Nation-building with great suspicion, while the school learning turns them hostile to both, school and learning. The sincerity with which issues of dignity, identity, or equality are raised in the political realm has a reflection in the kinds of textbooks that are given to children. Halfhearted, tokenistic/symbolic, contradictory, insensitive to the marginalized is what we experience in real life political theatre. And this is what our children get to learn as knowledge and values. We owe them better. And they need it nowŸ

Arun Kumar ([email protected]) is working with Child Rights and You (CRY) as General Manager, Youth. The usual disclaimer holds.

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INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

Feb - Mar 2009

Interview

“Benefits of Reservation should reach to all” Suresh kumar Digumarthi is one of the leading student activists in the University of Hyderabad. Here he interacts with Anoop Kumar on various issues concerning University Dalit student community. Suresh, please tell our readers about your background. I am doing my PhD in the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. I belong to the Madiga community and my father works in the Andhra Pradesh Health Department. My mother is a housewife. Both my parents were first generation literates. However, they could not access higher education. I have three siblings. Despite meager means, my parents did their best to provide us education; but it was the government scholarship that actually enabled us to aspire for higher education. You have been actively participating in the Dalit movement, along with your studies. How did you get introduced to the movement? I started participating in the Dalit movement only when I joined the University of Hyderabad. Before that, I was not very keen on our issues. One reason might be that my father hid our caste identity, as he was working in an area where there were not many Dalits. But when I joined the University in 1999, I was exposed to a very strong Dalit consciousness, present in the campus due to the student activism, that made me quite comfortable vis-à-vis my own identity and further interaction with my seniors drew me towards the Dalit movement. University of Hyderabad is known for its very strong and vibrant Dalit students’ movement. However, one also witnesses a sharp division among the Dalit students on caste lines. What are the reasons of such a division? Though it might appear to be so but I don’t think the division among the Dalit students are on the caste lines. It is issue-based and that issue is classification among the Dalit communities of Andhra Pradesh. This issue is a highly contentious one that came to the forefront in the 1980s. In AP, there are two major Dalit castes- Mala and Madiga, apart from many smaller castes. The Madigas have been demanding classification among the Dalit community, so that there are equal opportunities for all the Dalit castes to get the benefit of reservations. But the Malas, being the biggest beneficiaries among all the Dalit castes, have been opposing this demand. It has made an impact in our campus too, which gets reflected through two separate Dalit students’ groups working in the campus. In 1994, the Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA) was the lone Dalit Feb - Mar 2009

students’ group, which all the Dalit students were part of, irrespective of their caste backgrounds. It was then decided by the senior student members that ASA, to avoid any division, would not participate in any activities pertaining to the classification issue outside the campus. But it was observed that some of the functionaries from the Mala caste were actively promoting the activities of Mala Mahanadu (an organization of Mala caste) to oppose the demands for classification among the Dalits. Our Madiga seniors felt that by doing so, they had broken their promise. Besides, they also felt the need of forming a separate students’ organization for Madiga students to support the demand for classification. Then Dalit Student Union (DSU) was formed. As you said that DSU was formed for Madiga students, then why did you choose to use the term ‘Dalit’ instead of ‘Madiga’ to name your organization? It is true that our organization takes stands with Madiga perspective but we do not have any problems in including other Dalit students also with us. Some of our founder members wanted to name it as ‘Madiga Students Union’ but the others thought that it was not good to exclude other Dalits who wanted to join us, so we decided for Dalit Students Union. Apart from Malas and Madigas there are other numerous small castes within Dalit community. What are the options for students coming from these castes? Many of such students join Ambedkar Students Union. In fact many Madiga students are also active in ASA and it is not a problem with us. Here, I will like to make myself very clear that we treat ASA as our mother organization and apart from the classification issue we stand united. Earlier, our seniors used to tell us that ASA was Maladominated organization and Madiga students were not given much space. But when, we, the younger generation took the leadership we are telling our juniors that ASA is for all the Dalits and DSU is for the Madigas. Since last few years, the classification issue has assumed much importance in the Dalit struggle in Andhra Pradesh. We have also witnessed its impact on Dalit student’s politics here. What is this issue all about?

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The constitutional provision of reservation for SC/STs has benefited lots of Dalits. However, unfortunately, the benefits have been limited to certain castes only, the castes that are dominant among Dalits. If the reservation is not classified/categorized then all the benefits of reservation will be restricted to these dominant castes only so in order to spread the benefits of reservation to each and every Dalit castes it is must to provide reservation on the basis of the population of each of the Dalit caste. In Andhra Pradesh, apart from Madigas and Malas there are 57 other castes that are included in the SC list. Recently we had done a survey in University of Hyderabad about the representation of Dalit communities since last ten years. We found that only students from 13 Dalit castes got admission here. Even among them the number of Malas and Madigas were much high. What about the students from rest of the castes? The categorization is not the issue between Mala-Madiga alone but it should be done, so that the benefits of reservation would reach to each castes. With the rise of Madiga politics, Jagjivan Ram has emerged as Dalit icon in Andhra Pradesh. It is little surprising, as he never attained that stature in North India. There he remained a great Dalit politician but never became an icon of the emancipatory Dalit politics. Yes it is true. Madigas accepted Jagjivan Ram as one of their icons probably because he was from similar Chamar caste but they have not done that at the cost of rejecting Babasaheb Ambedkar. We follow both Babasaheb and Jagjivan Ram. But in north India where the Dalit movement is led by Chamars, Jagjivan Ram is not considered as an Icon. May be but we believe that Babasaheb Ambedkar gave us the Constitution but Jagjivan Ram implemented it. He successfully led many important ministries where he did his best to continue the policy of Babasaheb Ambedkar. That is quite a unique explanation! Anyways, coming back to student’s politics in the campus. Since its inception, DSU has been fighting elections for the student union. How has been the journey so far? Since 1996 we are fighting University elections and have a fair amount of success in getting our candidates elected. Earlier, our seniors had a pact with a right wing students group called ‘Discovery’, just in order to remain in the contest but later with the change in the leadership of DSU it was decided not to have any kind of pact with such groups. Since 2002, DSU has fought most of the elections in alliance with Ambedkar Students Union. Together we had alliances with Left students group also. But the experience has not been a nice one. Left students group had betrayed us several times. They align with us out of electoral compulsions and perceive Dalit students group

