Next day, today, Friday 27, fourteen of hundreds of protesting students from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) were sent to Tihar Jail after the late night brutal lathi charge by the Delhi police, attacking a student protest and long march aimed to march towards the Ministry of Education yesterday. Protesters have been demanding the resignation of Vice Chancellor (VC) JNU Ms Pandit who had made derogative remarks against Dalits and Blacks recently and also the restoration of the UGC Guidelines of 2026.

On Thursday (February 26), Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU), along with other student organisations, organised a “long march” from the university to the Ministry of Education in Delhi. Students alleged that soon after their march began, Delhi Police lathi-charged them near the main gate of the campus. They said several students were detained and taken to the Kapashera and Sagarpur police stations. Videos and photographs that surfaced on social media showed that many students, including women, were injured in the police action.

The students’ march began around 3 pm from Sabarmati Dhaba inside the campus. Students joined the rally in large numbers, including members of JNUSU, All India Students’ Association (AISA), Students’ Federation of India (SFI), Democratic Students’ Federation (DSF), National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), All India Students’ Federation (AISF) and other student bodies.

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming

14 JNU students sent to TIHAR JAIL
the state’s cowardice is on full display. They think iron bars break spirit, they are WRONG
​fight against BJP & Shantishri’s casteist regime will only INTENSIFY#JNU #jnusu pic.twitter.com/qJTC3DamOD

— Anjali (@anjali__27) February 27, 2026

जेएनयू में हज़ारों छात्र जब यूजीसी रेगुलेशन के पक्ष में और जातिवादी वाईस चांसलर की बर्खास्तगी की माँग के साथ शिक्षा मंत्रालय की तरफ़ बढ़े।
तब पूरी सरकार में कंपकंपी मच गई। दिल्ली पुलिस ने छात्रों के हाथ से बाबा साहब भीम राव अंबेडकर की तस्वीर छीन ली, हाथों में अपने… pic.twitter.com/2JyjjTrb8m

— Dhananjay (@SathiDhananjay) February 26, 2026

This protest began amid heavy deployment of security forces, including Delhi Police, across the campus. The main gate was completely barricaded to prevent the students from moving forward.

Before the march started, JNUSU president Aditi Mishra had told The Wire: “Our call today was directed at the Ministry of Education. We are demanding that the UGC Equity Regulations be implemented on the lines of the Rohith Act. We are also demanding the resignation of our Vice-Chancellor, Shantisree Dhulipudi Pandit, over her remark that ‘Blacks and Dalits are permanently drugged with victimhood’. We believe such a statement is unacceptable. We are also asking for the restoration of funds [to JNU and other universities], because continuous financial cuts are weakening public universities and affecting students directly.”

She had then added, “What we are seeing instead is a heavy police security presence. The university has been turned into what feels like a cantonment, with barricades placed every few metres, the Rapid Action Force deployed and water cannons and tear gas kept ready. FIRs are being filed against students simply for protesting.”

Despite the heavy police and security force presence and the main gate of the JNU being sealed off, the students remained firm on continuing their march. Around 4 pm, students moved the barricades placed outside the main gate and attempted to proceed with their march. Soon after this, police began detaining students participating in the march. During the process, scuffles broke out between them and the police.

The allegations of brutality included male persons, accused of masquerading as men in uniform assaulting women with pins and other weapons in gendered violence. Hundreds of police, paramilitary and other personnel were brought in to simply “handle a student’s protest.”

It was the obstruction of free movement by the Delhi Police who blocked and locked the JNU gates that began the altercation and thereafter police repression.

Danish, joint secretary, JNUSU, said, “We called for a peaceful march from JNUSU to the Ministry of Education. However, Delhi Police blocked JNU gates, putting locks on them. Around 500 to 700 policemen were deployed with heavy barricading, lathis, tear gas and water cannons. When students broke the locks and marched, the police launched a brutal lathi charge.

“Many students were hurt. Women students were dragged and their clothes torn. They [police] detained at least fifty of us and took us to Kapashera Police Station. Even now, many students, including me, are injured but have not received any first aid. There were also people in civil dress beating students brutally alongside the police. Students are still protesting at the main gate, and the police continue to beat them.”

Dhananjay, former JNUSU President speaks of this police brutality here

On Sunday, 22 February, a “Samta Rally” was organised on the JNU campus to protest against alleged anti-Dalit remarks made by Vice-Chancellor Shantishree Pandit. At the march, students demanded implementation of the new University Grants Commision (UGC) equity guidelines, and asked for the Vice-Chancellor to resign and issue a public apology for her statements.

However, after that march, tensions escalated and clashes broke out between two student groups. Left student organisations and JNUSU members accused members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) offshoot, student body Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), of pelting stones during the confrontation.

On Monday (February 23), the university administration registered a case against JNUSU office bearers over the “Samata Rally” and the alleged violence during the previous night’s protest Thereafter, JNUSU announced another march, and that was the one to be held on 26 February.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) also condemned the police action, describing it as brutal use of force against students at the JNU gate.

In a statement issued on today February 26, JNUTA said several students, including women, were injured and many detained, including two JNUSU office bearers. It raised concerns over reports that women detainees were taken to undisclosed locations and alleged that they faced further mistreatment in custody.

JNUTA said the police action appeared to be aimed at preventing students from exercising their democratic right to march to the Ministry of Education, and demanded the immediate release of all detained students, action against the officials involved and the withdrawal of police personnel from the campus gates.

The text of the JNUTA statement issued by Surajit Mazumdar (President) and Meenakshi Sundriyal (Secretary) reads:

“The JNUTA strongly condemns the brutal use of force by the Delhi Police against JNU students and the detention of several of them, including two JNUSU Office bearers. Reports indicate that several students, including women, have been severely injured in the police action at the JNU gate in which even the laws prohibiting male policemen from acting against women were brazenly flouted. The JNUTA is also extremely concerned at the wellbeing of those detained. There are several women among them and they have been taken to unconfirmed locations that are far away from the campus. Reports are also coming of them being subjected to further police beatings while in custody.

The police action today, and they also came armed with weapons, had the sole objective of preventing come what may the students from exercising their democratic right to march to the Ministry of Education. Prohibition of such marches, and then prosecuting those who march, and use of excessive force against them, have become part of the standard routine for the Delhi Police. In the process, it has become an instrument of not law enforcement but of authoritarianism and the curbing of constitutionally guaranteed democratic rights.

The JNUTA knows that the bankrupt JNU Administration led by the VC cannot be expected to discharge its duty as guardian of the students’ interests. After all, it is its own actions that have led to the current situation. The continuing refusal to act against her and even today’s police action, however, raises serious questions about whether her infamous casteist remarks and other actions in fact have the endorsement of the Ministry of Education. Is it that the Ministry did not want to answer the uncomfortable questions it would have had to face from JNU students?

The JNUTA demands immediate release of all the detained students and strict action against the police officials reponsible for transgressing the laws they are themselves bound by while enforcing them. The Police which is still at the campus gates must also leave immediately. We appeal to JNU teachers to remain vigilant and speak up against this violence and onslaught on democracy.”

Just a few days ago former JNUSU President, Dhananjay filed a complaint against the VC with the NCST. This may be read here.

Related:

JNU: Former JNUSU President complains against Vice Chancellor’s casteist & racist remarks

The Double Stage on Campus: Caste, crisis & UGC equity regulations (2026) controversy

UGC Guidelines 2026: AISA Protest at Delhi University followed by sexual abuse allegations amid police presence

The post JNU Students Lathi-charged, Injured, first detained during protest over V-C remarks, UGC Equity guidelines, now Jailed appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Introduction: The Campus as Double Stage

The University Grants Commission, on January 13, 2026, notified the Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, a broad set of rules intended to counter caste discrimination in Indian universities. Within two weeks, the Supreme Court stayed the regulations, observing that they showed “complete vagueness” and might have “dangerous impacts” to “divide society.” In the meantime, and in the weeks that followed, Indian universities, particularly Delhi University, witnessed protests and counter-protests, violence, allegations of assault, cross-FIRs and, subsequently, a month-long ban on all demonstrations. SabrangIndia’s detailed story on the nationwide protests may be read here and here.

