Raj Kumar

Amidst furores generated by the proposed changes in Delhi University, of late an evidence of brahmanical ingenuity is on grand display. When the FYUP course was announced, some say way back in 2008, there was no supporting argument that is for the benefit of SC/ST/OBCs, and it was never claimed to be so, by the administration or teachers' groups supporting FYUP, even in 2013 when the process of implementation got under way. But now there is a visible attempt to do so. And those who have been opposing the move, especially the left, have not belittled it on the ground that it will harm SC/ST/OBCs, and rightly so, as they never believed in primordial loyalties or identity politics. As per the argument in vogue, it will destroy the SC/ST/OBCs in the university. Now the mimicry, projected as a battle of nerves 'for and against the FYUP' has been turned on its head and there is a sinister casteist design to convert SC/ST/OBCs into the carriers of brahmanical political baggage. This is caste at its ugliest.

The whole bogey of FYUP cannot be understood in isolation. The changes at the higher education level by the ruling caste are being pushed for their own political considerations. For last 4-5 years there is a great desperation to dismantle the higher education; they destroyed the primary and secondary education in the country. Primary and secondary education is already controlled by the caste mafias where SC/ST/OBCs are systematically excluded and forced to go to the government maintained community kitchen to have Khichri (rotten and dangerous mixture of rice and vegetables). For all practical purposes ruling castes, including those in the judiciary, call these kitchens schools. But schools are supposed to provide food for thought and not food for the stomach. That is how they killed the primary and secondary education. SC/ST/OBCs parents no longer inquire their children what they study in the school as used to be the case in the past (at least with our generation this was the case). Now they ask what children ate in the school. Brahmanics of right, left and centrist orientation send their children to private schools mischievously called 'public schools'. What a travesty of education!

In last 20 years the ruling castes have destroyed the public sector in the country and upper caste capitalists have become billionaires by plundering public wealth with the active support of their international cousins. The so-called LPG is economic transformation strategy adopted by the ruling castes to destroy the Dalit-Bahujan economic prosperity, if any, they have achieved because of the protective representation and democratic constitutional functioning.

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Thahir Jamal KM

On 29th of April, the whole non-teaching staff along with some students started agitations in front of the administrative block demanding compensation for the deceased contract employee, who fell down from the fourth floor of the academic block of EFLU. All of a sudden, around 200 armed policemen rushed into the university with tear gas shells, water cannons and loaded guns and started lathi charging without any provocation. Tear gas machines were aimed towards the hostel, so the students wouldn't be able to take refuge in their rooms. All 35 acres of EFLU was then nothing but an open prison. Adding to the trauma of administrative discrimination, students felt completely alienated and insecure from what was home for the semester. It is with this police that our honourable VC madam assures security and safety on the campus!!

By this time, I had just woken up from my facebook delirium to view the real ground situation. Witnessing the violent nature of the police and their use of abusive words, I thought of recording visuals of the action. I obtained a camera from my friend. Within moments, policemen notice my camera and rush towards me, shouting: "yes, he is having the camera". They not only grabbed the camera, but they also packed me up in their armed hands. Soon my friend was by my side, offering explanations to the police: "He was just taking photographs. Why do you want to take him?" Without much ado or clarification, my friend was also shoved into the police van. Later from their queries and explanations, I understood that they caught me, suspecting that the camera was Dalit Camera. For the first time, I learned that taking photographs of Indian state's actions is an act of crime, inviting police action in Indian democracy. Moreover, I experienced the working mechanisms of the Indian state through its administrative apparatus.

The author and fellow student being arrested

EFLU administration has already permitted periodic police patrol to check 'unauthorized intruders' into the university. The reason offered being the security and safety of students in the university and hostel premises. Now the question is who will provide safety and security to students from police action? Counting the past experiences of Dalit-Muslim communities with the police in the Indian state, there is no way to trust the police. Rather there is enough reason to suspect police intrusion as a threat to the security of students from these communities. IB officials accompanied by local police and hostel office workers were seen sitting in front of students' rooms for hours in search of a Muslim student from Kerala. The growing links between the admin and police are no more a secret. The Vice Chancellor has fallen to the position of a military secret cell agent recruited to safeguard saffron nationalism in the name of national security.

