Caste, Higher Education and Senthil’s ‘Suicide’ (EPW)

(This was published in Economic and Political Weekly, VOL 43 No. 33 August 16 - August 22, 2008, pp 10-12)

Caste, Higher Education and Senthil’s ‘Suicide’
Senthilkumar Solidarity Committee (a group of intellectuals and activists based in Hyderabad)

The death of Senthilkumar, a dalit research scholar, at the University of Hyderabad earlier this year is one more example of how, reservations notwithstanding, caste discrimination continues to afflict India’s institutions of higher learning.

The suicide earlier this year of Senthilkumar, a dalit PhD student at the University of Hyderabad, has once again exposed the murky realities of caste discrimination in our universities. The debate on reservations in higher education has centred around the question of who “deserves” reservations, while the brahminical ordering of institutions of higher education has received only sporadic attention.* Senthil’s suicide has re-affirmed the fact that the dominant academic culture works relentlessly to subvert the logic of reservations.
The body of Senthilkumar was discovered in his room at the New Research Scholars Hostel on February 24, 2008. Since then, the attitude of the university has been one of denial and cover-up. The initial claims were that Senthil had died of “cardiac arrest”. Even after newspaper reports suggested a case of suicide,** the university did not take any action, and continued to feign ignorance. While the post-mortem report ascertaining the cause of death as “poisoning” is dated February 28, it was not made public until April. A dalit student agitation demanded an enquiry as well as compensation for the family – the minimum an academic institution is expected to do in the circumstances. To this the registrar’s response was that “there was no such provision in the University guidelines”.
In an open letter to the vice chancellor, the SC/ST Joint Action Committee (JAC: comprising students, faculty and staff association members) on campus demanded that the rules regarding the fellowships
for students be modified, in order to “provide a much broader philosophical premise for the grant of scholarship” and that the procedure for allotting guides to PhD students be made transparent. They also demanded a judicial enquiry; there was no response to this. Instead, an internal fact-finding committee was appointed in mid-March, only after intervention from D Ravikumar, the well known dalit intellectual and a member of the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly. The committee comprised only faculty members of the university; the JAC refused to depose before it.
The report submitted by this committee was again withheld until an application under the RTI Act (from the JAC) forced the university to make it available, finally, on April 28.
In what follows, we draw from this report, newspaper coverage and personal discussions to demonstrate the reason for all these evasions and denial – Senthil was yet another victim of the entrenched realities of caste discrimination that pervade academic spaces and practices in the university.