This debate goes beyond a simple policy debate. It is a point at which the underlying contradictions of caste in contemporary India have come face-to-face with the national arena. In my previous work, I introduced the concept of “schizophrenic modernity”, a condition in which a public official theatre of constitutional equality coexists with a dynamic social obscenity, wherein the hierarchy of caste is reinscribed through intimate sociability, bodily practices and moments of violence. The UGC controversy makes this schizophrenia explicit.

To gain a full understanding of the stakes, it is imperative to consult two scholars whose work helps to illuminate the underlying structure of this dispute. Anand Teltumbde’s work on the “camouflaged” presence of caste provides a framework for understanding how caste functions within modern institutions as a hidden system of social capital and exclusion, rather than as a visible ritualized hierarchy. Gopal Guru’s work on the scene/obscene dialectic of knowledge production, along with his imperative to theorize from the location of the obscene, supplies the methodological key to centering the Dalit experience in this argument. Together, they enrich and expand my Foucauldian-Gramscian framework, locating it within the particular intellectual traditions of Dalit Studies.

The article uses the framework to provide a thorough argument about the controversy. Part I will evaluate the rules as a scene of extending the constitutional scene into the obscene. Part II will locates the upper-caste reaction as a manifestation of “camouflaged” caste, as well as Gopal Guru’s reading of hegemonic denial. Part III will discuss the role of the Supreme Court as a moment of definitional politics. Part IV will analyse campus violence as a manifestation of obscene eruption, according to Teltumbde’s framework. Part V will evaluate the schizophrenic stance of the state. Part VI will explore Dalit counter-mobilizations as a moment of forcing the obscene back into the scene, according to Guru’s imperative to theorise from the location of the obscene. The conclusion will consider what this controversy tells us about the underlying architecture of caste power.

I. The Regulations: Extending the Scene into the Obscene

The UGC Equity Regulations 2026 have their roots in a specific set of events: a petition to the Supreme Court jointly filed by the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, both of whom took their own lives in the aftermath of alleged caste-based harassment on their respective college campuses. Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad, died in 2016; Tadvi, a tribal medical student in Mumbai, died in 2019. Their deaths have been seen as symptomatic of the failure of institutional mechanisms to protect marginalised students.

Statistics shown by the UGC to a parliamentary committee show a 118.4% increase in reported cases of caste-based harassment over five years, from 173 in 2019-20 to 378 in 2023-24. Journalist Anil Chamadia said that this increase “is not merely about numbers; it is directly linked to growing awareness among marginalised students and the protection given to dominant caste ideologies.” When first-generation Dalit students enter universities in greater numbers, the dominant castes may resent their presence, leading to increased harassment.

The regulations created a complex administrative machinery for equity. They mandated that every higher education institution set up an Equal Opportunity Centre (EOC) to monitor policies for the disadvantaged. Equity Committees, mandated to include representatives from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), women and persons with disabilities, were tasked with complaints. Institutions were mandated to set up “equity squads” for constant surveillance, establish 24/7 hotlines and ensure time-bound redressal of grievances, committees were to meet within 24 hours of a complaint and submit a report within 15 days. Failure to comply would invite severe punishment, including withdrawal of UGC funding, exclusion from schemes, or suspension of degree programs.

Notably, the regulations introduced protection for the first time for OBCs, besides SC/ST students, faculty and staff. The concept of “caste-based discrimination” in Clause 3(c) was articulated as discrimination “only on the basis of caste or tribe against the members of the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backwards Classes (OBC).”

Based on the current framework, the regulations can be understood as an effort to operationalize the constitutional ban on caste discrimination as a pervasive social order. While the Constitution bans caste discrimination at the level of abstract jurisprudence, the regulations aimed to create capillary structures—committees, squads, helplines—that would penetrate the intimate spaces of caste discrimination: the classroom, the hostel, the mentor-mentee relationship and social networks. They aimed to make visible the everyday humiliations, exclusions and violence against Dalit students, which the “obscene” had hitherto made invisible.

As a UGC functionary explained, “The regulations aimed to institutionalize anti-discrimination policies rather than have a piecemeal approach and thus provide ‘marginalised students with an official platform to raise their concerns, which was often lacking before.’” This is the role of the scene: to make grievances speakable, visible, and actionable. The obscene, on the other hand, is that which is unspeakable, the casteist remark that is reduced to “just a joke,” the exclusion that is reduced to “personal preference,” the hostility that is reduced to “academic rigor.”

II. The Upper-Caste Backlash: Camouflaged Caste and the Hegemony of Denial

The regulations didn’t just face criticism; they walked into a firestorm. Upper-caste students, faculty and a chorus of social media voices came out swinging almost immediately. Protests erupted at Delhi University, Lucknow University and right outside the UGC office. But if you listen closely to what the protesters are actually saying, something interesting emerges. Their words reveal how privilege dresses itself up as fairness when its back is against the wall. To really understand what’s happening here, we need two thinkers: Anand Teltumbde and his idea of “camouflaged” caste, and Gopal Guru with his insights about who gets to theorise and whose experience counts as real.

Teltumbde: When Caste Puts on a New Suit

In The Persistence of Caste (2010), Teltumbde makes a deceptively simple argument that cuts through a lot of confusion. Caste hasn’t disappeared in modern India; it’s just changed its clothes. It no longer marches around in religious robes, declaring Brahmins superior and Dalits polluted. Instead, it’s dressed itself in the respectable attire of modernity. It speaks the language of merit, efficiency and professionalism, all while quietly reproducing hierarchy through who knows whom, who gets recommended for jobs, who feels comfortable in academic spaces.

This is exactly what we’re seeing in the UGC controversy. The upper-caste protesters aren’t defending traditional caste ideology. You won’t hear them argue that Brahmins are naturally smarter or that untouchability was ordained by the gods. That would be too obvious, too easy to counter. Instead, they’ve wrapped themselves in the language of universalism, due process, and merit. They’re not defending privilege, they’re defending fairness. Or so they claim. This is caste in camouflage, operating through the very discourses that supposedly left it behind.

Teltumbde argues this camouflage isn’t accidental. It’s caste’s survival strategy, its “genius,” he calls it, though he means it darkly. Caste is plastic. It can take any form religious, secular, modern, global while never losing its core purpose: maintaining graded inequality. If you go looking for caste in its traditional avatar, you’ll declare it dead. You’ll miss its vibrant new incarnations entirely.

The protesters who warn of “complete chaos” and insist that “victim can be anyone on campus” aren’t defending old caste. They’re defending its new form as common sense, as the natural order of things, as what any reasonable person would think. They are, in Teltumbde’s framework, caste’s latest incarnation.

Guru: Why the Obscene Matters

Gopal Guru gives us the other lens we need. In The Cracked Mirror (2012), written with Sundar Sarukkai, Guru makes a provocative argument about how knowledge itself is structured by caste. Upper-caste “theorists,” he argues, have historically occupied what he calls the “scene”, the privileged space of abstraction, theory and universal claims. Dalit-Bahujan thinkers, meanwhile, have been confined to the “obscene”, the messy, particular, experiential realm that supposedly isn’t fit for theory. Guru calls for “epistemic humility”, a willingness to theorize from the site of the obscene, to take seriously the knowledge that comes from lived experience of caste.

The UGC controversy plays out this dynamic in real time. The upper-caste protesters occupy the scene. They speak the language of due process, safeguards against false accusations, and the danger of dividing society. Their discourse presents itself as neutral, rational, concerned with everyone’s good. And the Dalit experience that made these regulations necessary in the first place, the 115 suicides, the daily humiliations, the systematic exclusion gets pushed into the obscene. It becomes merely anecdotal, particular and insufficiently theoretical.

