By – Trisha Bhatnagar
Abstract
The article aims to highlight distressing lived experiences of Dalit women, particularly in higher education institutions. It will highlight how their violence-backed struggles are more often than not rendered structurally invisible. My article analyses how Institutional Redundancy interacts with the Dalit female student experience. Crises of Dalit women in this regard continue to be underreported and miscategorized by the academic establishment. Additionally, this article’s focus draws upon the financial precarity that creates a “triple marginalisation” for Dalit students. Academia’s invisibility around Dalit feminist standpoints, and meritocracy is used as a way to perpetuate campus hostility against subordinate groups. Hence, any recognition of Dalit women in knowledge-making spaces is met with severe backlash for the purpose of sustaining the norm of a redundant educational environment. This environment systematically erases Dalit women’s suffering and their often tragic ends, which are left unseen.
Introduction
Institutional alienation is critical in triggering student suicides, which is why most higher education entities prefer to belittle such realities under the rug. The plethora of underreported crises of Dalit women includes a culmination that involves the tragic reality of campus suicides. The structural analysis of the distinct forms of institutional ignorance faced is what the article aims to break its silence on. It traverses 6 points in the entire body of work, the lived reality of humiliation, triple marginalisation, manufacture of ignorance, backlash in knowledge-making, weaponising merit to erase, and alienation leading to student suicides. The marginalised experience travels these six stages. Rege’s work highlights the social ostracism and cruelty that Dalit women endure. Financial precarity also disadvantages them from the start across caste, class, and gender. On the other hand, epistemic (knowledge-based) violence is the normality of caste blindness in higher education institutions that, in turn, pushes Dalit perspectives to the back. However, when Dalits achieve mobility and visibility in these academic power structures, they are further targeted with hostility and humiliation. Privileged castes, therefore, use rhetorical tools to protest and push away marginalised students to force their caste realities into oblivion. Lastly, the hostile campus culture is the very reason behind the hostility and commonality of student suicides within it, which remain a heavily underreported phenomenon for Dalit women.
Everyday Life of Humiliation And Ostracism
The commonality between the historical and ongoing experience of Dalit women in higher education institutions is marked by the social ostracism and institutional apathy they “ought to survive.” Testimonies in Rege’s work vividly capture the distressing reality of Dalit women. Shantabai Dani, during her time at the women’s training college in Pune, detailed how she was subjected to brutal untouchability. She was banned from entering the common dining hall, so she was served from afar at the verandah. From afar meant the food and curry were thrown onto her plate from a distance, which soaked her bread. In popular literature on Dalits, we have come across the caste discourse and its role in food politics. Dani’s isolation explains how society chooses to problematicise tradition, for example, eating certain foods cooked within a specific caste. By excluding them due to the smell of their food, the effect on the external audience during the making of it in their own kitchen, perhaps owing to casteist neighbours, and more. The common bathroom was also deemed to be out of bounds for her; a makeshift bamboo toilet was what she had to make do with instead. Another student testimonial is Kumud Pawade’s; she pursued her master’s degree in Sanskrit while still facing uncontrollable hostility. She held a place in the merit list yet was mocked by interview panels sarcastically as to how a “government-sponsored brahmin” would have the audacity to teach a “sacred language”. Janabai Girhe’s account is another such testimonial. Institutional cruelty really does not leave anyone behind. Considering she had grown up begging for food to assuage her hunger, she was still in the hands of this violence. She was thrown out of college physical training class only because her severe poverty prevented her from purchasing Rs. 86/- worth of uniform and/or equipment. All these accounts underline the serious psychological trauma and isolation Dalit women are continuously subjected to in educational spaces, which is essentially their fundamental right to enjoy.
The Baseless Budget to get Educated
Underlying these experiences of classroom alienation is a more extensive structural obstacle characterised by significant financial instability. The insufficiency of financial resources constitutes a primary barrier preventing Dalit and Adivasi girls from accessing higher education and/or compelling them to discontinue their studies. Despite the presence of welfare schemes and scholarships purportedly aimed at supporting marginalised students, there exists a significant deficiency in the documentation. With regards to explicit physical and financial allocations specifically designated for Dalit female students. This pervasive financial exclusion significantly limits their opportunities for higher education. It results in a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) that is markedly below state averages. Without specific provisions mandating allocations for women students, the aforesaid goals of development do not effectively materialise into tangible resources. As a consequence, Dalit women encounter a distinct form of “triple marginalisation,” characterised by an uneven playing field which is uniquely intensified by the interplay of their caste or tribe, class, and gendered positions. In the absence of dedicated financial support, the fundamental right to access education continues to remain an unattainable aspiration for these women.
