Caste, Higher Education, and Senthil's "Suicide"

The Senthilkumar Solidarity Committee, a group of Hyderabad intellectuals and activists, cry out against caste-ism in higher education this blog. Their cause began with the death of Senthilkumar at the University of Hyderabad. Senthilkumar, or Senthil for short, was a dalit (untouchable) student at the University of Hyderabad and was studying to be a PhD in physics. He was the first person in his entire Panniandi community to enter higher education. His parents are pig-rearers in Tamil Nadu, an depended on him for their survival. He was awarded a non-NET fellowship at the University, which is specifically designed to not be performance-based aid. However, after failing his exam, the administration publicly ended his fellowship and posted his failure on the school notice-board. Without the fellowship, Senthilkumar would be unable to attend the University. His fellow dalit students organized massive protests against such treatment, and a committee reviewed his case and reaccepted his position in the fellowship. However, this re-admittance was not announced, and even Senthil was not aware of its findings.
On February 24th, 2008, Senthil’s body was found in his dorm room. The University claimed he died from cardiac arrest, but recently released the autopsy report, which sited poisoning as a possible cause of death, along with suicide. No investigation by the police or the University was made until Dr. Ravikumar, a well-known dalit activist and a member of the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly, intervened. As of yet, there has been no progress in the case, and many members of the dalit community are understandably upset at this blatant caste bias.
The Senthilkumar Solidarity Committee claims that “Senthil was yet another victim of the entrenched realities of caste discrimination that pervade academic spaces and practices in the university”. The “brahminical ordering of institutions of higher education” is a huge problem for modern India. While officially the caste system was banned over half a century ago, the system still pervades today. Schools all over the country, from elementary level to graduate schools, have been blocking dalit access to education through various means. Interviews, special academic requirements, and public pressure all are against an untouchable’s way in to education. In the Hyderabad University Physics program, there were four dalits. Two were dropped from the non-NET fellowship due to supervisor recommendations, and Senthil allegedly committed suicide.
The Senthilkumar Solidarity Committee claims that there are still many elite institutions in the country that pride themselves on ‘purity’, meaning that they have only upper-caste members. Science, especially, is being blocked for dalits. Many upper-caste Indians believe that science is not for “the masses”, and that it “is an exclusive domain, and zealously guarded as such”. Caste prejudice in education comes in all forms: badgering of dalit students, hostel (dorm) accommodation, extracurricular activities, grades, classroom practices, and much more. And yet, nothing is being done. The SSC asks us—“How many more dropouts, humiliations, and deaths will we need before recognizing that institutions must be held accountable and the guilty punished?”