When protesters claim that “victim can be anyone,” they’re not just describing reality. They’re prescribing how reality should be seen. They’re demanding that the scene remain blind to the actual direction of caste violence. The universal category of “anyone” erases the particular vulnerability of Dalit students. The scene refuses to see what the obscene knows.

The Hegemony of Denial in Action

Listen to Alokit Tripathi, a DU PhD student who told PTI the rules would create “complete chaos.” His concern? The burden of proof would shift to the accused, with “no safeguards for those wrongly accused.” And then this: “The definition of victim is already predetermined. Victim can be anyone on campus.”

This is Teltumbde’s camouflaged caste, speaking in perfect accent. The historically privileged group positions itself as potential victim. The structural violence documented in the 2007 Thorat Committee report on AIIMS, where Dalit students faced “avoidance, non-cooperation and discouragement” from faculty and peers simply vanishes. The actual power relations on campus, where faculty and administration remain overwhelmingly upper-caste, where informal networks quietly reproduce privilege all of it erased from the frame.

And its Guru’s hegemonic denial too. The universal “anyone” neutralizes the particular. The scene refuses to see.

The Myth That Won’t Die

Then there’s the false complaint narrative. It came up everywhere. Petitioners told the Supreme Court that without a provision penalizing malicious complaints, grievance mechanisms would become weapons. One counsel painted a vivid hypothetical: imagine a fresher who resists ragging from a Scheduled Caste senior. The senior files a false caste discrimination complaint. The fresher, without anticipatory bail under the SC/ST Act, could be imprisoned, his career ending on his “first day, first month and first year.”

As a Feminism in India analysis pointed out, this script is borrowed straight from Men’s Rights Activists. When women get legal protection, men declare the laws will be misused for petty revenge. When Dalits get protection, savarnas shout exactly the same thing. These narratives do something specific: they drag remedial measures from the societal and historical to the personal. They diminish systemic violence by obsessing over hypothetical misuse.

Now, to be clear: no legal mechanism is immune to misuse. But the exclusive focus on this possibility, without a whisper of concern for the actual violence Dalit students face daily, reveals what the narrative is really doing. It positions the upper-caste subject as the true victim, the one most at risk from a system supposedly designed to protect the vulnerable. This is Gramsci’s “common sense” at work. The dominant group’s experience gets naturalized as universal. The subordinate group’s experience becomes questionable, particular and obscene.

The Battle over Naming

The fiercest fight was over words. Clause 3(c) defined caste-based discrimination specifically as discrimination against SC/ST/OBC communities. Petitioners called this “completely exclusive.” It created, they argued, a “hierarchy of protection.” They pointed to Clause 3(e), a broader provision prohibiting discrimination on grounds of “religion, race, caste, gender, place of birth, disability, or any of them.” Why have both? Why was 3(c) necessary if 3(e) already existed?

The answer cuts to the heart of the matter. Clause 3(e) gives you formal equality, discrimination is wrong, period, and whosoever does it to whomever. Clause 3(c) recognizes substantive equality, the understanding that caste violence in India has direction. It flows historically and structurally from dominant castes to oppressed castes. As the Supreme Court observed in the Sukanya Shantha case, the Constitution itself is “the greatest testament against historical injustices done against the marginalised castes.” Substantive equality requires that “the law must endeavour to correct historical injustices.”

To refuse this naming, to insist on a “neutral” definition that ignores historical directionality is to push the actual structure of caste violence into the obscene. It is to demand that the scene remain blind to what it doesn’t want to see. The petitioners’ call for an “inclusionary” definition is, from this perspective, a demand for comfort. A demand that the scene not be forced to confront the asymmetrical reality it obscures.

III. The Supreme Court: Definitional Politics on the Scene

The Supreme Court’s interim stay of the regulations on January 29, 2026, did more than halt a policy. It laid bare what’s really at stake in this battle over the scene and the obscene. The Court’s questions, its concerns, even its well-intentioned interventions, all of them reveal how difficult it is for institutions to see what they’ve trained themselves not to see.

What Troubled the Court

The bench, led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, was genuinely worried. They weren’t wrong to be, regulations with “very sweeping consequences” deserve scrutiny. After 75 years of trying to build a caste-less society, the Chief Justice observed, policy that appeared “regressive” and might “divide society” gave him pause. You can hear the sincere concern in his words: after all this time, after everything we’ve tried, are we moving backwards?

Justice Bagchi focused on Clause 3 (c). Wasn’t it redundant alongside Clause 3(e)? Shouldn’t we measure these definitions against the constitutional vision of Article 15, the promise that the state shall not discriminate against any citizen? There was also worry about ragging, which one counsel described as the most common form of discrimination on campus. Why didn’t the regulations address that?

Then came the question that revealed everything. The Chief Justice asked whether the regulations covered caste-based discrimination “by reserved categories that are better situated than other reserved groups.” When counsel confirmed there was no such protection, the Chief pressed further: “Has anybody examined this aspect?”

Why the Scene Can’t See

From where we’re sitting, with Teltumbde and Guru as our guides, this question is illuminating. Not because it’s wrong to ask, in the abstract, it’s perfectly reasonable. But because of what it reveals about how the scene sees the world?

The question assumes symmetry. It imagines a level playing field where power flows in multiple directions, where a student from a “better situated” reserved category might discriminate against someone from a “lesser situated” one. And yes, theoretically, this could happen. Caste is complicated. Graded inequality means there are hierarchies among oppressed castes too, some OBCs are better positioned than some SCs, some SCs than some STs.

But here’s the thing about forests and trees. To focus on this internal hierarchy while ignoring the fundamental asymmetry between oppressed castes as a whole and the dominant castes that have historically controlled every institution—that’s not nuance. That’s blindness. The question “what about discrimination by reserved categories” sounds sophisticated. It sounds like careful, balanced thinking. But its function is to distract, to make the scene appear complex while actually preserving its refusal to see the main structure of violence.

The Court’s concern about “dividing society” works similarly. It assumes a unity that the regulations would disrupt. But as the Feminism in India analysis put it, “Their remark that the regulations might ‘divide society’ are a stark reminder of how those in privilege view the world around them. The fractures already exist, they have been put in place to sustain those at the top of the food chain.” The regulations didn’t create division. They simply named it. And naming division, for those who benefit from not seeing it, always feels like violence.

Jaising’s Attempt

Senior Advocate Indira Jaising tried to bridge this gap. Appearing for the petitioners in the original Vemula-Tadvi case, the case that had made these regulations necessary in the first place, she argued that the Court couldn’t consider this matter in isolation. There were directions in the Abeda Salim Tadvi proceedings that had to be honoured. The regulations, she insisted, existed “to create an inclusive society.” She tried to show how Clause 3(c) and Clause 3(e) worked together, not against each other. But opposing counsel kept interrupting. The connections she tried to draw kept getting lost.

Jaising reminded the Bench that the 2012 Regulations had been repealed. If the Court stayed the new ones, there would be nothing. A vacuum. The Court heard her and used its powers under Article 142 to direct that the 2012 Regulations continue in force until further orders. A practical solution, perhaps. But also a telling one: better the old framework, however inadequate, than the new one that actually named names.

The Warning

The Chief Justice ended with a warning to the petitioners: don’t turn this “into a political issue.” The instruction itself is revealing. It positions the Court as a neutral arbiter standing above politics, while the petitioners’ mobilization, their insistence that caste violence is real and must be addressed is framed as potentially illegitimate, as dragging law into the muck of politics.

But here’s what this framing misses: the Court’s own observations were deeply political. The question about reverse discrimination. The concern for the general category. The worry about dividing society. These aren’t neutral positions. They’re the scene’s attempt to manage the boundary between what can be seen and what must remain invisible, what can be spoken and what must stay unspeakable. They’re the scene’s way of preserving existing power relations while sincerely believing it’s just being reasonable.

