“Please serve 10mg of sodium azide to all the Dalit students at the time of admission.”
The above lines are from a letter written by Rohith Vemula to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, dated December 18, 2015. In the letter, he had registered his protest against the harassment and caste discrimination faced by Dalit students from university authorities, staff, and dominant caste youth. Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder lays bare the manner in which higher education institutions in India have turned into neo-agraharas (neo-Brahmin enclaves).
We lost Rohith Vemula in 2016 due to the influence of right-wing politics at the University of Hyderabad. It is hard to forget the role that the national level leaders of the BJP and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) played in his institutional murder. Although eight years have passed, the ‘Rohith Act,’ which was proposed to prevent caste discrimination against Dalit students in higher educational institutions, still hasn’t been passed. The Modi government has shown no interest in saving the lives of Dalit students.
In 2006, a committee led by Professor Sukdeo Thorat studied caste discrimination at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and submitted a report in 2007. It brought to light the suffering that Dalit students experience at institutions like AIIMS. Some of the key findings of this report are listed in the table below:
These findings reveal the harsh caste discrimination and untouchability that Dalit students endure in reputed higher education institutions. They were routinely humiliated with caste slurs for their skin colour, caste-based occupations, and for availing reservation for their studies. The college administration and faculty members also deliberately failed Dalit students, withheld their doctoral degrees, and delayed the disbursal of their scholarships and stipends.
The primary reason for caste discrimination is India's caste system. Just as caste has permeated all institutions of the land, higher education institutions too are steeped in casteist discrimination. They are completely enmeshed with Brahminism and capitalism.
Origins of Brahminism in education
The British Charter of 1813, which decreed that scientific knowledge and literature must be embraced, was the foundation of higher education in modern India. Even though Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Minute declared in 1835 that the Indian education system must create “a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and intellect” to achieve British hegemony, it enabled Shudras and ati-Shuras to obtain an education.
At the same time, the Phule couple — Jotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule — laid the foundation for an Indian education system. They saw success for about half a century, but Indian local governments simply did not adopt their curriculum because they imparted an education that was opposed to a Brahminical caste order.
In 1854, Charles Wood’s Despatch, a set of recommendations for educational reform in India, directed that places of learning be opened to common people. As a result, the universities were set up in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, and Christian missionaries started 28 colleges affiliated to these universities.
In response, several higher universities and colleges were set up on the basis of religion, such as Sikh University, Aligarh Muslim University, Vedic University, Banaras Hindu University, and Kashi Vidyapeeth. Thus, the dominant castes and classes of different religions came forward to disseminate Brahminical education. A curriculum that cared little for scientific temper was given more importance. There was simply nothing in the curriculum about the annihilation of caste, bigotry, gender-based discrimination, language discrimination, or equality and the cultures of marginalised communities.
From 1916, the British government itself set up universities such as the Mysuru, Osmania, and Annamalai varsities. While, on the surface, these institutions were secular, it was predominantly those from the dominant castes who obtained education initially. The corporate sector of the time followed suit and started educational institutions. To some extent, there was an impression that these institutions were motivated more by a desire to serve than by financial gain. As a result, a sense of admiration for the affluent classes was created among the public.
The Tatas, Birlas, and other capitalists started educational institutions, and by providing the very same upper classes a Brahminical and capitalist education, they turned these institutions into neo agraharas.
Post-Independence Brahminism
The first University Education Commission (1948-50) of Independent India, formed under the leadership of Dr Radhakrishnan, made no effort to universalise education. The Kothari Commission of 1966 went so far as to hold that education would not bring about social reform and made no effort to give importance to Dalits, Shudras, or women in education.
By the 1980s, the Brahmins and Banias who had benefitted from the English education policies of the British and post-Independence Indian governments were ready to take up the jobs created by the new industries set up during Jawaharlal Nehru’s time. The higher education of the third generation of these dominant caste people had to be secured. The Brahmin-Bania bureaucracy of the 1980s recognised that demand for higher education had increased and created the opportunities for its expansion. By 1986, there were 150 universities and 5,000 colleges across the county. It was the third-generation Brahmin-Bania forces who studied in these institutions that lent strength to the anti-Mandal agitations in the 1990s.
By the 1980s, Dalit movements that emphasised education for Dalits had taken root across the country. Even though it is true that non-Brahmin castes received reservation in jobs during the rule of pro-people kings such as Shahu Maharaj, the Wodeyars, and others, those opportunities reached the bulk of Dalits only after the Constitution of Independent India came into force. This is evidenced by the fact that only 9.06% of Dalits were literate in 1961. Even though the first generation of Dalits who obtained primary education in large numbers in post-Independent India raised the literacy rate of Dalits to 65.32% by 2011, they were still behind the 78.78% literacy rate of other castes. Successive governments of independent India, who did not give as much importance to the education of Dalits as they could have, were directly responsible for this situation.