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as threats to their existence. In the rustication case of ten Dalit students (2002), Left supported the University administration and we would never forget that. Recently there has been some huge controversy in the campus regarding putting up of beef-food stalls in the University Cultural Fest by the Dalit students. What is your opinion? It is unfortunate that the University administration and upper-caste chauvinist students are opposing the beeffood stalls set up by the Dalit students. We are beef-eaters. Beef has been part of Dalit food culture in South India. We have grown up on beef. When anybody can eat chicken, fish, mutton etc. openly in this country why can’t we eat our food. They should respect our food culture. We want to resist this brahminical cultural hegemony. In the cultural fest, students from different region and culture put up their food stalls. For example every year we have Bengali, Keralite, Northeastern and other region-based food stalls. It is not just about food. It is about showcasing your culture before the campus. Similarly we also thought of displaying our Dalit culture by putting up beef-food stalls. So we took permission from the university administration to open beef stall and then only we put up our stall. But there was lot of opposition? The beef stall was huge success. Lots of people came and ate. Later some students from Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) came and asked us to stop our stall. We refused. Then they forced the administration to withdraw the permission. We simply stated our position that beef has been part of our food and nobody has the right to deny us. Most of the Dalit students started keeping vigil around the stall so that administration could not forcefully evict us. The administration applied every trick on us- they threatened us, cajoled us but we remained firm. That was in 2006. However, the unity of Dalit students prevailed and we ran our stall successfully. We hope that in future, we will be able to run our stall successfuly. ‘Upper’ castes students also came to your stall to eat beef? Of course, our beef stall was the most successful one. The demand was so much that we were unable to provide enough beef packets. Not only Dalits but also many other students from Muslims, Christians, Northeast also used to visit our stall. Beef has been part of their food habits also but they are denied that due to ‘upper’ caste chauvinism in this country. But we were surprised by huge number of ‘upper’ caste students visiting our stall. Though many of them did not wanted others to know about their eating beef. Then we realized that most of the ‘upper’ caste students eat beef and the ABVP is just trying to get political mileage and don’t want to loose the opportunity to assert their socio-cultural hegemony on usŸ

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Feb - Mar 2009

Photo Courtesy Frontline

Manual Scavenging and the Legal Discourse

Through the Lens of Pollution by Saptarshi Mandal

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lot is being written about these days in newspapers, popular magazines and academic journals on manual scavenging. While all these writings highlight the failure of the law in abolishing manual scavenging and liberate the Dalits who are forced to clean human excreta with their hands, there seems to be an uncritical view of the law itself as a mode of liberation. There seems to be a feeling that if only the law had been implemented in the right spirit, we might have seen an end to the practice of manual scavenging. Such an uncritical, sanitized view of law however, presupposes the law as an autonomous institution, divorced from the existing social relations. It needs to be recognized that the relationship between the law and the manual scavengers has a long history of confrontation, control and coercion. One needs to take a long hard look at the law and the legal discourse around manual scavenging and ask whether law could at all serve the ends of a radical anti-caste politics leading to justice for and liberation of the of the manual scavengers. In this article, I propose to dwell on this question by exploring Feb - Mar 2009

Bounded by caste, customs and traditions, the Dalits involved in manual scavenging find no legal recourse despite the enactment of law prohibiting the practice. A close reading of the law reveals that the state also never intended to do so. three sites of interaction between manual scavenging and the legal discourse.

Within the ambit of ‘Essential Services’ ‘In the tropics, cleanliness was as important to the British as loyalty’, writes Vijay Prashad in his account of the manual scavengers of Delhi (Untouchable Freedom: Social History of a Dalit Community, pp 2). The central aspect of the colonial governance policy in India was to restructure urban life by making the cities clean and out of reach of the dreaded epidemics. However, despite the efforts and 'a most laudable zeal in this work of sanitary improvement' by the municipal bodies, regular and timely removal of garbage remained confined to only those areas of the city where the British stationed. Lest the inhabitants of the old city (reference is to Old Delhi here) whose INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

unsanitary conditions were not attended to, should rise up to another revolt against the unequal civic amenities, the colonial masters blamed it on the sweepers' inefficiency. Every house in a locality used to be serviced by a particular sweeper. Additionally, there was an informal agreement of service between the householder and the sweeper, which, in addition to the monthly wages, entitled him to receive leftover food on a daily basis and money during ritual occasions. Since contact with filth threatened the notion of ritual purity of both the Hindus and Muslims, the householders seldom offended the sweepers. This allowed the sweepers some bargaining power - albeit limited - within the structure of subordination, which gave them a sense of economic security and dignity. However, this irked the colonial officers who exaggerated this limited

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power and independence of the sweeper in order to justify the administration's taking over of the cleaning duties and tying them to the administration through fixed wages. The sweeper was thus portrayed as a 'tyrant', who holds the entire urban community to ransom depending on his whims. Another aspect of the municipality's move to appropriate the labour process surrounding the cleaning of the city was that the sweeper was an 'irreplaceable worker', who supported the entire edifice of sanitary administration with cheap labour. Despite the gradual mechanization of the system of disposal of filth, what kept the 'modern' mechanized system running was the manual labour of the sweepers of the municipality. It would not be too erroneous to argue that the economic considerations of the colonial masters were influenced by the native caste relations. In the native consciousness, the Dalit, being the embodiment of pollution, was hardly human to be accorded any dignity and therefore it wouldn't unsettle the native sentiments if the Dalits were used as a cheap substitute for a capitalintensive sanitation technology. The authority of law was used to tighten the administration's hold on the sweepers, who were gradually becoming servants of the municipality. Under section 118 of Act XX of 1891, the municipality could prosecute any sweeper who neglected his statutory duties. This meant in effect, that the sweepers could not go on a strike to protest against any decision of the administration, for that would be a neglect of his statutory duties. While the foregoing is the

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story of how the colonial legal discourse worked in favour of the prevailing Hindu social order in retaining the status quo, it was the legal discourse of the independent Indian State, that cemented the Dalit's association with filth by invoking the language of 'essential services'. The Essential Services Maintenance Ordinance (ESMO) had its origin during the Second World War, when it was deployed to ensure the smooth running of the war economy. When the sanitation

Services' and whom they were not prepared to release except on one month's notice. While the Indian government tried to secure safe passage for the 'Hindus' of Pakistan, there was no concern about the Dalits left behind in Pakistan. Dr. Ambedkar raised this issue in a letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in December 1947. However, it is not known what came out of his concerned intervention. Once again the national polity got a chance to decide the fate of the