The scene doesn’t see itself as political. That’s its power. It experiences its own perspective as simply how any reasonable person would see things. The obscene, by contrast, is always marked, always particular, always suspect. The Court’s warning not to make it political is, from this perspective, the most political gesture of all. It’s the scene telling the obscene: stay in your place. Let us decide what counts as real.

IV. The Campus: Violence and Its Representation

The confrontation at Delhi University on February 13, 2026 and its aftermath, brought something into sharp focus that the legal arguments had kept at a distance. The campus became a stage where the obscene, the violence that usually stays in the shadows, whispered about in hostels, experienced in everyday humiliations erupted into plain sight. And then, just as quickly, the scene moved to push it back into invisibility.

What Happened at Arts Faculty

The day started as a demonstration in support of the UGC regulations, organized by the All India Forum for Equity and backed by AISA, the left-wing students’ association. But by the time it ended, the Arts Faculty had become a battleground. Members of the ABVP, the RSS-affiliated student organization, were there too. The two sides faced off, and things turned ugly.

A YouTuber who identifies as a Brahmin journalist came forward with a harrowing account. She claimed she was assaulted and subjected to rape threats by what she described as “a mob of nearly 500 people.” According to her, the crowd turned on her after asking about her caste. She recounted: “The girls around me whispered rape threats in my ears just because I am a Brahmin; ‘aaj tu chal, tera nanga parade niklega,’ is what they said.”

But that’s not the only version of events. AISA activists and another journalist on the scene offered a different picture. They said the woman had made casteist remarks, had shoved another woman to the ground, had provoked the crowd. The Delhi Police, as they often do in such situations, registered cross-FIRs at the Maurice Nagar police station. Both sides got to file complaints. Both sides got to be victims. Sections related to molestation, assault and criminal intimidation were invoked. The official record would show that something happened, but not what, or why, or who bore responsibility.

When the Obscene Surfaces

This is exactly the kind of moment Teltumbde writes about in The Persistence of Caste. In his analysis of the Khairlanji massacre, he argues that violence against Dalits in contemporary India isn’t some leftover from a premodern past. It’s a modern phenomenon, the obscene erupting into visibility when the established order faces a genuine challenge.

Think about what happened at the Arts Faculty. The rape threats, whether whispered or shouted. The casteist remarks, whoever initiated them. The physical confrontation. None of this looks like the old spectacles of sovereign power, where kings or landlords publicly punished those who transgressed. This is different. This is clandestine, community-sanctioned violence, emerging in the chaos of a protest, later revealed through competing media narratives and activist accounts. It’s an attempt to violently reassert a crumbling local hegemony to remind certain people of their place.

Teltumbde puts it plainly: “The violence against Dalits is not a relic of the past but a contemporary phenomenon, rooted in the challenge that Dalit assertion poses to the social order. When Dalits refuse to accept their subordinate position—when they own land, seek education, assert their rights—the dominant castes respond with violence to restore the ‘common sense’ of hierarchy.”

This is what the UGC regulations represented: a challenge to the campus’s caste order. And the violence at Arts Faculty regardless of which account you believe, regardless of who struck first was the obscene striking back. It was an attempt to restore common sense, to remind everyone that some things don’t change.

The Ban

Four days later, on February 17, Delhi University imposed a month-long ban on all public meetings, processions and demonstrations. The official reason cited “information received indicating that unrestricted public gatherings… may lead to obstruction of traffic, threats to human life, and disturbance of public peace.” The order prohibited assemblies of five or more people, the shouting of slogans and the carrying of hazardous materials.

The vice-chancellor made a public appeal. He urged teachers and students to “maintain trust in the judicial process.” He emphasised that “social harmony is the greatest thing.”

On the surface, this is reasonable. After violence, a cooling-off period. After confrontation, a return to order. The university administration performs its proper role: neutral arbiter, guardian of peace, defender of harmony.

But as Mithuraj Dhusiya, an associate professor at Hansraj College, pointed out, the ban may be using “traffic concerns as a pretext to curb mobilisations over issues such as appointments… and the recent suspensions of teachers.” In other words, the official scene of administrative order becomes a mechanism for silencing the obscene eruption into visibility. Don’t protest. Don’t gather. Don’t shout. Trust the process. Have faith in the institutions.

The Double Stage

What the campus revealed in these weeks was its nature as a double stage. On the visible scene, everything is proper. The university issues statements. The police file cross-complaints. The vice-chancellor appeals for harmony. The ban is justified by traffic concerns and public safety. The official discourse is one of neutrality, balance, procedural correctness.

But beneath this scene, operating in the shadows, is the obscene of caste violence and its contestation. The whispered rape threats. The casteist remarks shouted in the heat of confrontation. The student organizations mobilizing along caste lines. The informal networks through which ABVP coordinates its response. The everyday humiliations that never make it into police reports. All of this operates off-stage, invisible to the official record, yet determining everything that happens on it.

The university, like the state more broadly, manages the boundary between scene and obscene. It decides what becomes visible and what remains hidden. It frames some things as political and therefore suspect, other things as administrative and therefore neutral. It preserves existing power relations while sincerely believing it’s just keeping the peace.

The obscene erupted at Arts Faculty on February 13. For a moment, it was visible. Then the scene moved quickly to push it back into invisibility. The ban. The appeal for harmony. The trust in the judicial process. All the familiar mechanisms for managing the boundary, for ensuring that what must not be seen stays unseen.

V. The State: Schizophrenia Institutionalized

The ruling BJP’s response to the controversy reveals something deeper than political calculation, though calculation is certainly part of it. What we see is the Indian state caught in a contradiction it cannot resolve, speaking out of both sides of its mouth because it is itself split down the middle. Anand Teltumbde has spent years analysing this condition, and his framework helps us understand what’s really going on.

The State’s Caste Character

In Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva (2018), Teltumbde makes an argument that should be obvious but somehow still needs saying. The Indian state is not some neutral arbiter floating above society, untouched by caste. It is itself constituted by caste relations. Its institutions, its personnel, its everyday practices all are shaped by the caste order. This is why the state can simultaneously enact progressive laws and fail to implement them. This is why it can speak the language of equality while quietly reproducing hierarchy.

The UGC controversy is a perfect illustration. Through the University Grants Commission, the state produced genuinely progressive regulations aimed at protecting Dalit, Tribal, and OBC students from the violence they face on campus. This was the state acting in its constitutional identity, the identity that promises substantive equality, that acknowledges historical injustice, that tries to make things right.

But then the Supreme Court stayed those regulations and the political leadership welcomed the stay. The same state that created the protections now celebrated their suspension. Two voices, coming from the same body. This is not hypocrisy in the simple sense. This is a deeper split—between what the state formally commits to and what it actually is.

The Forward-Backward Dilemma

The Indian Express captured this dilemma well in its reporting. The BJP, over the last decade, has worked hard to expand its base beyond the upper castes that traditionally supported it. Since the 1990s, upper-caste communities in northern, western and central India have preferred the BJP, while OBCs, SCs, and STs tended toward Congress or regional parties. But under Narendra Modi, the party has made serious inroads into these communities, through higher representation in candidate lists and ministerial positions, through appointing Dalits and Tribals to top constitutional posts like President and Vice-President, through linking Hindutva issues to caste optics.

As Seshadri Chari, former editor of the RSS-linked magazine The Organiser, put it: “The BJP’s Ram Temple, Article 370 and other issues were basically an expression of cultural nationalism… However, the Opposition continued to come out with strategies to counter it. The Congress has recently decided to counter the BJP’s Hindutva cultural nationalism by playing on the caste fault line. The BJP has answered this by putting its core agendas within a caste framework.”