Senthil
Senthilkumar was the first to enter higher education not only from his family, but the entire Panniandi community. His parents survive on pig-rearing in Salem district of Tamil Nadu. He had finished an MPhil in Physics from Pondicherry University before financial constraints forced him to interrupt his education. He enrolled with the School of Physics at the University of Hyderabad in 2007. This arduous journey into higher education could only have been made by a person of exceptional ability and determination.
Senthil was the only student from the batch of 2007 who was yet to be assigned a supervisor. He failed in one of the four papers required in coursework and in the first supplementary exam. He had the provision of writing another exam in March and clearing his backlog.
The non-NET fellowship (awarded to students at the University of Hyderabad) was his only source of survival as a student. It was also an important means of supporting the family. As the JAC also pointed out in their letter, according to new university guidelines, the fellowships for PhD students are not linked to “performance” in coursework. However, the School of Physics acted in contravention to this and Senthil’s fellowship was stopped, his name put up on the notice-board, citing his failure in coursework as the reason. The rule connecting fellowship with “performance” in coursework clearly has a punitive logic. In this logic, the fellowship becomes a tool of punishment in the hands of the authorities against students, rather than a means to support their education. It is well known that the demands of higher education make the fellowship absolutely crucial for dalit students, and withholding it amounts to wilfully denying them a place in the university, in the first instance. As Senthil’s case shows, the denial of the fellowship can have even more serious consequences.
After protests by a dalit student, a deans’ committee meeting was held and this rule was changed, a week before Senthil’s death. Incredibly enough, the decision was not communicated to Senthil or announced, unlike the very public withdrawal of the fellowship. The report records that the loss of the fellowship was a source of intense anxiety for Senthil in the period leading up to his suicide; it was undoubtedly one of the reasons that drove him to it.
The report’s account of the School of Physics reads like a modern-day manual on practising caste discrimination. In 2006, it became the only school in the faculty of Sciences to introduce coursework. Incidentally, this was also the year that the Rajiv Gandhi Fellowships for SC/ST students in higher education were instituted. At every step of the way, the school seems to have experimented with ways of ejecting “unwanted” students out of academics. One example is the criteria for clearing the coursework; the rules were suddenly changed so that even if a student scored the required 50 per cent to pass in a course, the doctoral committee would be the final arbiter of his/her grade. The students were not informed of this change, resulting in many of them failing or getting a “pass” in courses they assumed they had cleared.
Another example is the distinction between the “faculty adviser” and the “supervisor”. The practice of allotting an adviser for the initial stage of research is not the same as appointing a supervisor who guides the student’s research. According to Vipin Srivastava, the dean, School of Physics, it was understood that the adviser would eventually become the supervisor. The students however insisted that the advisors made it “amply clear” to them “that they should not assume that they would be their eventual supervisors”. The report records that this creates “uncertainty in the minds of students…compounded when [they] see some of their colleagues being already treated as full-time research scholars and permitted to use the labs of their faculty advisers.”
One might think that the rules being arbitrary for all students, the most one can accuse the school of is lack of “transparency” and “communication”. Therefore, the rules and procedures must be made “transparent”. This is also the report’s “finding” and its “recommendation”.
But what are we to make of the following two statements? “…it is a fact that most of the students affected by the inconsistencies and ambiguities in procedures were SC/ST students” (p 4). Even more significantly, “[A]ll the Physics students that this Committee could meet have reported their sense that the School was acting against the interests of the SC/ST students” (p 4). It also tells us that out of four SC/ST students in the batch, two dropped out because they did not find supervisors, and one has now committed suicide.
The report categorically states, “Senthil was aware of all the problems being faced by other SC students in the School. He was not only beginning to believe that the SC/ST students were ‘being targeted’ in the School, but was also getting anxious about it. He spoke to friends about the case of one of his friends, who, in spite of being a CSIR fellowship-holder and clearing all four papers in one attempt failed to pass the comprehensive viva examination. Such instances led him to think that the School had too many ‘obstacles’ for someone wanting to do a PhD in Physics” (p 5).
When reports of Senthil’s death first came out, Srivastava told a newspaper “we did make personal recommendations with the academic council to not include students who are not up to the mark”. The report of the fact-finding committee has established that the “mark” this school seems to require is the mark of caste. The “arbitrariness” in the procedures of the school, then, is quite systematic; it seems designed to push out those dalit students who have managed to gain entry in spite of this special requirement. These are students who have battled such odds at every step to come to the department, and whose success is a testimony to their ability and their immense value to the academic community. The practices of the School of Physics then amount to upholding the caste-order at huge costs to science and higher education, and the nation at large.

Elite Institutions
The University of Hyderabad is no stranger to allegations of caste-based discrimination, that have also been the centre of many a political agitation. The rustication of 10 dalit students in 2002 – without an inquiry or any investigation – is only the most recent instance that comes to mind. But this is the first time that an official acknowledgement has come from the university, in spite of the vice chancellor, Syed Hasnain’s claim that the committee has not found “evidence” of discrimination.
The years following the Mandal agitation have given us the vocabulary to speak about caste in its new realised forms in modern institutions. While this new language has to some extent transformed the discussion in the humanities and social science disciplines, the “pure sciences” have been completely fenced off from a
social audit in the name of “objectivity” and “national progress”. It is significant that the latest round of agitation against reservations has been spearheaded by medical professionals, engineers and the IT sector. These disciplines have been at the forefront of pitting “merit” against “politics”, where one lies in the domain of truth and objectivity, while the other is merely a politician’s whim. The survival of these disciplines is linked to the prestige attached to them by virtue of their exclusivity. In this scheme of things, Science is important inasmuch as the “masses” cannot approach it – it is an exclusive domain, and zealously guarded as such.
Those who manage to get in in spite of these stringent gate-keeping mechanisms are made to pay a heavy price for their ability. A dalit research scholar committed suicide at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore last year, and no investigation was held. The Thorat Committee Report on AIIMS has documented the widespread manifestations of caste prejudice at that premier institution, where right from the ragging of students, to hostel accommodation, extracurricular activities, grades and classroom practices, all aspects of life bear the stamp of caste bias. How many more dropouts, humiliations and deaths will we need before recognising that institutions must be held accountable and the guilty punished?
Senthilkumar’s suicide lies at the intersection of the academic malpractices of the School of Physics, the exclusivity of the “pure sciences”, the re-formed untouchability practised in university spaces and the threat to the status quo posed by reservation. Each of these questions has to be addressed if higher education is to be enabling and not merely accessible, for the large numbers of students who struggle to gain entry into it, only to be met with indifference, or downright hostility and humiliation. Reservations may provide access, but as Senthil’s death shows, the battle for democratising our institutions – and a genuinely progress-oriented science – is of a different order altogether.