Photo Courtesy Getty images

The economic considerations of the colonial masters were influenced by the native caste relations. In the native consciousness, the Dalit, being the embodiment of pollution, was hardly human to be accorded any dignity workers of Delhi went on a strike in 1943, they were arrested and returned to their workplace. In 1947, the provisions of the ESMO were incorporated in the Industrial Disputes Act. During the Partition, the new State of Pakistan refused to allow the 'untouchables' involved in sanitation work to immigrate to India, as the government had declared the sweepers as belonging to 'Essential INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

manual scavengers when the ESMO bill was taken up for discussion in the Lok Sabha in 1957 in response to the strikes of manual scavengers across various municipalities of the country. The Dalit's escape from the caste-based division of labour was legally barred, when the ESMO was passed by 226 votes to 51. In 1965, the ESMO was given a longer leash of life when the Supreme Court of India opined that ESMO did not Feb - Mar 2009

restrict the freedoms of speech, expression or association and held therefore, that there was no fundamental right to strike.

Scavenging & Customary Rights The discourse of 'Customary Rights' arose in the 1960s following the report of the second Malkani Committee, which sought to provide effective solutions to the 'Customary Rights to Scavenging'. The Committee considered the question, whether the right to clean human excreta and dispose it was a customary right. And, if indeed it was so, whether it could be considered to be a right to property under the Indian Constitution. The second question was relevant - legally speaking - for the simple reason that, if the right to manual scavenging was a right to property, then the practice of manual scavenging could not be abolished without paying due compensation to the scavengers as is required by the Constitution. Manual scavenging was thought of as similar to property due to several reasons: for one, over time it had become a hereditary practice, where the children continued in the parents' place as manual scavengers in a particular house or locality. Secondly, there was an unwritten agreement between the householder and the scavenging family, whereby members of that family alone could provide services to the former. Thirdly, the family collecting the refuse could sell the refuse (as manure) thereby supplementing the family income. Finally, these 'rights' could be sold or mortgaged by the family holding them, just like property. The Committee labored hard to find Feb - Mar 2009

evidence for the existence of such 'customary rights'. The Committee later concluded that due compensation could not be paid to the manual scavengers, in accordance with the Constitutional scheme, on abolition of the practice. This was so, because the Committee found that the evidence was not 'clear and unambiguous' enough - as required by the law - to support such a claim. Nevertheless, it did recognize that such customary rights existed and that they were 'an extension of the traditional rural jajmani system'. Although, if recognized as customary rights with clear and unambiguous evidence, it would have meant economic benefits to the manual scavengers, I find the trope of 'customary rights' problematic for several reasons. One, customary rights are invoked by communities to assert their rights in natural resources. For example, right to use forest products or right to fishing in tanks etc. Two, the language of customary rights suggests the existence of a

consensus between the claimants of rights and the subject matter of the rights. Three, customary rights relate to crucial questions of livelihood. And four, to be legally recognized, customary rights should not only be ancient and certain, they should be reasonable as well. When the language of customary rights is invoked and advocated in the context of the manual scavengers, it stealthily reads in the 'consent' of the scavengers to the system that degrades them and robs them of their dignity. It must be remembered that those involved in manual scavenging do not take up the job by choice. The language of customary rights masks the power and coercion involved in the process of marking certain bodies as unclean and then assigning them the most degrading of tasks that perpetuate their association with 'pollution'. What is more, it also tends to underplay the institutional and legal patronage accorded to this system of coercion. And finally, the debate transforms to one on the existence of 'evidence' and 'compensation' rather than question the inherent legality or morality of the practice of manual scavenging.

Employment of Manual Scavengers and Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act

In 1993, the State enacted the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act. The stated objective of the legislation is to 'enact a uniform law for the whole of India for abolishing manual scavenging by declaring employment of manual scavengers for removal of human excreta an offence and thereby ban the further proliferation of dry latrines in the The Dalit's escape from the caste-based division of country'. The law recognizes that the labour was legally barred, when the ESMO was passed practice of manual in Lok Sabha by 226 votes to 51 INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

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Photo Courtesy Frontline

One primary reason why the law has not led the process of liberation of the manual scavengers is that the implications of the notion of 'pollution' have not been recognized by the legal discourse

Manual Scavengers protest demanding the deomolition of dry latrine in Kurnool

scavenging, which continues unabated in major parts of the country is indeed 'dehumanising'. However, a closer reading of the law reveals two aspects: one, that the legislative intent is more towards improvement of urban sanitation and public health rather than liberation of the manual scavengers; and two, that the law does not provide for an absolute abolition of manual scavenging. Section 3(1) of the Act directs that the State Government 'may' declare by notification in a particular area that no person shall employ another for the purpose of manual scavenging and that no person shall construct or maintain a dry latrine. The next sub-clause however, waters down the absolute prohibition suggested by the foregoing clause, by adding that the State Government 'shall' issue a notification to the above-mentioned effect, only if (a) it has issued another notification at least ninety days before, declaring its intention to prohibit manual scavenging; (b) there are adequate facilities for the use of water-seal latrines in that

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area; and (c) it is necessary or expedient to do so for the protection and improvement of the environment or public health in that area. Three points may be noted here: one, the use of the word 'may' in the first clause and 'shall' in the second clause reveals the differential sense of priority and urgency in the legal intent. Two, the word 'and' in clause 3(1)(b) suggests that for the State Government to issue notification, all the three conditions have to be fulfilled. And three, the State Government can issue notification based on considerations of protection of environment and danger to public health, but liberation of the manual scavengers from an undervalued and degraded task may not be a concern pressing enough! Additionally, the State Government is empowered to declare any area exempt from the application of the Act, upon any such condition as it may think fit. It seems that the Act was spearheaded by the ministry of urban development and passed in the interest of urban sanitation, fuelled by international concerns, and INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

less because of concern for the manual scavengers.

