Anoop Kumar
I believe every educational institution in this country, especially the so called ‘national’ ones have been deliberately designed in a way to exclude the majority of Indians and to term them as ‘non meritorious’ at the expense of a very small upper caste English speaking elite.
It is a conspiracy. It is not accident. It has been a well thought out, well executed chicanery for the benefit of very few… JNU, TISS, EFLU and all other central institutions are just fraud perpetrated on the rest.
Students and Social Justice Activism
Working at the community level gives you lot of cushion, many among us get instant support and recognition, but the same is not true for our student activists.
Since I have the experience of both, I can vouch for our student activists being more vulnerable as they fight mostly all alone, without outside support and most importantly they fight directly with the enemies who control their entire careers and who with one stroke can ruin our students lives forever. Have witnessed it firsthand.
Therefore the responsibility of supporting our student activists, wherever they are, lies totally on the community of conscious Ambedkarites…
For the stakes are too high, the battle too tough, the enemy there is at its diabolical best, and the student activists fighting for all of us too precious and our only assets…
They have criminalized your identity. You are not only an unworthy student but are a criminal. A hardened one. For getting admissions in institutions that were never designed to teach you. You are an intruder. An illegal alien.
Hence they have turned your educational aspirations/experiences into much cruel prison statements full with humiliations, suicides and drop outs, devoid of even a remote chance of finding pride or any sense of achievement for your educational efforts.
Majority of us have internalized this and feel ever guilty of our ‘transgressions’ and try to defend ourselves, in our heads, trying to justify our presence in these institutions and our ‘non-merit’ on the basis of unequal caste system, a result of over a millennium of deprivation.
But, for much of our discomfort, they have already moved away from ‘caste’, from some assumed ‘privileges’ their forefathers seemed to enjoy in the past due to caste.
Now Padam shri Prof K. L. Chopra does not need quotes of ‘Manu smriti’ to hate you. He has solid data in the form of results/performances of SC/ST students in IITs in his hand to prove your non-merit. To hate you. To say that you are ‘unteachable’ donkeys. To force you to commit suicides, drop out or if able to graduate as a complete mental wreck.
How you are going to fight this? Not by quoting Manu smriti for sure. ‘Upper’ castes have moved far beyond these texts. They have IITs, IIMs, JNU, EFLU, TISS and all such institutions as undeniable proof of their superiority and your non-meritoriousness.
The day we got reservations, they started constructing the discourse of merit and made sure every educational institution falls into that discourse and works towards perpetuating that, making it a complete fool-proof mechanism to not only exclude but also to criminalize those who somehow entered there.
Unless you dismantle, deconstruct these institutions, bit by bit, their entrance exams, their pedagogic practices, their rationale for existence, their faculty/student intake, their caste/class backgrounds, their educational policies, it is impossible for us, for our children and for their children. Without which we won’t be meritorious ever, not even in thousand years.
Now upper castes do not quote some brahminical texts to call themselves pure and superior they quote these institutions!
Try it if you don’t believe!
All members of the SC ST and OBC communities across religions are deeply invested in the principles of social justice, and each one them, from parliamentarians to civil service officers to academics and families of past, present and future students have to come forward to have this unjust suspension of our students in JNU revoked immediately.
Finally, more power to our friends Rahul Sonpimple, Bhupali Kusum Vitthal and our other student activists in Jnu. As an ex-Jnuite, I am aware of how vicious, diabolical and brahminical jnu administration has always been. You guys are too brave, more than any of us of past. You are waging a battle and fighting it fiercely, something which we could only imagine then but never could do. But please in all this, do take care of your well being too. More power to you ! Jaibhim!
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Anoop Kumar is an Ambedkarite activist and teacher based in Wardha