This is the context in which the UGC regulations landed. They put the government in a genuine quandary. An ABVP insider noted that even some pro-Hindutva influencers—like author Anand Ranganathan—have been critical of the BJP on this count. “The Congress’s criticism does not matter that much,” the insider said, “but such voices are taken seriously by common middle-class supporters of the BJP and the Sangh.”

The dilemma is real. If the government supports the regulations, it risks alienating the upper-caste base that still forms the core of its support. If it opposes them, it undermines its carefully cultivated image as a party that cares about OBC and Dalit interests. There is no clean solution, only management of the contradiction.

Two Voices, One State

Watch how the state speaks in this controversy. Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan offered what was described as a “blanket assurance”, the regulations would not be misused, and no one would face harassment. This is the constitutional voice, affirming protection, promising fairness, addressing the scene.

But simultaneously, the government welcomed the Supreme Court stay that suspended the regulations. The ABVP national organizing secretary, Ashish Chauhan, explained that the organization had welcomed the stay because “some words were unclear,” adding that “the groups to be protected need protection” while “other groups should not fear any misuse.”

This is the political voice, addressing the obscene. It acknowledges the anxieties simmering among the upper-caste base. It reassures them that their fears are heard. It frames the stay not as a defeat for equality but as a clarification, a fine-tuning, a protection against misuse.

Two voices, speaking from the same state, to different audiences, about the same regulations. They cannot be reconciled because the state itself cannot be reconciled, split between its constitutional identity and its actual embeddedness in caste society. This is what Teltumbde means when he says the state is not above caste but constituted by it. It cannot simply decide to be neutral. It speaks out of both sides of its mouth because it has two mouths.

The Ambedkar Parallel

Outlook India drew a parallel that’s worth sitting with. When B.R. Ambedkar proposed the Hindu Code Bill in parliament, he faced “aggressive resistance” that reflected, in the magazine’s words, “an attempt to preserve a conservative social order rather than uphold constitutional values.” When Jawaharlal Nehru eventually withdrew the bill, the mouthpiece of the Arya Mahila Hitkarini Mahaparishad celebrated it as the “victory of divine forces over demonic forces.”

Then as now, reforms aimed at addressing structural inequality were framed as attacks on tradition. Then as now, they were called divisive, threatening to social harmony. Then as now, the state retreated in the face of upper-caste mobilization.

The parallel is instructive because it shows how little has changed. The specific issues are different—the Hindu Code Bill addressed women’s rights within family law, the UGC regulations address caste discrimination in higher education. But the underlying dynamic is the same. The constitutional promise of equality collides with the social reality of hierarchy. And when that collision happens, the state, constituted as it is by that hierarchy finds ways to manage the collision without resolving it.

Nehru withdrew the bill. The Supreme Court stayed the regulations. Different times, different institutions, same outcome. The state speaks its two voices, and the obscene continues its work, mostly unseen.

VI. Dalit Counter-Mobilisation: Forcing the Obscene into Visibility

Against all of this, the Court’s blindness, the state’s split voice, the violence on campus, the ban on protest, Dalit students, activists and their allies keep organising. They keep forcing the obscene into visibility. This is not just activism. It is, in Guru’s terms, theorizing from below. In Teltumbde’s, it is counter-hegemonic assertion.

Guru: Knowledge from the Obscene

In The Cracked Mirror, Guru makes a claim that cuts deep. Dalit experience is not raw material waiting to be processed by upper-caste theorists into proper knowledge. It is itself a site of knowledge production. The people who have been pushed into the obscene see things that the people on the scene cannot. Not because they’re smarter, but because of where they stand.

“The experience of humiliation is not just an object of analysis but a source of critical insight,” Guru writes. “Those who have been pushed into the obscene have a perspective on the scene that those who occupy it cannot access. Theorizing from the obscene is not a supplement to mainstream theory but a challenge to its very foundations.”

Think about what this means. The mothers’ petition. The Dalit student protests. The work of scholars like Anil Chamadia. These are not just people demanding things. They are producing knowledge. They are refusing to let Dalit experience be dismissed as anecdotal, as merely personal, as insufficiently theoretical. They are insisting that the scene confront what it has worked so hard to exclude.

The Mothers who wouldn’t disappear

The UGC regulations exist because of this struggle. They exist because Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi, mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, filed a joint petition in the Supreme Court. They didn’t have to do that. They could have grieved privately, quietly, the way the scene prefers. Instead, they dragged the reality of campus discrimination into the national eyes cape.

Their lawyers submitted a number: 115 students took their own lives between 2004 and 2024. Many of them Dalit. The UGC itself filed an affidavit in October 2023 admitting that caste discrimination against Dalit students was not some “unfounded presumption” but an actual, documented reality.

The mothers’ petition made visible what the obscene had rendered invisible. The suicides. The daily humiliations. The institutional failures that everyone knew about but no one named. The regulations were the state’s response, inadequate, contested, and now stayed, but a response nonetheless. Forced visibility produces results, even if those results are then rolled back.

Refusing to Disappear Again

The Supreme Court stayed the regulations. DU banned protests. The scene did what it always does: tried to push the obscene back into invisibility. But organizations like AISA keep mobilizing. Students keep protesting. They refuse to let the obscene return to comfortable darkness.

Feminism in India put it plainly: “The decision to halt the regulations is just another attempt at denying basic dignity to Dalits and keeping the caste system in place.” The counter-protests are an answer to this. They say: we saw what you tried to hide. We’re not going to un-see it just because you’re uncomfortable.

Teltumbde: Why Mobilisation Matters

Teltumbde, writing about the protests after the Khairlanji massacre, captures what’s at stake in this kind of mobilization. He says the protests weren’t really about getting justice for one family, though that mattered too. They were about something bigger: forcing the state and society to confront the reality of caste violence that the official scene works so hard to deny. They were an attempt to shatter the hegemony of denial, to make the obscene visible.

The same is true here. The mobilizations around the UGC regulations are not just about supporting a particular policy. They’re about the fundamental question of whether caste will be permitted to continue its hidden work, or whether it will be forced into visibility and thereby into contestation.

What the Numbers Mean

Anil Chamadia pointed to something striking: reported discrimination cases went up by 118.4%. The scene might look at this and see a problem, too many complaints, too much disruption. But Chamadia sees it differently. The increase, he says, is “directly linked to growing awareness among marginalised students.”

When Dalit students enter universities in larger numbers. When they refuse to accept humiliation silently. When they organise and protest and demand accountability. The obscene gets forced into visibility. The numbers go up. And then the backlash comes, the violence, the protests bans, and the Supreme Court stays. This is the dynamic Teltumbde describes. Dalit assertion provokes upper-caste violence, which provokes further Dalit mobilization. The boundary between scene and obscene becomes a site of continuous struggle.

The Intellectual Work

None of this happens in a vacuum. The “growing awareness” Chamadia talks about is produced, in part, by the intellectual work of scholars like Guru and Teltumbde themselves. They have given language to experiences that were previously suffered in silence. They have provided theoretical frameworks, like the scene/obscene dialectic that help people understand their situation and act upon it.

This is what Guru means by theorising from the obscene. Not just describing oppression. Producing the conceptual tools for overcoming it. Dalit students now have a vocabulary for naming what they experience. They have legal categories, “caste discrimination,” “hostile environment,” “institutional failure” that were forged through decades of struggle. They have frameworks that help them see that their individual humiliation is not just personal bad luck but structural violence.

The UGC controversy is, in part, a testament to the success of this intellectual project. The backlash is real, the violence is real, the stay is real. But so is the visibility. So is the mobilisation. So is the refusal to disappear.

The obscene keeps erupting. The scene keeps trying to push it back. That struggle—unequal, ongoing, with no guaranteed outcome—is where we are.