Through the Lens of Pollution One of the major aspects of the Dalit's situation of marginality and exclusion is her association with the notion of ritual 'pollution' accruing from her engagement with the so-called 'unclean' occupations. Certain occupations - mostly associated with death and human bodily waste - are regarded as unclean and degraded and therefore assigned to those considered to be outside the pale of humanity. In fact, the link between the Dalit as embodying pollution and the polluting occupations follows a circular logic: Why are the jobs polluting? Because they are performed by Dalits. Why are the Dalits polluting? Because they perform polluting jobs. It is this association with ritual pollution, and the stigma and discrimination resulting thereof, that sets apart Dalits from the other deprived groups or 'have-nots' in the Indian society. And it is this association with ritual pollution that

Feb - Mar 2009

is invoked to explain and justify the sub-human status assigned to the Dalits by the caste system. One primary reason why the law has not led the process of liberation of the manual scavengers is that the implications of the notion of 'pollution' have not been recognized by the legal discourse. In fact, as we have seen throughout this paper, the discourse of sanitation and public health is continuously used to black out the caste-implications of the process through which the State provides sanitation facilities. Thus, we see in several cases, the Courts direct the State authorities to undertake specific measures like construction of extra public latrines and regular cleaning of them, in order to protect human health and

sanitation under Article 21 of the Constitution. However these judgments have seldom dwelt on the question of rights of those Dalits who are employed to clean them manually.

Need of Dalit Jurisprudence As I have shown in this paper, the law is neither an unbiased arbiter of human disputes, nor is it a neutral assigner of roles and responsibilities of the people that it regulates. The presumptions and operation of the law are informed by the existing caste relations and the corresponding power relations in the society, which ensure that the law, instead of breaking, further entrench the statusquo. More than twenty years back,

in a short article, Prof. N.S. Chandrasekharan had urged the Indian judges and legal academics to develop, what he termed as a Dalit Jurisprudence, which could guide the manner in which justice may be delivered to the Dalits. Chandrasekharan argued that the legal formulations devised for empowering Dalits needed 'something more' than the already existing vision of social justice that one found in the Indian Constitution. In the specific context of the State's attempts at the abolition of manual scavenging, that 'something more' would be recognizing the ideology of 'pollution'. As and when such a theory of Dalit Jurisprudence emerges, it must squarely address the question of 'pollution' within the legal dynamics Ÿ

Saptarshi Mandal ([email protected]) is studying Law at the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata

A Man Dies Cleaning Sewer in Chennai, Despite High Court Ban On 20th November 2008, the Madras High court passed a landmark Judgment, banning the entry of any human beings into the sewer manholes and septic tanks. It also asked the state government to file an action taken report on its compliance with the court order. On 4th January 2009, the Chennai metrowater Chairman publicly affirmed that no worker was being used to clean sewer lines and septic tanks and they would be filing the report in the court before 15th January. There was nothing surprising in such statements from the government officials, as it is a common knowledge now, about how the various governments have been lying about the prevalance of manual scavenging in their states and thus blocking the path towards the eradication of manual scavenging. This denial of existence of manual scavenging in Chennai got exposed just three days after the Chairman made the statement. Unfortunately, on 7th January, one life was lost while cleaning the sewer manhole in North Chennai. Mr.Ettiappan, aged 50, who went to clean the sewer line along with two other workers, died inside the sewer line. However, the government officials quickly tried to disown any responisibilty, proving that a Dalit life is much cheaper and also that they are not bothered by the law of the land. The news of Ettiappan’s death was not able to get any media coverage as the entire state media was only intreseted in covering the controversial Assembly by-election in Tamilnadu due to which, it might now again become easy for the government officials to hoodwink the courts on the issue of manual scavenging. It has now become imperative for the Indian civil society to initiate action against the guilty officials and also to unite and work, both at micro as well as national level, against manual scavenging, which is even worse than slavery. We owe it to Ettiappan and his now orphaned family. With inputs from Narayanan A., PAADAM Feb - Mar 2009

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Tamilnadu

Caste Violence in Ambedkar Law College Based on the fact-finding report by a committee of noted academicians and human right activists namely Dr A. Marx, K. Palanisamy, Rajini, Thai. Kandasamy, Kesavan, Sujatha, Manoharan, Dr P. Sivakumar, Dr K. Santhosham, Prof J. Lenin, C. Jerome Samraj, R. Revathi and Raghavan. The whole country was shocked to see the visuals of student clash that happened on 12th November, at the Dr. Ambedkar Law College, Chennai. The fact that these clashes have taken caste lines, seeks extra concern. Based on the repeated telecasts in the visual media, the general understanding amongst public is that of particular community students conducting a heinous attack on another community students. From a lay viewpoint, this seems like the actual truth but this is just a half-truth. This issue has much deeper roots. The clashes between the students from Dr. Ambedkar Law College have been happening for many years now. In this context, a thevar caste (one of the dominant castes of Tamilnadu) organization Mukkulathor Manavar Peravai (Mukkulathor Student Organization) was formed in the Law College. This outfit celebrates October 30th as Thevar Jeyanthi on Muthuramalinga Thevar’s birth anniversary. In all the posters and pamphlets printed for this function, apart from inclusion of casteist slogans, the name of the Dr.Ambedkar Law College is always truncated to Chennai Law College. This has created a feeling of hurt and anger in the minds of the Dalit students studying in the college. The same thing was repeated this year also, in posters prepared for Thevar Jeyanthi. According to Mukkulathor Student Organization, some Dalit students, infuriated at the removal of Dr. Ambedkar from the name of the Law College, tore away a few of these posters. Dalit students claim that they did not tear the posters but only questioned about the deletion. However, there was some altercation that took place between the two groups. As a result, some thevar students issued warnings to the Dalit students, not to sit for the coming exams. Bharathi Kannan and Arumugam, both having a criminal past of assaulting Dalit students, were the main instigators. The exams started on November 5th and many Dalit students didn’t appear for exams, out of the fear. Just after two days, 4 Dalit students, on way to examination halls, were brutally assaulted by a group of students led by