Nevertheless, by the 1980s, Dalits had begun to enter Group C and D jobs in the government. The second generation of Dalits turned towards higher education in the 2000s, but largely chose to study humanities. Thus, technical and medical education still remained the bastion of Brahmins, Banias, and other landowning castes and classes. The tables below illustrate this:
In the 1990s, the red carpet was rolled out for private educational institutions as part of the neo-liberal project. Brahmin-Bania intellectuals supported free-market policies even though they understood the ideology behind the conditions placed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on developing countries. After World War II, American capitalists moved away from investing in weapons development and began to eye education and health. The Brahmins and Banias in the government and bureaucracy wholeheartedly welcomed these profiteers into the education sector in the 2000s. Among the supporters of this project were a class of opportunistic Shudra and Dalit elected representatives and intellectuals.
Thus, due to the liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation policies introduced in the 1990s, higher education ended up in the hands of private capitalists. In 1983, over 80% of educational institutions were run by the government. By 1999, the government’s share had been reduced to 67%, with private investment in education jumping by 11%.
The government dramatically reduced public spending on education as a result of structural adjustment programmes. The credit for this goes to the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. By 2006-07, around 91% of engineering, 92% of physiotherapy, 95% of pharmacy, and 94% of hotel management institutions were privately run.
Even the judiciary has often ruled in favour of private capitalists in cases pertaining to public education. The third generation of Dalits who dreamed of obtaining technical and higher education now found themselves facing insurmountable obstacles. On the one hand, it was the Brahminisation of government universities and colleges that was performing the Tandav, and on the other, private colleges run by profiteering capitalists were like the steps Vamana took to push Bali into Patala.
This situation was exacerbated by the fact that higher education institutions are brimming with faculty from the dominant castes. According to an RTI reply in 2024, 82.8% of faculty members in 13 IIMs are from the dominant castes. Dalit faculty members constitute 5%, Adivasis 1%, and other backward castes (OBC) 9.6%. Similarly, 80% of the faculty in 21 IITs are from the dominant castes, while Dalits make up 6%, Adivasis 1.6%, and OBCs 11.2%. In some educational institutes, there isn’t a single faculty member from marginalised communities. Many posts in reserved categories go unfilled year after year. Another worrying development is that 13,626 Dalit, Adivasi, and OBC students who enrolled in higher education institutes, including central universities, between 2018 and 2023, have dropped out. Half of these are SC and ST students.
These avatars of Brahminism and capitalism have taken the lives of many Dalits, including Rohith Vemula.
Since 2014, under the Modi government, education policies themselves have been completely Brahminised. Simultaneously, scholarships for students of graduate and postgraduate courses have been reduced. Between 2015 and 2024, public spending on education has been peanuts—a mere 4.1-4.6% of GDP. By injecting its communal Hindutva politics into college campuses and supporting the ABVP, the Modi government has undertaken propaganda campaigns against the demands of Dalit-Bahujan students which would uphold their self-respect. Anyone who questions this is targeted. It is as if private capitalists have become the very government.
A Rohith Act
When Dalit students battle such a tough atmosphere to finally enter institutions of higher learning, people with Brahminical and capitalist mindsets inflict caste-based discrimination on them. The situation described by the Thorat committee report in 2007 continues to exist even today. While the UPA government back then did nothing to remedy it, the NDA government today is encouraging caste-based discrimination. This is what led to Rohit Vemula’s institutional murder.
No student should feel compelled to take their own life, but according to information provided by the Modi government in Parliament, between 2014 and 2022, 122 students died by suicide at IITs, IIMs, and other central universities. More than half of these students were Dalits and Adivasis. Rife with taunts about reserved and unreserved, veg and non-veg, taxpayers and ‘freeloaders’, college campuses are stifling for Dalit, Shudra, and Adivasi students.
During such a time, a Rohith Act against caste-based discrimination, which would save Dalit students and enable them to realise their dreams, needs to be implemented. Each state government in the country must exert pressure on the Union coalition government to pass such a law. We must launch a people’s movement to fulfil Rohit Vemula’s last wish. Higher educational institutions, which are neo agraharas, must be made humane through law in order to create an atmosphere free of discrimination for Dalit students.
Vikas Mourya is an author and part of the Campaign for Rohit Act.
This piece was translated by Anisha Sheth.