ABSTRACT
The structures of social discrimination that the university – in its liberal exhilaration of ‘freedom’ – is believed to be exempted from, have historically moulded its fortunes. This essay draws our attention to the assumptions of caste privilege that underlie public discourse on higher education in India – whereby anti-reservation campaigns across campuses have routinely made news, while repeated instances of Dalit suicides within institutional spaces have provoked little outrage or alarm. That constitutional mandates for affirmative action have often translated into popular perceptions of ‘disentitlement’ for privileged student groups is evidence of the university’s relationship with social justice. Babu surmises that the happenings at IIT Madras and University of Hyderabad throw up an interesting case for the self-assertion of Dalit Bahujans and a coming-of-age of identity struggles for marginalized student populations. The demographic shifts in higher education have enabled students from socially oppressed groups to move from a rights-framework around basic questions of equality (of opportunity) to ‘citizenship’-claims based on freedom of expression. The inconstancy of progressive liberal politics on issues of social justice factor into Babu’s plea an urgency for the ‘convergence’ of interests and struggles, in order to re-make the university.
