Physical harm and being humiliated on the basis of caste are equally damaging, says academician Yashpal Jogdand. It is these precarious conditions that Dalit students must endure as make their journey through India’s higher education institutions.
On February 12, a first-year Dalit student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, died by suicide. The 18-year-old student, Darshan Solanki, had faced casteist humiliation, according to his family.
Jogdand, Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, told Scroll in an interview that there are no systemic efforts to address casteism and foster sensitivity among faculty, students and staff at these institutions.
The Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle student collective at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, has described the death as an institutional failure. It says that premier institutions lack mechanisms to help students from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes deal with harassment and discrimination on campus.
Jogdand’s work focuses on social identity, social psychology of caste, and stigma and wellbeing among marginalised groups. According to him, research suggests that members of the upper castes are generally aware of caste-related injustice and violence, but their response is usually ambivalent because of the sense of disruption to their worldview.
This story was originally published in scrol.in . Read the full story here