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Forum against Caste Discrimination in Education

A petition shall be sent to the Vice Chancellor, EFLU, protesting the way in which the administration filed cases against 9 SC/ST/OBC students. Please sign the petition 'Stop Criminalization of SC/ST/OBC students in EFLU' on change.org to register your protest.

Building on this petition, this article discusses the issues surrounding the EFLU administration's high-handedness at greater length.

~

"Many years ago, I was..shocked to learn that I myself had been placed on an FBI list – of the Ten Most Wanted Criminals. This only began to make sense to me when I realized that I was not the exclusive target: through me, the FBI was transmitting a message to all revolutionary activists that they would be marked as criminals and that, in fact, our movements against imperialism and for racial and gender justice would be generally criminalized."

Angela Davis, "Hands Off Assata."

We strongly protest the criminal cases that have been filed against 9 SC/ST/OBC students in EFLU by the administration, at the Osmania police station on 10th May 2013. These students have been charged of rioting, wrongful restraining of people, damaging property, using criminal force and trespassing. All of this because they actively participated in the peaceful student protests that followed the suicide of Mudasir Kamran, a Kashmiri Muslim student, on March 2nd, 2013.

Disregarding all rules and regulations regarding disciplinary action in the university, Mudasir Kamran was sent to police custody at the behest of the Proctor for "counseling," after he had an altercation with a fellow student. It was after he was arrested and detained in the police station – some reports also say that he was tortured – that Mudasir committed suicide in his hostel room. From the evening that Mudasir died, armed police men were allowed to enter the campus and they kept accompanying the students through the meetings and candle light marches that followed. The students protested strongly against this till at last the police was made to leave the campus on March 3rd.

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This is the second part of the interview with P. Sivakami, ex-IAS officer, writer and politician who founded the political party, the 'Samuga Samatuva Padai', to work 'on the principles of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar, as a forum for social equality'. She is also the founder of the Dalit Land Rights Movement in Tamil Nadu.

Sivakami had talked to Kuffir during the National Dalit and Adivasi Women's Congress held at TISS, Mumbai, on Feb 15-16, 2013.

Continued from here.

Kuffir: We are disturbed by the Dharmapuri violence, one of the greatest tragedies in recent times, so many families were brought to the streets. What are your views on this? The Vanniyars are supposedly a backward class who are equally poor in some ways, but why did this happen? Their discourse seems (to indicate) there are more such things in the offing.

Sivakami: Actually, there have been inter-caste marriages between Dalits and Vanniyars earlier also, nothing happened there. Of late, a frustrated Ramadoss and his MLA Kaduvetti Guru, with ulterior motives, have been carrying out campaigns against inter-caste marriages and the repealing of the SC ST Act. Not only with ulterior motive of stopping of inter-caste marriages but they were also instigating caste violence, saying that, whoever tries to grab our girls should be murdered.

So they go on campaigning like that, and they were unchecked by the government, because these kinds of talk warrants arrest under normal circumstances. But the government did not do anything; plus because everybody knows what the attitude of the government towards the Dalits is. None of our requests are even heard by the government. Because we ask for promotion in vacancies, filling up of backlog vacancies, and we want new hostels for the students and increased allowances in hostels and infrastructural facilities in the villages, like basic amenities in the villages, drinking water, electricity and all that. And increased allocation for many requests like toilets and we are also asking for buying land from the Special Component Plan and give it to us. At least for self-help groups give some land because in Karnataka they have given land to the self-help groups.

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Dr. N. Sukumar

"A University stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and for the search of truth. It stands for the onward march of the human race towards ever higher objectives. If the Universities discharge their duties adequately, then it is well with the Nation and the People." 