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Bharathi Kannan and Arumugam. On 12th November, again Bharathi Kannan and his group assembled in the campus and tried to create terror among the Dalit students by openly brandishing knives and choppers, threatening them not to sit for the exams. Hearing that Dalit students are being threatened and stopped from writing exams, around 40 hostellers, mostly Dalits, armed with sticks arrived at the college. These students clearly told the college administration that they had come there to protect Dalit students so that they were able to sit for exams and had no intention of doing violence in the campus. However little later, the situation became worse as the Bharathi Kannan and Arumugam, both armed with knives, pounced on one Dalit student Chithirai Selvan. Seeing him fall with heavy injuries on his head enraged Dalit students and they caught both of them. We saw on the visual media that the two were beaten up badly after their knives fell to the ground. The police despite being present on the spot did not take any effort to stop the violence or disperse the students. Three cases have been registered after the November 12th incident. In this, so far 23 Dalit students have been arrested. Injured Chithirai Selvan has also been arrested. A case against Bharathi Kannan and Arumugam has also been registered but none has been arrested. Preventing students from writing their exams have far reaching implications on the students’ life and career. Neither the college administration nor the professors could confirm the number of Dalit students who could not write their exams, due to the threatening by the other students’ group. The violence of November 12 th is strongly condemnable but it should not be seen just in the context of that day’s incidents. It should be seen in the context of the series of events that have taken place in the campus. The action taken by the local administration is also one sided. Every Dalit student who came across has been arrested. Gokul Raj, a student totally unconnected to the incident and who is not even a student of the Dr.Ambedkar Law College has also been arrested Ÿ

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Feb - Mar 2009

West Bengal

The Caste Ailment Strikes the Calcutta Medical College Hostel The following report was published in a Bengali Newspaper Ananda Bazaar Patrika, Friday, 30th May 2008. We are grateful to Saptarshi Mandal from National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata for its translation in English

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s Biman Basu going to arrange a communal dinning at the Calcutta Medical College? A few years back, the school students of Birbhaanpur in Bankuda district had boycotted the mid-day meals cooked by ‘low’ caste women. It was said that they had been instructed to do so by their family members. The Left-Front chairman Mr. Biman Basu had gone there and had organized a communal dinning with all the caste members, thus saving the state government from much embarrassment. This time around, there have been allegations that some students at the Calcutta Medical College hostel have been prevented from taking water from the taps, on account of their ‘low’ caste by their ‘high’ caste classmates. For the same reason, the said students have been subjected to physical and mental torture also. It is surprising, that all those who were so vociferous against the divisive nature of ‘caste-based’ reservations, should have such cases of blatant untouchability in their own backyards! Seventeen students of the first and second years, who are residents of the men's hostel at the college have expressed their grievances in writing, to the Dean Mr. Prabir Kumar Dasgupta and Hospital Superintendent, Mr. Anup Roy. In their written account, the Feb - Mar 2009

aggrieved students have said that for the past few days, a group of students at the men's hostel had been abusing and taunting them on caste lines. The situation took a serious turn on the night of 17th May, when a group led by three students entered the hostel and started abusing the Dalit students on caste lines and warned them against taking water from the taps. When the latter protested, they were dragged out of their rooms and beaten up by the mob. The aggrieved students approached the authorities, in order to seek redressal against such violence. The authorities and the doctors at the Medical College are extremely upset about this kind of caste-based disturbances within the hostel. On 19th May, the Hospital Superintendent, after making primary enquiries, constituted a committee comprising of four departmental heads, for conducting detailed investigations into the matter. The committee comprised of Dr. Siddharth Chakravarty of the Cardio-Thoracic Department, Dr. Sukanto Chatterjee of the Pediatrics Department, Dr. Tapan Kumar Basu of Forensic Medicine and Dr. Samir Dasgupta of Community Medicine. After investigations, the committee is more or less certain that the incident had, indeed occurred. However, since the situation at the Medical College is perpetually tensed INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

surrounding matters related to the hostels, the committee fears that the submission of the report would amount to adding fuel to the fire. The students, against whom the allegations have been made, have however denied that the incident ever took place. In the words of superintendent Mr. Anup Roy, "this incident has given me a mental shock. I am somehow not being able to accept such mentality and attitude of the students of the medical college. We have requested every student organization on the campus to monitor that such shameful incidents do not take place in future". The members of the investigation committee informed, that in order to test the validity of the allegations, all the seventeen aggrieved students were asked to write down their accounts of the incident, separately, in front of the committee. It was seen that all the seventeen students wrote similar descriptions. The committee members stated, "Our report is complete. It is extremely demotivating. But given the turbulent situation at the medical college caused by the student movement, we really don't know what would happen when we release the report. And it is such considerations that are preventing us from submitting the report" Ÿ

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Tamilnadu

Celebrating the Birth Anniversary of M C Rajah by Iyothee Thassar Thinkers Circle

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n 22nd June, Iyothee Thassar Thinkers Circle (ITTC), an academic forum of research scholars and faculty members, celebrated 125th birth anniversary of Rao Bahadur Mylai Chinnathambi Rajah (popularly known as M C Rajah) by organizing a memorial lecture in Chennai. Dr. Armstrong (lecturer, University of Madras) and renowned writer Gautham Sanna delivered the lectures reflecting upon the vision and contributions of this great Dalit leader of the early 20th century. Rao Bahadur MC Rajah was a great political activist, educational philanthropist, parliamentarian, statesman who played a major role in liberation of ex-untouchables in Tamil Nadu and outside. He was an associate of Babasaheb Ambedkar and together represented the concerns of ex-untouchables at national level and made immense efforts towards organizing them to fight for their political, social and economic rights. He organized number of meetings and conferences demanding abolition of untouchability as well as basic rights for Dalits like land rights, housing rights, access to public wells, pathways to burial grounds, primary health care, mid-day meals for primary students and compensatory allowance for Dalit parents for admitting wage-earning children to schools. He organized the Dalit community in Madras presidency through forming co-operative societies. He was also a staunch votary of proper representation of ex-