VII. Theoretical Synthesis: The Controversy as Exemplar of Caste’s Schizophrenic Modernity

The UGC controversy illustrates every dimension of our theoretical framework, now enriched by the insights of Teltumbde and Guru:

The controversy reveals that caste’s modernity is not defined by its disappearance but by its strategic disaggregation. Power flows by maintaining the split between a disavowing public scene and a vibrant private obscene. The UGC regulations attempted to extend the scene’s reach into the obscene, to make the state’s power felt in the intimate spaces where caste actually lives. The backlash was the obscene defending itself, refusing to be illuminated.

The Supreme Court’s intervention, staying the regulations, questioning their definitional logic suspended the outcome. But the dialectic continues. Every protest, every counter-protest, every legal argument, every editorial, is a skirmish on the boundary between scene and obscene. And as our framework teaches us, that boundary is where power does its most important work.

Conclusion: The Dialectic’s Latest Act

The UGC controversy is not an isolated policy dispute. It never was. It is the latest act in the long drama of caste’s schizophrenic modernity—the permanent, unresolved tension between a constitutional scene that promises equality and a social obscene that quietly, persistently reproduces hierarchy.

The regulations did not emerge from nowhere. They came from a specific genealogy of struggle. The mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, who could have grieved in private and instead filed a joint petition in the Supreme Court. The 115 student suicides between 2004 and 2024, many of them Dalit, each one a story the scene preferred not to see. The 118 percent increase in reported discrimination, which the scene reads as disruption but which really measures growing awareness, growing refusal to suffer in silence. The regulations were an attempt to create mechanisms that would penetrate the obscene, that would make visible what the scene had rendered invisible. They were an attempt—flawed, contested, but genuine—to fulfil the constitutional promise of substantive equality.

The backlash revealed the power of the obscene. It was not organized in any formal sense, not announced in advance, not easy to document. That is precisely its strength. Upper-caste students mobilized through informal networks, through what Teltumbde calls “social capital”, the connections that operate off-stage, invisible to the official record. They framed themselves as victims, as the truly vulnerable ones. And they succeeded. They convinced the Supreme Court that regulations designed to protect Dalit students actually threatened “social harmony.” The narrative of false complaints, of reverse discrimination, of the general category as the real victim—this is the hegemony of denial operating at full capacity. This is what Teltumbde means by “camouflaged” caste, what Guru analyses as the scene’s epistemic violence. It does not need to defend hierarchy openly. It only needs to make hierarchy invisible, to make the structures that produce vulnerability disappear, to make the vulnerable look like the powerful.

The state, caught between its constitutional obligations and its political base, did what it always does in such moments. It spoke with two voices. One voice assured the constitutional audience that protections would remain, that no one would be harassed. The other voice, quieter but more decisive, welcomed the judicial stay that rescued the government from its dilemma. Two voices, same state. The schizophrenia is not a bug; it is the feature.

The campus revealed itself as a double stage. On the visible scene, the university administration performed neutrality, issuing statements, filing cross-FIRs, appealing for harmony, banning protests in the name of traffic. Beneath this scene, the obscene did its work: the confrontation at Arts Faculty, the whispered rape threats, the casteist remarks, the informal mobilization along caste lines. And when the obscene erupted into visibility on February 13, the scene moved quickly to push it back. The protest ban was not about traffic. It was about management. It was about re-establishing the boundary.

And throughout, Dalit students, activists, and intellectuals continued the work of forcing the obscene into visibility. They organized, protested, theorised and refused to let the moment pass. This is what Guru calls “theorizing from the obscene”, not supplementing mainstream theory but challenging its foundations. This is what Teltumbde analyses as counter-hegemonic assertion and not just demanding inclusion but shattering the terms of exclusion. It is the work of breaking the double stage.

The Supreme Court will hear the matter again in March 2026. Whatever it decides, the controversy has already revealed something fundamental about the architecture of caste power in contemporary India. It has shown that the boundary between “scene” and “obscene” is not natural. It is political. It is constantly contested, constantly renegotiated. It has shown that the struggle for caste equality is, at its heart, a struggle over visibility. Over what can be seen, what can be spoken, what can be named. Over who gets to define reality.

As long as the schism persists, as long as the official scene disavows what the social obscene reproduces, caste will endure in its schizophrenic modern form. It will adapt, mutate, camouflage itself. It will learn new languages, wear new clothes, inhabit new institutions. But its very adaptability is also its vulnerability. Each time it is forced into visibility, each time the obscene is dragged into the scene, the possibility of transformation opens. Each eruption is also an opportunity.

The project of annihilation, as Ambedkar envisioned it, requires nothing less than the demolition of the double stage. Not just reforming the scene. Not just documenting the obscene. But destroying the architecture that keeps them separate. The UGC controversy is one battle in that long war. Not the first, not the last. But a battle nonetheless.

Teltumbde writes that “caste’s genius lies in its plasticity.” He is right. But plasticity cuts both ways. What can adapt can also be broken. What can mutate can also be killed. Each moment of forced visibility is a wound. The question is whether enough wounds can be inflicted, enough times, in enough places, to bring the whole structure down?

Guru teaches us that this struggle must be waged not only on the streets and in the courts but in the realm of theory itself. Theorising from the obscene, centering Dalit experience, refusing the scene’s abstractions, insisting on the specificity of caste violence is not a supplement to political work. It is political work. It is the work of producing the conceptual tools that make visible what the scene works so hard to hide. This article has attempted to contribute to that project, using the tools of Foucault and Gramsci while remaining grounded in the intellectual traditions of Dalit Studies. The scene/obscene dialectic, enriched by Teltumbde’s analysis of camouflage and Guru’s insistence on theorizing from below, offers a framework for understanding not only this controversy but the broader condition of caste in contemporary India.

The double stage still stands. Its foundations hold, for now. But they are cracking. Every protest, every petition, every act of theorising from below is another crack. The question is not whether the structure will fall—all structures fall, eventually. The question is whether we will be the ones to bring it down, and what we will build in its place.

(The author teaches history at Shivaji College, University of Delhi. He can be reached at skandpriya@shivaji.du.ac.in)

References

Chamadia, Anil. Interview with University World News, 2026.

Feminism in India. “What The 2026 UGC Regulations Revealed About Caste, Merit and Savarna Victimhood.” February 9, 2026.

Guru, Gopal, and Sundar Sarukkai. The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory. Oxford University Press, 2012.

The Hindu. “As SC stays UGC equity rules, protection to marginalised castes came from a Constitutional promise to end ‘historical oppression’.” January 30, 2026.

Hindustan Times. “Protests, counter-FIRs, now a ban at DU: Campus on the boil over UGC rules against caste discrimination | Explained.” February 16, 2026.

India Today. “Travesty of UGC Campus Rules 2026: They turn a protective shield into a deadly sword.” January 29, 2026.

The Indian Express. “As UGC row simmers, why BJP dilemma over ‘forward vs backward’ has deepened.” February 18, 2026.

Outlook India. “The Socio-Cultural Debate Over the UGC’s Equity Regulations.” February 16, 2026.

Supreme Court Observer. “Supreme Court stays 2026 UGC equity regulations.” January 29, 2026.

Teltumbde, Anand. The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders and India’s Hidden Apartheid. Zed Books, 2010.

Teltumbde, Anand. Dalits: Past, Present and Future. Routledge, 2016.

Teltumbde, Anand. Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva. Navayana, 2018.

Thorat Committee Report on AIIMS Discrimination, 2007.

University World News. “New rules aim to tackle campus-based caste discrimination.” January 20, 2026.

University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026. The Gazette of India.

Zee News. “Delhi University enforces 30-day curbs on protests after UGC unrest.” February 17, 2026.

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Rather than emerging organically from local and lived religious practice, it sought to recast a historically plural, socially embedded river into a singular sacred geography, flattening its layered cultural, ecological and political meanings into a uniform religious spectacle.

