Raju-Venkatesh Solidarity Committee
This appeal finds its importance and urgency in the context of Prof.Amartya Sen’s arrival to University of Hyderabad on 19th December 2013; as well as, due to the prolonged student protests and debates against the Vice Chancellor and the administration, at the campus. In the wake of Dalit suicides, systemic failure and institutional lapses, VC refuses to accept and engage with the question of caste and institutionalized forms of caste discrimination.
The debate has come in the context of several student suicides, of Dalits particularly, due to a systemic discrimination against them. Most of the Dalit students have been experiencing different forms of exclusion. It starts from institutional spaces such as class rooms, labs and administrative block.
Please sign the following letter to Prof. Sen at change.org:
To:
Dear Prof.Amartya Sen
To address this issue at the University of Hyderabad, on discrimination in higher education, and, distinctly explain institutional forms of caste discrimination.
The debate has come in the context of several student suicides, of Dalits particularly, due to a systemic discrimination against them. Most of the Dalit students have been experiencing different forms of exclusion. It starts from institutional spaces such as class rooms, labs and administrative block. Dalits are taunted and ridiculed for their attempts to learn skills, to raise certain questions, and importantly but also glaringly, for their presence, itself, in the public space. It is, in fact, a clear-cut systemic, as well as, normative violence unleashed upon the marginalized sections, so as, to exclude them from main-stream academia.
Hence we request you, kindly, to address this issue at the University here, on discrimination in higher education, and, distinctly explain institutional forms of caste discrimination, at the investiture ceremony. Your kind gesture would sensitize university fraternity, most importantly, Prof. Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, the Vice-Chancellor – who thinks of issuing a show-cause notice to himself – as he fails to understand and denies a very criminal fact of the everyday, i.e., suffering and humiliation.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
~~~
[Via Dontha Prashanth]