~ Jawaharlal Nehru

"The most important and urgent reform needed in education is to transform it, to endeavor to relate it to the life, needs and aspirations of the people and thereby make it the powerful instrument of social, economic and cultural transformation necessary for the realization of the national goals. For this purpose, education should be developed so as to increase productivity, achieve social and national integration, accelerate the process of modernization and cultivate social, moral and spiritual values."

~ Radhakrishnan Commission on University Education, 1948-49

The University of Delhi, the largest public funded educational organization in the country, is rushing at break neck speed towards a four year undergraduate program. On the face of it, the course appears very innovative. However, a deeper analysis reveals a certain structural problem with the entire process of cultivating opinion, regarding the pedagogy among the academic community and the larger public, concerning the value of the FYUP. In the entire discourse, the VC is acting like a feudal paterfamilias who cannot brook any dissent. 

A Dubious Alliance 

In a poverty ridden country, only public institutions cater to the requirements of the downtrodden and the marginalized groups. Once the doors were opened to the neo-liberal market forces, the elites could access the resources across the globe leaving the crumbs for their unfortunate brethren. The debate on the FYUP has been hijacked by the Stephanians, an old boys' network, a caste club which seeks to set an agenda for the leftover Indian academia. One wonders, how many students in India have access to higher education and how many possess the wherewithal to fly to America. The FYUP is aimed at the American audience whereas 70 percent of DU's students comprise of the SC/ST/OBC, Hindi medium students. A hurriedly set together task force, in the form of caste and ideological army is stifling all dissent against the FYUP. The beleaguered DU administration has resorted to surveillance of all forms of media. Many of the Deans and Heads of Departments have signed in favour of the new program, whereas their colleagues have argued about the undemocratic and autocratic means resorted to justify the program. In response to write-ups appearing in the social and print media regarding the dubious claims made by the University authorities, the Registrar hastily cobbled together a Press Release on 3rd May 2013 signed by a few self-proclaimed 'Harijan' teachers. A closer investigation reveals that majority of the SC/ST teachers, who are the signatories of the above mentioned press release, belong to a particular college and a large number constitute ad hoc teachers. The hierarchical power relations are evident in the entire exercise. 

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Hany Babu & Jenny Rowena

There have been enraged debates against the proposed Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) of the Delhi University that is to be introduced from the next Academic session. A large number of teachers and students have already come out in open protest. However, the Union Ministry for HRD has come to the defense of the FYUP by claiming that it meets the "needs and challenges of the modern society and the nation". It was also claimed that FYUP "blends practical application with high-end knowledge, facilitating the students either to seek jobs, or become entrepreneurs or to undertake high end research". Many who oppose FYUP disagree strongly and talk about the dilution of courses, the hasty manner in which they are being introduced, and bemoan the impending "death" of a prestigious university. 

As OBC teachers who have confronted and struggled against the extremely bad track record of Delhi University in the implementation of reservations, we are concerned about the impact of this new policy on the OBC and other marginalized students. A point that we would like to foreground right at the outset is that a major structural change like the FYUP is ushered in at a juncture when Delhi University has been finally forced to implement the provisions of reservation as made mandatory by the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admissions) Act of 2006 following a series of agitations by various groups of students and teachers and interventions by the Courts. As the result of this, a typical classroom now is supposed to hold almost 50% students from the reserved categories, thereby majorly changing the constitution of the previously upper-caste dominated classrooms. 

What we find alarming is that the structure of Courses in the FYUP and the exit points together create an inbuilt mechanism that is going to have a calamitous effect on the interest of underprivileged students by forcing them to exit with degrees of lesser value, nullifying the battles won on the front of the implementation of reservation. With the help of these exit points, the FYUP ushers in a stratified structure of three kinds of degrees, which will not have the same value. Apart from this, we also argue that factors like the enforcement of a set of Foundation Courses which are not designed to give adequate grasp of any discipline and the extra cost that the FYUP entails are also detrimental to the interests of the students from weaker sections.  

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