Intersectionality of Caste and Gender in the Curriculum itself
This structural marginalisation is exacerbated by an academic environment that systematically disregards Dalit perspectives, due to epistemic violence. Currently, within Indian universities, it is feasible for students and educators to pursue postgraduate/research degrees in the social sciences and humanities while remaining unacquainted with the works of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. This underscores a systemic “manufacture of ignorance” prevalent within higher education institutions. Wherein, privileged groups actively participate in the erasure of Dalit feminist epistemologies, facilitated by their caste and educational advantages. Even in progressive academic environments such as Gender Studies, the unique challenges faced by Dalit women frequently receive insufficient attention. In these contexts, pluralism has evolved to signify a notable lack of substantive debate. By fostering a superficial form of pluralism that facilitates a “peaceful co-existence” between individuals who recognise caste and those who opt to overlook it. All of this while ostensibly engaging in gender studies. Indian higher education institutions systematically exclude the intersection of caste and gender from their curricula, causing the structural neglect of systemic pressures faced by Dalit women.
Patriarchal Barriers of Dalit Female Knowledge-Making
Any effort to challenge this constructed ignorance or to overcome the limitations of exclusion is met with significant resistance. The emancipatory agenda of the Dalit and women’s movements must traverse a complex landscape. It is characterised by the mediation of inter-caste relations through rigid boundaries. The growing prominence of Dalit women within power structures, such as panchayats and emerging knowledge creation processes, inevitably accelerates heightened backlash against them. This backlash is frequently manifested through demeaning practices. Aimed at eroding their intellectual autonomy, often resulting in extreme violence. The advent of autonomous voices among Dalit women poses a significant challenge to the entrenched brahmanical dominance. Within feminist movements, as well as patriarchal practices that persist in Dalit political spheres. When Dalit women contest a monolithic understanding of the Dalit community, largely acknowledged misinformation, or the upper-caste bias inherent in mainstream feminism, they often face aggravated backlash. Such backlash serves to reinforce conventional, caste-based patriarchal structures. To penalise Dalit women for their audacity in asserting intellectual and political agency.
Modern Day Shantabai, Kumud, and Janabais in Dr.Payal Tadvi
The dire tragedies of institutional casteism are starkly illustrated by the suicides of marginalised University students. The case of Dr. Payal Tadvi, a 26-year-old medical student from the Adivasi Tadvi Bhil community, serves as a poignant illustration of systemic violence. In 2019, Dr. Tadvi took her own life at a municipal hospital in Mumbai. The act was a consequence of persistent caste-based discrimination, public humiliation, and professional exclusion perpetrated by three senior co-workers from upper-caste backgrounds. Leading health networks condemned her death as a wretched illustration of the pervasive casteism. Additionally, the impunity that exists within medical institutions nationwide. This tragedy compelled the bereaved mothers of Payal Tadvi and Rohith Vemula to seek intervention from the Supreme Court. Urging the establishment of stringent guidelines to beat caste discrimination on campuses. These institutional murders are not merely isolated occurrences— they signify a pervasive academic environment wherein systemic harassment of Dalit or Adivasi women and/or men has become normalised. For these students, the university continues to serve as an environment wherein overlapping caste and gender biases exist. Whose devastating impact ultimately renders their lives and aspirations tragically futile.
Conclusion
All in all, with theories from the legal lexicon and scholarly work in gender and caste studies presented before, my critical arguments have been advanced. This mainly includes institutional alienation of Dalit female knowledge-makers, students, and prospective students. Social ostracism faced by Dalit female students is not only historic but also incredibly prevalent and understudied. Yet another common problem of aspiration without opportunity or a proper designated financial allocation for Dalit and Adivasi female youth advancing their access to higher education becomes the question. The curriculum of the Indian education system is known for erasing histories, including but not limited to Indigenous history, Caste history, Mughal history, and more. Universities, especially in progressive fields of study like the humanities, continue to ignore their crux, which involves the logic of Dalit feminist epistemologies. Brahminical dominance, therefore, remains a sick trend, so any intellectual agency to Dalits would not allow the mainstream othering and everyday exclusion of the Dalits. I, lastly, urge affirmative action for the betterment of Dalit female youth and their futures before we can only read about such aforesaid institutional murders.
Author’s Bio
Trisha Bhatnagar is a 4th-year law student pursuing a B.B.A. L.L.B (Hons.) in Business Administration and Legislative Law at Jindal Global Law School. Her interests lie in exploring how gender and identity interact with society and its power structures at large across education, technology, agriculture, sanitation, and more.
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