The analogy with the Kumbh Mela is particularly revealing. In North India, the Kumbh is anchored in centuries-old institutional frameworks involving akharas, monastic orders, ritual calendars and cosmological cycles that have evolved through long-standing social consent. Bharatapuzha, by contrast, has never functioned as a Pan-Hindu pilgrimage centre. It has no historical association with mass ritual bathing, no priestly networks that regulate sacred time, and no inherited mythological mandate that binds the river to cyclical purification rites. The invocation of “Magha” rituals, the language of sin, cleansing and rebirth, and the visual grammar of saffron spectacle are recent insertions, introduced through publicity materials, digital campaigns and political speeches rather than through inherited community practice. What is being staged is not continuity but construction.

The presence of constitutional authority at the inauguration was therefore not incidental. It conferred institutional legitimacy on an invented ritual format, transforming a curated spectacle into an authorised public act, much as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inauguration of the newly constructed Ram Mandir in Ayodhya did. In Kerala, where religious expression has historically coexisted with strong secular institutions, such gestures alter the delicate balance between faith and governance. State endorsement converts cultural experimentation into an assertion of civilisational authenticity. The river becomes not merely a site of gathering but a stage on which new claims to cultural ownership are rehearsed and normalised.

Attempts to anchor the Mahotsavam in history frequently invoke Mamankam, the medieval assembly held periodically near the Bharatapuzha. Yet this historical analogy collapses under scrutiny. Mamankam bore little resemblance to the religious spectacle being staged today. It was neither a Hindu religious congregation nor a ritualised conflict between faiths. It was a political assembly centred on sovereignty, territorial control and the public contestation of kingship. Held once every twelve years, Mamankam was the site where the Zamorin of Calicut asserted his authority even as it was violently challenged by the Valluvanad rulers through the Chaver warriors. These warriors, drawn from specific lineages, attempted ritualised assassinations of the Zamorin, transforming the assembly into a theatre of political resistance. The purpose was not spiritual sacrifice but the destabilisation of power.

Equally central to Mamankam was its plural social composition. Muslim traders, soldiers and administrators were integral to the Zamorin’s political and economic base. Calicut’s emergence as a maritime hub depended on sustained alliances with Arab merchants, and these relationships were embedded in the very structure of power that Mamankam symbolised. To retrospectively frame Mamankam as a Hindu cultural ritual is to erase these realities and impose a communal lens that did not exist in the historical moment. Mamankam was not organised around ritual bathing, mantra recitation or priestly hierarchies. Its rituals were inseparable from warfare, trade negotiations, artistic performances and displays of military prowess.

Thus, translating Mamankam into the idiom of the Kumbh Mela strips away its political and plural character, replacing it with a homogenised religious narrative that is easier to mobilise but historically indefensible.

What distinguishes the Maha Magha Mahotsavam from earlier cultural events in Kerala is the scale and sophistication of its digital mobilisation. Social media platforms have been used not merely to publicise the festival but to frame it as a corrective to an alleged cultural suppression of Hindus in the state. This rhetoric borrows heavily from the national Hindutva lexicon, where visibility is equated with revival and dissent is recast as hostility to faith. Online narratives repeatedly position Malappuram district as a site of cultural imbalance, invoking its Muslim-majority demography to suggest that Hindu traditions require assertive reclamation. This portrayal is not new. Malappuram has long been marked in political discourse as an exception within Kerala, often detached from its historical contributions to trade, education and anti-colonial resistance. By situating a major “Hindu” event at the district’s symbolic edge, the festival implicitly marks territory.

On the ground, this rhetoric has tangible consequences. Local accounts point to heightened communal sensitivity, with Muslim residents expressing discomfort at the language used in promotional material and commentary. Pluralism is not attacked directly; it is simply bypassed. The idea of a “Hindu awakening” advanced here does not celebrate Kerala’s syncretic traditions but seeks to replace them with a uniform cultural script. In doing so, it narrows the definition of belonging and reimagines public space as an arena of assertion rather than coexistence.

Beyond ideology, the Mahotsavam raises pressing questions about environmental stewardship and public safety. Bharatapuzha is among Kerala’s most endangered rivers, its flow depleted by dams, sand mining and encroachment. Large-scale gatherings on its banks inevitably place additional stress on an already fragile ecosystem. The controversy surrounding the proposed temporary bridge illustrates the tension between spectacle and regulation. The stop memo was issued on procedural and safety grounds, including the absence of clearances and concerns over construction in a sensitive river zone. Yet sections of social media discourse reframed this administrative action as a cultural or communal slight, despite no such intent or basis in official orders. This episode highlights a deeper challenge for Kerala: how routine governance decisions are increasingly vulnerable to politicisation when wrapped in the language of faith.

Further, stampedes at religious events have demonstrated how inadequate crowd management, infrastructural shortcuts and political pressure to maximise attendance can result in tragedy. Kerala’s administrative machinery has limited experience managing events of this scale, particularly in ecologically sensitive zones. There is also the question of precedent.

Once a river is reimagined as a ritual bathing site, pressure mounts to repeat and expand such events. Environmental damage then becomes cumulative, justified in the name of a tradition that did not previously exist.

Organisers describe the Maha Magha Mahotsavam not as a culmination but as a beginning, frequently invoking 2028 as the moment when the initiative will reach its full symbolic and participatory scale. This long-term vision underscores the political nature of the project. Cultural transformation is not achieved through singular events but through repetition and institutional backing that generate familiarity; familiarity hardens into memory, and memory eventually masquerades as antiquity. This is how invented traditions become heritage.

Kerala’s historical strength has been its resistance to such flattening. Its public culture has accommodated religious expression without allowing any single narrative to monopolise history or space. The remaking of Bharatapuzha challenges this equilibrium by privileging one interpretation of the past while marginalising others. What is at stake is not merely the character of a festival but the future grammar of Kerala’s public life. Whether history is engaged as a complex inheritance or reduced to a tool of mobilisation depends on how society responds now.

Supporters present the Mahotsavam as spiritual renewal and a gateway to religious tourism, promising economic visibility and regional development. These claims cannot be dismissed outright. Kerala has long benefited from cultural tourism, and pilgrimage economies can generate livelihoods. Yet spiritual tourism is never purely economic. It reorganises space, privileges certain narratives and fixes meaning in ways that are difficult to reverse. When rituals are newly assembled rather than inherited, tourism risks converting memory into spectacle and communities into bystanders to a story told about them rather than with them.

What is unfolding along the Bharatapuzha is not a disagreement over faith but a struggle over authority: who defines culture, how memory is institutionalised, and which identities are permitted to feel native in shared spaces.

The Maha Magha Mahotsavam marks a shift from lived tradition to curated symbolism, where culture becomes less an expression of social life and more a claim to power. In this transformation, history is not engaged as complexity but recruited as an instrument.

The costs are cumulative. Socially, curated spirituality narrows belonging and renders dissent suspect. Environmentally, rivers turned into ritual stages are subjected to pressures that sanctity cannot mitigate. Historically, selective storytelling flattens the past, replacing layered inheritance with simplified images designed for mobilisation. What is lost is not only accuracy but the ethical discipline of living with contradiction.

Kerala’s pluralism was never ornamental. It was forged through negotiation, overlap and unresolved differences. The remaking of Bharatapuzha tests whether that inheritance will endure or yield to a politics that prefers clarity over truth. Culture can evolve, and tourism can coexist with tradition, but only when history remains a conversation rather than a commodity, and public space remains a site of coexistence rather than conquest.

(The author is an Indian author, political analyst and columnist. His debut book, The Essential (2023), was launched by Dr. Shashi Tharoor and features a foreword by former External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid. His research and commentary have appeared in IJPA, Global Policy Journal, South Asian Voices, ORF, The Unpopulist, SAGE, among others, and leading dailies.He posts on ‘X’ at @ens_socialis)

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Dhananjay, one of the complainants is a former president of the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) and the first Dalit student to be elected to the post in nearly two decades in 2024 has filed a detailed complaint with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) on the issue. The second complaint was filed by Suraj Kumar Baudh, founder of Mission Ambedkar, a forum working on spreading B R Ambedkar’s teachings.