Notes
* The Thorat Committee Report on AIIMS, which has been conveniently forgotten in the euphoria surrounding Venugopal’s reinstatement as director.
** TOI, February 26, 2008.

Visit the link to download a PDF file of this report: http://www.epw.org.in/epw//uploads/articles/12552.pdf

Guilty should be punished: Kancha Iliah

University of Hyderabad should take action against those who are responsible for the death of Senthil Kumar, said scholar and activist Kancha Iliah. At a press meet in Hyderabad organized by Senthil Kumar Solidarity Committee, he said the University should give a much fairer amount as compensation for the grieved family, compared to Rs 5 lakh it has now agreed to provide.

“The Vice Chancellor should show the basic integrity of admitting that caste discrimination exists in the University, acknowledging the findings of the Pavrala Committee. The Committee report clearly points out the lack of transparency in the regulations of School of Physics. It is unfortunate that he made a public statement that Senthil's suicide had nothing to do with caste discrimination and that the university will not take any action against anybody for this suicide”, Iliah said.

“While institutions like EFLU has already announced that 27 per cent reservation for OBCs would be implemented right away, the VC of University of Hyderabad has said recently that it would implement only 5 per cent reservation for OBCs this year. The University is functioning as a modern agrahara,” he added.

Noted scholar Susie Tharu said by denying the findings of the Committee, the Vice Chancellor has cheated the teaching fraternity as a whole.

Activist Gogu Shyamala, scholar K Satyanarayana, Adv K Balagopal, scientist Veena Shatrugna, Praveen (research scholar, UoH) also spoke at the meet.

Press meet on 07-05-2008

This is to inform all of you that Senthilkumar Solidarity Committee is organizing a press meet tomorrow to challenge the statements made by HCU VC that Senthil's suicide has nothing to do with caste discrimination and that the university will not take any action against anybody for this suicide. His statement distorts the findings of the Pavrala Committee report that he himself had commissioned. We wish to invite you all to attend this press meet.

Venue: Press Club, Basheer Bagh
Time: 11.00 AM

The Solidarity Committee has invited the following academicians and pubic intellectuals to speak on this issue:

Kancha Ilaiah
P.L.Vishveshwara Rao
Susie Tharu
Gogu Shyamala
Muthaiah
Veena Shatrugna
K.Balagopal
Rama Melkote
K.Satyanarayana
K.G.Kannabiran
Bojja Tarakam

A related blog

http://out-caste.blogspot.com/2008/03/death-of-dalit-student-in-hcu_07.html

Enquiry committee absolves University of caste discrimination

The committee set up by the University of Hyderabad to enquire about the death of Senthil, says in its report that many ‘discrepancies and ambiguities’ had crept into the assessment of students in the Department of Physics since 2006, and that Dalit students, in particular, were victims of these discrepancies which in turn led the them to believe that the department was ‘casteist.’
The report, in effect, refuses to admit the discriminatory practices against Dalits in the campus, by saying that the "discrepancies" that have crept into the evaluations have "led the Dalit students to believe that the department is casteist."

The link to a report in The Times of India, Hyderabad, 03/05/08
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JSC8yMDA4LzA1LzAzI0FyMDA1MDA=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

or

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JSC8yMDA4LzA1LzAzI0FyMDA1MDA=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

Future plan of action

The team from Anveshi Research Centre, Hyderabad, after visiting the campus of University of Hyderabad recently, has suggested a number of initiatives, including:

1. forming a Senthilkumar Solidarity Committee comprising of major academics in the city and dalit and other student organisations.

