The Ambedkarite Students’ Association (ASA) at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, released a statement to the press announcing that they were forced to call off the Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations that were scheduled to take place on Thursday, April 14. Journalist Sujat Ambedkar, the great grandson of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, was invited as the guest for the celebrations but was denied entry into the campus by the administration on Thursday after he reached the venue.
Ilaiyaraaja, a member of ASA at TISS, says, “We had submitted the application on April 8. The administration responded saying that we can conduct the event. However, they mentioned that no outsiders will be permitted. We believed they were referring to other attendees who are not from TISS, not that they would deem the guest as an ‘outsider,’” he said. Ilaiyaaraja added, “As per the protocol, the application is reviewed within five days by the administration. In this case, the administration had already permitted students to conduct the event, but had not given permission for the guest to enter the campus.”
The press release issued by ASA on Thursday also cites that other events such as the ‘State of India Education Report Launch’ on April 6, and the ‘Service Training Programme for 20 All India Service Officers on Social Policy and Governance’ from March 21 to 25, were held on the campus wherein members from outside the campus were in attendance. “The authorities also approved Holi celebrations on campus ground,” the statement read. It is to be noted that the Maharashtra government announced that all curbs related to COVID-19 would be lifted from April 2 in the state. TNM has reached out to the Dean of Student Affairs (DSA) for a comment and we await his response.
Ilaiyaraaja points out that although students had further appealed to the DSA, director and registrar at TISS, they did not hear back from the DSA and registrar. “The director had responded to our email but the decision to not permit ‘outsiders’ was not changed,” Ilaiyaraaja tells TNM.
“To not allow Mr Sujat Ambedkar, the great grandson of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, on his Jayanti Celebration, despite him making time for the institute, without providing any reason for the same, is a deeply humiliating, discriminatory and casteist practice against the entire Dalit community. The Ambedkarite Students Association conducted a meeting and collectively concluded that in order to offer the last shred of respect to Mr Sujat Ambedkar, we have no choice but to cancel the entire event. We, the students from marginalised communities, think that to not allow Dr Ambedkar’s family member on campus is a modern form of untouchability being practised,” the statement read.
From battling casteist abuse to other forms of discrimination, students from marginalised communities have spoken about caste-based discrimination practiced in educational institutitions in the country. Videos of a Humanities professor, Seema Singh, from IIT Kharagpur, hurling abuses at students from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes at the English class she was teaching, went viral in 2021. Another example is Kerala-based PhD scholar Deepa Mohanan’s hunger strike to call out casteism in academia. Deepa told TNM in November last year that Nandakumar Kalarickal, the director at International and Inter University Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (IIUCNN), had stopped her from accessing the chemicals and polymers in the laboratory, denied her seating at the workplace, worked to block her stipend, and had locked her alone inside the lab once. Deepa had also alleged that he has been rude and abusive towards her, the only Dalit scholar in her batch, and has generally done everything in his power to ensure Deepa doesn’t get her PhD on time.