Bhimraj M, a Dalit student from Tamil Nadu, has crowdfunded Rs 20 lakhs towards the expenses of his MPhil in Law at Oxford University. On Tuesday, June 20, TNM published a story on Bhimraj’s crowdfunding initiative. By Thursday, the initiative had received around Rs 15 lakh from more than 600 contributors. Tamil Nadu Olympic Association general secretary and state Basketball Association president Aadhav Arjuna contributed Rs 5 lakh towards the expenses. Aadhav also presented Bhimraj with a statue of Ambedkar and a book.
Bhimraj has been awarded the Ratanshaw Bomanji Zaiwalla Scholarship, which is a partial scholarship that mostly covers tuition fees, given by the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, based at Somerville College. The scholarship amount that he has been awarded will almost cover the tuition fee of £26,450. The amount gathered through the crowdfunding will help cover living and other expenses (like the visa cost, immigration, health surcharge, airfare, etc.) that amount to approximately £19,518 (around Rs 20 lakh).
As part of his MPhil at Oxford, Bhimraj intends to analyse the Indian legal mechanisms in challenging discriminatory waste facility siting. His other research projects have touched upon the intersection of law and Dalit rights. His Masters dissertation analysed the adequacy of international human rights mechanisms to address caste-based discrimination. His now discontinued doctoral research was on environmental discrimination faced by Dalits in India.
Formerly a PhD scholar at the South Asian University (SAU) in New Delhi, Bhimraj faced disciplinary action in November 2022 for participating in the student protests demanding increased stipends and scholarships. He was initially rusticated for a year, and then expelled after he and others questioned the University’s harassment of a student who had to be hospitalised following his rustication for protesting against the SAU administration.