2. preparing a detailed note on what actually happened (our reading of the situation) and what the issues are. Along with signatures, this, as a letter should be sent to: Arjun Singh (HRD Minister), Thorat, Karunanidhi, YSR. The request would be to the HRD Minister and UGC to constitute an enquiry committee; partiularly since the internal report actually makes the School of Physics culpable.
Also this could be sent, as a write up, to the EPW. The immediate demands should be compensation for senthil's family, action on the dean of the school, and at a different levels mechanisms to make the university and the schools more accountable and democratic.

3. Circulating the report and put it on as many websites as possible.

4. For this note, it may be necessary to meet some faculty, students and non-teaching staff of HCU. We need to plan this depending on the availability of people. In any case, we will have a rough structure of the letter ready in two-three days.

A poem

http://lovepeaceandprosperitytotheworld.blogspot.com/2008/04/senthil.html

Report in Junior Vikatan (a popular Tamil Magazine)

Palanisamy and Deivayanai, Senthil's parents

SC/ST Joint Action Committee's statement

The SC/ST Joint Action Committee, University of Hyderabad, wishes to bring to your notice the gruesome death of a Dalit, Mr Senthil Kumar, a first year Ph.D research scholar in the School of Physics on Febraury 24. Mr Senthil Kumar was found dead in his hostel room and is stated to have committed suicide due to non-allotment of Supervisor and withdrawal of fellowship.

Mr Senthil Kumar hails from a very poor family and his parents have been surviving on pig rearing. He was a first generation educated person and he completed his MSc from American College, Madurai and Mphil from Pondicherry Central University. He joined University of Hyderabad as a Research Scholar in 2007 and failed in one of the subjects in the course work. He gave a supplementary examination and it appears that he feared that he may fail again in the supplementary exam and that his PhD registration may be terminated once for all. It was this fear that he would go back home without a PhD which seems to have been the reason for taking his life.

It has to be pointed out that it is only School of Physics in Sciences arbitrarily introducing course work in order to harass Dalit students. The School introduced course work in 2006, which incidentally coincides with the introduction of exclusive scholarships known as Rajiv Gandhi Fellowships given to SCST students. We believe that the extreme arbitrariness of admission and evaluation procedures including the allotment of Research Supervisors has led to this very gruesome incident. The School of Physics has always been a hostile place for students from belonging to rural and lower caste communities.

The SC/ST Joint Action Committee brought this incident to the notice of our Vice Chancellor and he has so far not adequately responded to the situation. Infact, despite several requests, he has avoided meeting the Dalit organisations on the campus. Our Vice Chancellor has been extremely insensitive to issues concerning SC/STs on the Campus. During his two year Vice Chacellorship, the University has been in the public attention for very controversial reasons including the alleged illegal allotment of land to a private party and a recent Central Bureau of Investigation raid on the University administration premises.

Though the University has constituted a committee to probe into the circumstantial details relating to Senthil's death, we think it has not taken the issue seriously because:
a. Firstly, as various Dalit bodies on the campus and Dalit leaders from outside the campus have alleged ill-treatment from the teaching fraternity at large, it is inappropriate to constitute a committee comprising of teachers from inside the university to probe into the death of Senthil.
b. Secondly, it is a medico-legal case; the committee is not adequately equipped to handle the case.
c. Therefore, the SC/ST Joint Action Committee strongly express displeasure regarding the terms of reference and constitution of the committee and demand that the University should invite a sitting judge to probe exclusively into the affairs of the School of Physics and fix responsibility along with the Principal Secretary , Ministry of Human Resources

The University of Hyderabad rusticated 10 Dalit students in 2002 and caused untold misery to their future. We had represented the matters regarding the organised suppression of SC/ST's by the University Authorities since very long time but unfortunately the University authorities never looked into the matter and were very casual in dealing with the harassment and discrimination against our community.

Senthil Kumar P

Links to press reports

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Hyderabad/HCU_PhD_scholar_found_dead/rssarticleshow/2810766.cms
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/02/25/stories/2008022558850500.htm

http://www.thehindu.com/2008/03/08/stories/2008030854270600.htm

Times of India report

Caste guides your fate at HCU

Dalit Student’s Suicide Brings Caste Bias In Central Varsity Out In The Open

Nikhila Henry TNN

Hyderabad: It took the death of a Dalit student to bring out caste conflicts on the University of Hyderabad (HCU) campus to the fore. After the shocking suicide of Ph D scholar P Senthil Kumar, Dalit students are up in arms against the varsity administration alleging foul play in allotment of guides. According to sources, many Dalit and minority students in the School of Science do not get guides even two years after they join PhD and M Phil programmes. However, academics claimed the students were not allotted guides as many of them do not match up to the standards of the department and it takes almost a year to train them in basics.