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M.C. Rajah (1883-1943) untouchables in state councils, local bodies and public services. He propagated the terms ‘AdiDravida and Adi-Andhra’ for bringing all Dalit castes together in South India and to mark their differences with the caste-hindus in the historical context by terming Dalits as the original inhabitants of the country. Later he reorganized Adi-Dravida Mahajana Sabha in 1916 and used it as a platform for giving Dalits a political voice. In 1919, MC Rajah became the first Dalit leader of the country to be nominated as the member of any state legislative council. Recognizing his immense contribution and leadership towards ex-untouchables he was nominated for four consecutive terms as a member of Madras Legislative Council. He used this opportunity for articulating the problems faced by Dalits in Madras presidency and INSIGHT-YOUNGVOICES

secured their various social and educational rights. Further, in 1928, he was also nominated to the Provincial Council. His services to Dalits in the field of education are immense. Himself a born teacher, he was also a teacher-trainer and an educational philanthropist. He was responsible for establishing a Dravidian School in 1936 at Nungambakkam. To counter untouchability practices in educational institutions he built hostels for Dalit students and secured scholarships for them. With community's support he also initiated various night schools, gymnastic clubs and training centers for widows for teaching women students. Recognizing his vast contribution in the field of Education for marginalized sections British government nominated him for various committees of Education Department. In 1925, he wrote a book titled ‘The Oppressed Hindus’ reflecting on the present conditions of Dalits and their issues using proper statistics. He also outlined the glorious past of ex-untouchables and their pioneering contributions in the fields of literature, astronomy, astrology, medicine etc. Using historical tools available he claimed present Dalits to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the country having a well-developed civilization with democratic form of governance. Later in the same book, he argued for proper representation of the Dalit community in government positions as the best possible solution against casteist prejudices Feb - Mar 2009

prevalent in the society. Apart from this book, he also contributed in the preparation of numerous school and college textbooks during his tenure as a teacher-trainer at Saidapet Teacher Training College and as a lecturer in Voorhees College, Vellore. In his lecture, Dr. Armstrong located the contributions of MC Rajah towards the Dalit liberation visà-vis the vision of Bhakti radicals like Raidas and scholar-revolutionaries like Iyothee Thassar, Jotiba Phule and Babasaheb Ambedkar. While Bhakti radical Raidas (c1450-1520) envisioned ‘Begumpura’, a city without sorrow, a casteless & classless society without any mention of the temples. An urban society in contrast to Gandhi's village utopia of RamRajjya, Begumpura is a land with no taxes, harassment or hierarchy. Great Dalit revolutionary Iyothee Thassar desired a society that existed earlier in Tamil Nadu in the form of a Sakya Buddhist Commonwealth. Similarly, Bhakti radicals namely Chokhamela, Janabai, Nirmala, Soyra, Banka, Gora Kumbhar, Kabir, and Tukaram imagined for an egalitarian and

democratic society. It was a land of King Bali that was desired by Mahatma Jothirao Phule for the emancipation of the wretched of the Indian society. Dr. Armstrong argued that these visions and dreams of social revolutionaries were made realizable by both MC Rajah and Babasaheb Ambedkar through their boundless efforts in the first half of 20th century. Both the Dalit leaders wanted freedom of Dalits from the clutches of hindu imperialism through their own collective and individual efforts. In his lecture, Gautam Sanna spoke about MC Rajah's effort to organize the Dalits at national level and his special relationship with Babasaheb Ambedkar. In 1926, he was elected as the first president of the All India Depressed Classes Association in the convention held at Nagpur. Babasaheb Ambedkar, who did not attend the conference, was elected one of its vice-presidents. However the difference between the two leaders arose on the issues of separate electorate and conversion. During the round table conferences, Babasaheb demanded

dual representation for Dalits in the form of separate electorate whereas MC Rajah supported joint electorate system and subsequently joined Gandhi's camp. There he got nominated as a member of the executive council in Harijan Sevak Sangh. This confrontation with Babasaheb also led MC Rajah to sign a pact with BS Moonje, leader of All India Hindu Mahasabha opposing his demand of separate electorate for the Dalit community. This pact is known as Rajah-Moonje pact. He also opposed Babasaheb's call for conversion from Hindu religion at Yeola conference in 1935. But soon after he got disllusioned with congress and Gandhi as he found Harijan Sevak Sangh to be a body of sychophants of Gandhi and without any vision for Dalit empowerment. MC Rajah accepted his mistake and joined hands with Babasaheb Ambedkar once again. In 1942, both made a joint presentation, considered as landmark in the Dalit movement, in front of Sir Stafford Cripps commission demanding socio-political rights for the Dalit community Ÿ

Celebrating Dalit History Month

Searching for the Past by Iyothee Thassar and Ambedkar Research Scholars Forum

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he idea that the Dalits were always deprived throughout the history was challenged by a group of young scholars in a meeting held on April 19th, 2008. Iyothee Thassar and Ambedkar Research Scholars Forum (IARSF) organized this meeting as a part of the celebration of 'Dalit History Month' in Chennai. P. Ponnuswamy, a research scholar from the Department of Tamil, University of Madras, introduced the Feb - Mar 2009

concept of 'Dalit History Month', which he said, is inspired by the 'Black History Month' celebrated in USA. Various Dalit groups from all over the world are now observing 'Dalit History Month' in the month of April every year to commemorate Babasaheb's birth anniversary and to generate discourse on the Dalit ‘ history and culture. Dr. P. Balamurugan, Lecturer in History, emphasized the need for new . INSIGHT-YOUNG VOICES

interpretations in writing/reading history through Dalit perspectives. Quoting studies on the inscriptions of the Chola period, he argued that Indian historians have either ignored or failed to draw obvious conclusions regarding the references to the Dalit and other Sudra castes found in such inscriptions. "It is not unusual to find gaps in the history as they are normally about an episode, intentions or some

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information. However, in Indian history writing, it is not accidental that a whole mass is missing from the scene," he said. He argued that many ancient inscriptions have clearly mentioned about various Sudra and Untouchable castes, particularly in context of Devadaayaa (Grants to the Temple) and Brahmadana (Donations to the Priest). This shows that Dalits had properties and many of them donated lands to the religious bodies. It was only during the late Chola period that the Dalit castes were confined to menial jobs and were dispossessed due to enforcement of rigorous caste regime. Dr. K .Raghupathi, from Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, spoke about the changing nature of Dalit leadership in erstwhile Madras Province to post-Independent Tamilnadu. Analyzing various agitations and struggles led by Dalit leaders and organizations, he contended that the Dalit leadership in pre-Independence period was much militant and worked for fundamental rights, while post-independence Dalit leadership ended up being ineffective and opportunistic. Before independence, the Dalit struggle in Madras province under the leadership of Rettamalai Srinivasan, MC Rajah and Sahajaananda Swamigal was clearly guided by a 'positive agenda' of human rights and socio-economic equality for the Dalit community. However, the post-Independence Dalit leadership has limited itself to responding only towards successive caste-based atrocities and Dalit massacres. Being part of a democratic polity and having a constitution that guarantees equal rights for the Dalits, the leadership should have been