“We did make personal recommendations with the academic council to not include students who are not up to the mark. We insist on course work as it is very necessary to learn the basics,” dean of School of Physics Vipin Srivastav told ‘TOI’. However, many students are not happy with the course work proposal. Of the eight schools, only Physics and English departments insist on course work. Incidentally, Senthil Kumar was from the School of Physics. “Though the administration quotes rules, according to which students will have to complete the first year without a guide, it should not be forgotten that the rule was introduced in 2007. There are several students who had joined three years ago and are yet to be allotted a guide,” T Nageshwara Rao, a former student of School of Physics, told ‘TOI’.

The one-year course work rule was introduced in 2007 as some departments found it difficult to accommodate many students recommended by a committee for admissions for reserved category. According to the current rules of the university, a student will be taken under a guide only after they finish their course work which will be regular classes for six months and an examination at the end of the semester. However, this system was introduced during the 2007-08 academic year. In the 2006 batch, six students who were pursuing PhD programmes were not allotted guides.

“I had no reason to stick on as there was nothing to be done even after six months. Hence, I went back to my home town,” said a girl student hailing from Guntur district. Meanwhile, Vipin Srivastava stated many faculty members had taken in as many students as possible. “There is no discrimination on the basis of caste,” he added. “There is a great demand for experimental physicists whereas there are no takers for Theoretical Physics as it is tough. Students who did not get a guide were not capable to take up theory courses though it was offered to them,” Srivastava said. Anyhow, it seems the castebased conflicts are swept under the carpet. In most cases, the students were afraid to come out in the open as they feel it would eventually hamper their future. “In many cases, students who are not liked by the faculty do not get references to pursue research at institutes abroad,” a student of the chemistry department, requesting anonymity, told ‘TOI’.

According to the students, many faculty have issues in referring names of ‘quota students’ for admissions in foreign universities. “In the department of chemistry, students are allotted guides only when the admission formalities are completed. However, we have a selection process on the basis of interviews which will filter only good students,” School of Chemistry dean M Periaswamy said. “We will not allow the course work policy to continue in the university, especially when it indirectly led to the death of a student. The students will have to be allotted guides immediately,” an Ambedkar Students’ Union representative told ‘TOI’.

Times of India Report on Feb 26, 2008

HCU scholar consumed poison, say police

TIMES NEWS NETWORK, Hyderabad:

A day after Ph.D scholar Senthil Kumar was found dead on the University of Hyderabad (HCU) campus, police on Monday claimed the student committed suicide. “After the postmortem at Gandhi Hospital, doctors declared Senthil Kumar committed suicide by consuming poison,” police sources told ‘TOI’. Though there was no preliminary postmortem report, the sources said the initial observations by the doctors who performed the postmortem was that it was a case of suicide.

“Doctors said he consumed poison,” said a police officer. In a related development, HCU students on Monday morning staged a dharna in front of the vice-chancellor’s office protesting the scholar’s death. The university authorities promised the protesting students that a probe would be ordered if the postmortem report confirms the death as suicide. “University authorities promised that an inquiry committee will be formed if the postmortem report says it is suicide,” S Harnath, a Ph.D scholar and a student union representative, told ‘TOI’. “So, far we have not received any official report about the reasons for the death. If the postmortem report confirms it as a suicide, there will be an inquiry,” HCU registrar R Y Narasimhulu said.

Earlier on Monday, HCU students boycotted classes demanding an internal inquiry into the death. All the major student unions organised a rally on the campus and staged a dharna in front of the administrative block. HCU vice-chancellor Seyed E Hasnain and registrar R Y Narasimhulu met the students who gave a list of their demands. The demands included—all Ph.D students be given scholarship irrespective of they clearing the course work; all Ph.d students be assigned a guide immediately after they get admission and Senthil’s family be given Rs 10 lakh as compensation. The authorities said they were seriously considering the issue. “Scholarship issue can be decided only by academic council of the university and when it comes to compensation there is no such provision in the university guidelines,” the registrar said.

However, he said the student’s family would get the insurance amount from the insurance agency under the university health insurance scheme which is mandatory for every student. Senthil Kumar’s family members took his body to their home town, Salem, on Monday evening.