doing their job much better. Such is not the case and the present Dalit leadership is completely devoid of any positive agenda. It is a huge setback for the community. According to Dr. K. Raghupati, the root cause of such decay in Dalit leadership lies in the Poona Pact (1932), where Babasaheb Ambedkar was forced to give away his demand for separate electorate. J. Balasubramaniam (PhD scholar, Madras Institute of Development Studies) traced the history of one village (Tiruppanikarisalkulam in Tirunelveli district) and tried to explain the complex relationship between land and caste. He augmented his findings with documentary evidences, testimonies, village legends, folktales and other narratives. According to him, in late 19th century, the Dalits of this village witnessed a political renaissance due to their migration that gave them huge exposure of external world. In early decades of 20th century, some Dalits started investing in constructing schools, libraries and youth clubs for the benefit of the community which eventually got translated into political mobilisation in the form of a vibrant Adi-Dravida Mahajana Sabha. However little later, this Dalit assertion was assimilated by much younger but powerful Dravidian Movement. The conceptual notion of Dravidian was actually proposed and brought to circulation in the political realm first by the Dalits but was taken over by the resource-rich middle caste groups. Then, the Dalit leadership started calling themselves 'AdiDravidas'. Later in his presentation, J. Balasubramaniam stressed that the Dalits in Tamil Nadu should now get rid of the 'patronizing agenda' of the Dravidian Movement Another research scholar

Stalin Rajangam, working on the Dalit history, spoke about the life and struggle of a Dalit activist known as Vanchinagaram Kandan in Melur. The dominant caste people killed Kandan, when he tried to fight against the untouchability and other discriminations in the 1980s. Today, his memory is alive among everyone and he has become a 'folk-god'. The local Dalits have constructed a temple in his memory that can be seen as sign of increasing assertion from the community. Ratnamala, Ph.D scholar from Communication Department, M.S. University, Tirunelveli, spoke about Thamirabarani Massacre, in which 17 Dalit laborers were brutally murdered by the police in 1999. She narrated about the media coverage given to this gruesome incident. The, then, newspaper reports were guilty of distorting facts while reporting and thus diluting the whole issue. Scholar and writer G. Aloysius, well known for bringing out the works of Iyothee Thassar, presided over this meeting. While commenting on the need of such scholarly initiatives, he appreciated the efforts of celebrating Dalit History Month and said that even highly funded academic seminars in Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University do not come out with such insightful and multi-disciplinary perspectives on history. The exhibition of the documents related to the Dalit history was also displayed on this occasion. It included copies of Assembly debates, memorandums submitted by our great leaders MC Rajah, R. Srinivasan and minutes of the AdiDravida Mahajana Sabha. The meeting concluded with a documentary screening on the life and work of Iyothee Thassar made by Pari Chezhiyan Ÿ

Both reports submitted by J. Balu, Madras Institute of Development Studies,Chennai.

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Feb - Mar 2009

Tamilnadu Non-implementation of Reservations

Dalit Leader Files Case Against IIT MADRAS

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n 15th May, the Tamil Dalit leader Thol Thirumavalavan (President, Viduthalai Chiruthaikal Katchi) filed a writ petition at Madras High Court, seeking its intervention against caste-based discrimination in student admissions and faculty recruitment undertaken by IIT Madras administration. According to the Dalit leader, the IITs, since their inceptions, have singularly failed to provide proper representation to the SC/ST community in admissions. Despite being completely funded by the Indian state, IITs have displayed their complete recultance to adhere with the constitutional norms of providing 22.5% reservations in admissions for SC/ST students. This fact can be verified by the data about the total number of students enrolled in the academic year of 2004-05 in IIT Madras (see table). The Deputy Registrar of IIT Madras, provided this statistics to a researcher seeking information for the Times Higher Education Supplement, London. The total students on the rolls of IIT Madras in the year 2004-2005 were 4687. However, the total number of SC/ST students was only 562, thus constituting only 11.9 % of the total students. If the reservation for SC/ST students had been followed properly there would have been 1054 students from the reserved category. The Dalit leader also rasied serious questions about the 'preparatory courses' undertaken by

IIT Administration for the &RXUVHV 7RWDO 6&67 3HUFHQWDJH Dalit students, where a (QUROOHG limited number of SC/ST %7HFK    candidates are admitted to a preparatory course of one'XDO    year duration in case all the 'HJUHH reserved seats are not filled. 06F    This course attempts 07HFK    to prepare the students in Physics, Mathematics, and 0%$    Chemistry of 10+2 level. On 06    successful completion of the course, the students are 3K'    offered direct admission to Students In IIT Madras (2004-05) the undergraduate programs in the next academic year. exam, she was asked to take up the However, the reality is preparatory course in IIT Madras otherwise. In the name of preparatory although she had scored brilliant 94 courses, the SC/ST students are per cent marks in Class XII. However, segregated and their stay in IIT is at the end of the course in IIT Madras, stigmatized as non-meritorious she was failed in one subject, students. Though several lofty ideas Physics. She could not believe this are given to back-up the existence of and went to National Commission for this course, yet, not even once the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled quota for SC/ST students had Tribes for redressal that forced IIT completely filled. Above all, if the management for re-examination and Dalit student fails in this course she/ many Dalit students got admitted he is not allowed any re-examination, after that. or another attempt to re-do the course According to Thol and has to forfeit his/her seat secured Thirumavalavan, the concept of in the IIT JEE. preparatory course is an illegal In fact, in 2001, Chennai-based subversion of the reservation policy Dalit Media Network came out with a and there is also a strong need for report exposing the case of Sujee some kind of academic audit of IITs Teppal, an ST student who topped to be undertaken to ensure that these the Andhra Pradesh common institutions are not able to destroy entrance test (EAMCET) for the concept of social justice in such engineering in her category but a blatant manner Ÿ instead wanted to pursue B.Tech from IIT. After clearing the IIT entrance With inputs from Meena Kandasamy, Anna University, Chennai

Feb - Mar 2009

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Maharashtra Court’s Verdict on Khairlanji

No Casteism, No Molestation, No Rapes; Only Killings

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n 24th September, after 16 month long trial, the Bhandara district and sessions court pronounced its judgment on the case of Khairlanji killings. Out of the 11 convicts, 6 have been awarded death sentence due to their direct involvement in the killings. Two of the convicts were handed life imprisonment, whereas rest 3 were acquitted due to the lack of evidence against them. The punishment awarded to the killers have brought some relief to the Dalit community, which was quite agitated over the gruesome killings of the four members of a Dalit family. However, the sad part is, despite a planned mob attack by caste-hindus that led to the killings, the court had ruled out the castehatred angle, stating that there was no evidence to that effect. As a consequence, none of the accused could be charged under the Prevention of Atrocities on SC/ST Act (1989). It has also refused the charges of rape, even molestation by stating the same reason of lack of evidence. According to the honourable judge, the naked bodies of the two Dalit women were fished out of the canal but there was nothing to prove that the accused had removed their clothes before ferrying their bodies in a bullock cart, towards the canal. Thus, it had declined to register the case under IPC 354(molestation). It seems that the honourable court at least accepted the killings, probably, because it could not declare the dead bodies alive! The Khairlanji village lies in the

Bhandara district of n o r t h e a s t Maharashtra. On September 29, 2006, a mob of about 50 caste-hindus attacked the house of Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange and killed his wife Surekha (44 years), daughter Priyanka (18), sons Sudhir Hang till Death : (21) and Roshan (23 and blind) in the broad daylight. According to the newspaper reports, the village caste-hindus were enraged as the Bhotmange family had showed courage to resist their efforts to grab some portion of agricultural land that belong to Bhotmange’s. The Bhotmange’s were one among very few Dalit families of the village dominated by caste-hindus, mostly belonging to the kunbi caste. Apart from the land issue, it seems that the caste-hindu villagers were also jealous as the Bhotmange family was relatively better off than other Dalit families and all the three children were getting proper education. On top of that, the Bhotmange’s, especially Bhaiyyalal’s wife Surekha Bhotmange, was bold enough to testify against some caste-hindu villagers in the local police station, pertaining to the case of physical assault on one of her relatives. In the area, where one’s caste denotes her social standing and also prescribes her behaviour, the little

prosperous, assertive and educationally forward Dalit Bhotmange’s family was considered deviant, threat to the caste hierarchy and therefore insulting to the castehindu sensibilities. Therefore, almost the whole village decided to attack this family to maintain the sanctity of caste hierarchy. According to the eyewitnesses, they were first stripped naked, dragged from Photos courtesy atrocitynews.wordpress.com

1. Ramu Dhande 2. Vishvanath Dhande

their hut to an open ground and were beaten by a mob of about 50 people. Rest of the villagers, including the caste-hindu women, witnessed this brutality, without interfering. Surekha and Priyanka were gang-raped, and tortured to death in full public view. Then, both the sons were stabbed to death with their private parts mutilated. There could be no other reason, apart from the caste hatred, that could induce the brutal manner in which the Bhotmange’s family was killed in the broad daylight. The caste composition of the mob, complicity of the whole village, audacity of the attack and the brutal execution of the attack – these all are common characteristics of any Dalit massacres. It is indeed unfortunate that, the honourable court was not able to understand the true nature of this caste-based killings. If such incidents were treated as mere criminal acts, devoid of any castiest motivation, the Prevention of SC/ST Atrocities Act would soon lose its all relevance Ÿ

With inputs from Ratnesh Kumar, BANISS, Mhow

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Jharkhand Indian School of Mines University, Dhanbad

Jamadars: 2 out of 2 Sanitary Inspectors: 0 out of 2

A

ccording to the letterhead of Indian School of Mines University, Dhanbad, it has been "In service of the Nation, since 1926". It is indeed a noble idea for any institution, to serve the nation. What better way to do so by an institution, completely funded by public money, than to be inclusive, to reflect the diversity of the nation, its citizenry. However, the problem starts when that institution, in the name of serving the nation, becomes the monopoly of few. Indian School of Mines University is one such institution. It is one of the oldest engineering/technical institutes of the country. It was established in 1926, on lines of Royal School of Mines, London, in the heart of mineral-rich belt-Jharkhand, by the then colonial government of India and endorsed by Indian National Congress. Both the rulers and the contesting power of that time were unanimous on the need of such institute that could provide technical know-how to the nascent Indian mineral industry. Incidentally, Jharkhand is also a state, which has one of the highest percentages of SC/ST population (28 % ST and 12 % SC) in the country. The identity of the state is completely intertwined with the tribal identity. However, ISMU is one institution, located in Jharkhand, which belies this, through its conscious exclusion of both SC and STs from its rank and file. So one can find in ISMU that both posts of Jamadar (manual scavenger) are held by SCs, though both posts are unreserved, whereas there are no SC/ST for the two post of sanitary inspector. Similarly for the Group C posts, which is almost always filled up with locals in any institution and require less educational qualification, the positions held by SC/ STs in ISMU does not reflect the local population profile. Out of total 201 Group C posts, SC/ST people held 38, making it 19 % of the total (see table 1). It is far below than stipulated 22.5 % SC/ST reservations, leave alone reflecting 40 % of state population. The situation becomes worse as we move towards higher echelons of ISMU. There are 50 posts of Group B employees in ISMU, out of which only 8% are filled by

Non-Teaching Total sanctioned Posts filled in Posts filled Post Post by SCs in by STs Group A

31

2

1

Group B

50

3

5

Guoup C

201

27

21

Table 1: Non-Teaching posts SC/STs. Then for 31 Group A (non-teaching) posts, ISMU has been able to recruit only 2 SCs and 1 STs. This is the case when the ISMU is constitutionally bound to provide 22.5 % positions to the SC/ST communities in all Group A, B, C posts. One can very well imagine the magnitude of exclusion of SC/ST people from the ISMU's teaching posts that does not, yet, come under the purview of Reservation provisions for SC/STs. There are absolutely no surprise in store for us as this 83 year old institution, with all its good Name of the Post

Total sanctioned Posts filled in Posts by SCs

Posts filled in by STs

Professor Associate

20 46

01

-

92

01

-

Professor Assistant Professor

Table 2: Teaching posts intention of serving the nation, has not been able to recruit even a single tribal (see table 2), who could be worthy of teaching the students here and that too situated in Jharkhand. ISMU has been very 'generous' of recruiting two SC persons as its faculty against total 158 faculty positions, making complete mockery of the nation that it claims to serve. It is shame that ISMU has failed to recruit more SC/ STs for its teaching positions, though hundreds of students from these communities might have graduated from the very same institute in its 83 years of existenceŸ

With inputs from Dr. Lal Chand Prasad, Benaras Hindu University, Varanasi Feb - Mar 2009

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