This casteist statement by the Vice Chancellor of JNU—even otherwise a controversial person—has led to widespread protests by all students of this iconic university but especially Dalit Bahujan students. Slogans like “Ambedkarwaali Azaadi” have echoed all over the campus.

JNU की VC ने दलितों और Blacks के “victimhood” जैसे नीचे स्तर की बात की, साथ ही साथ UGC रेगुलेशन के ख़िलाफ़ माहौल बनाया।

“अंबेडकर वाली आज़ादी” के नारों के साथ अब पूरा कैंपस VC के इस्तीफ़े की माँग कर रहा है।

ऐसे VC के रहते कैसे कोई बहुजन छात्र विश्विद्यालय में सुरक्षित महसूस… pic.twitter.com/m1iCEwrRjw

— Priyanka Bharti (@priyanka2bharti) February 23, 2026

Thousands marching in JNU chanting Ambedkar’s name against a VC who dismisses lived caste oppression as “Drug addiction”
This is not leadership — this is Manu-smriti in VC robes.
Remove her!
#Sack_Castiest_JNU_VC
pic.twitter.com/TTR7tcHoG4

— Ravi Ratan (@scribe_it) February 23, 2026

The current union of students, JNUSU has also protested the remarks.

In the detailed complaint, while seeking Pandit’s removal as the V-C in his complaint submitted to the NCSC chairperson on Tuesday, Dhananjay – a PhD scholar at JNU – accused the V-C of making statements that “prima facie promote feelings of hatred and ill-will against the people belonging to the Dalit and other marginalised communities,” and sought action under Section 3(1)(u) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

Dhananjay has argued that the comments – coming from the head of a Central university – had created a “serious detrimental impact” on Dalit students and had “clearly given rise to feelings of hatred and ill-will against students belonging from Dalit and other marginalised communities”.

“The conduct of Santishree D Pandit, being a person holding a responsible academic office, is criminal and reprehensible,” the complaint said, adding that educational institutions “ought to be sanctuaries of inclusivity, enlightenment, and constitutional morality”. Instead, it alleged, her statements had “sown division and inflicted emotional distress upon students and members of the Dalit and marginalised community”.

The detailed complaint may be read here. Dhananjay, in his complaint has also pointed out to the deleterious impact of such statements by the V-C PAndit. The complaint states that, “there have been incidents of harassment on students belonging from the Dalit and marginalised communities. Furthermore, the general atmosphere against the students and people belonging from the Dalit and marginalised communities has become hostile.”

Dhananjay the former President of JNUSU in 2023-24 and a PHD scholar in Arts & Aesthetics has also argued in his complaint that, “the Courts of our country have repeatedly emphasised, that Public Authorities should exercise caution in their speeches and public statement. Needless to mention, Ms. Santishree D. Pandit, has failed to adhere to such directives of the Hon’ble Court. Moreover, as the Vice Chancellor of an university, it was the duty of Ms. Santishree D.Pandit, to ensure a safe and peaceful environment for the students of her university. However, by making the said statement, she has clearly failed to discharge the said duties. It bears mention, that as a result of her statement, students are apprehending threat to their safety and security and are living under an atmosphere of mental agony.”

Besides, the complaint states that the said statement also amounts to hate speech, as they humiliate, incite prejudice and social hostility against a historically marginalised community. The statement promotes feeling of enmity, hatred and ill-will on the basis of caste. Such speech insults the historical struggles faced by the said marginalised community, undermines social harmony and perpetuates systemic discrimination, which the Constitution of India and special legislations such as the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act seek to eradicate.

Reliance was placed in Dhananjay’s complaint upon the judgement of the Supreme Court in the matter titled as Vishal Tiwari vs. Union of India & Ors. [W.P. (Crl.) No.466 of 2025]. Relevant portion of the said order is being given here under:-

“While we are not entertaining the present writ petition, we make it clear that any attempt to spread communal hatred or indulge in hate speech must be dealt with an iron hand. Hate speech cannot be tolerated as it leads to loss of dignity and self-worth of the targeted group members, contributes to disharmony amongst groups, 5 and erodes tolerance and open-mindedness, which is a must for a multi-cultural society committed to the idea of equality. Any attempt to cause alienation or humiliation of the targeted group is a criminal offence and must be dealt with accordingly.”

In conclusion the young student leader states that “the conduct of Ms.Santishree D. Pandit, being a person holding a responsible academic office, is criminal and reprehensible. Educational institutions ought to be sanctuaries of inclusivity, enlightenment, and constitutional morality. Instead, her statements have sown division and inflicted emotional distress upon students and members of the Dalit and marginalised communities. It also bears mention, that till date Vice Chancelor has not issued any statement of apology. This simply bolsters the fact, that the statement given by the Vice Chancellor was a well thought statement, which has been given to create discrimination and to promote feeling of hatred and ill will against the people belonging from Dalit and other marginalised community.”

The complaint invokes sections 196 and 197 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, that are sections related to words and actions that promote feeling of enmity, hatred and ill-will on the basis of caste.”

It is under Article 338 of the Constitution that prescribes that it shall be the duty of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes to investigate and monitor all matters relating to the safeguards provided for the Scheduled Castes under this Constitution, or under any other law for the time being in force, or under any order of the Government, and to evaluate the working of such safeguards that the complaint has been filed.

Investigation and further action against the Vice Chancellor in accordance with the law and Constitution has been sought. The complaint also urges that “appropriate authorities to register a case under the relevant provisions of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, including Section 3(1)(u) and recommend stern disciplinary and legal action, including the immediate removal of the said Vice Chancellor from her position, so as to uphold justice and deter such conduct in future.

The second complaint filed by Baudh also raised similar concerns, accusing Pandit of making “demeaning and dismissive” remarks. That complaint said Pandit’s statements suggested that efforts to address caste inequities were merely claims of “victimhood” rather than “legitimate claims for equality, dignity, and constitutional safeguards”.

Baudh has requested NCSC to “take cognizance of the matter and examine whether the remarks promote prejudice, incite hostility or constitute contempt or disrespect towards scheduled caste communities” and “issue a notice seeking detailed explanation from the V-C”.

Earlier, responding to the controversy earlier, Pandit had told PTI that her remarks had been taken out of context. “I am a Bahujan myself, I come from an OBC background,” she had said, adding that she was referring to what she described as “woke” interpretations of history and the creation of “imaginary worlds” around permanent victimhood.

On UGC’s equity regulations, which were stayed by the Supreme Court last month, Pandit had said during the podcast interview that they had been introduced without adequate consultation. “It was done secretly. Many of us who are part of the system didn’t even know what was in it,” she said, calling the regulations unnecessary and constitutionally flawed.

She had also defended the JNU administration’s decision to rusticate five student leaders for allegedly vandalising surveillance equipment at the Ambedkar Library. “They destroyed this property, literally broke it down, sat on top of it, took pictures and they themselves put it on social media as though they have done something great,” she said, adding that the students had been charged under what she described as a “very strong Act,” apparently referring to the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984.

The administration, she had said, had shown restraint by debarring the students for two semesters and imposing a fine of Rs 20,000. “It is taxpayers’ money. I am answerable as a Vice-Chancellor to the government, to Parliament, and to the people of India,” she had added.

On Monday, JNUSU leaders were booked on charges, including rioting and criminal conspiracy, after the university filed a complaint with the police in connection to the student protests on Sunday night against Pandit.

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Will focus on ‘Indo-centric narratives’, implementing NEP: New JNU VC 

UGC Guidelines 2026: AISA Protest at Delhi University followed by sexual abuse allegations amid police presence

The post JNU: Former JNUSU President complains against Vice Chancellor’s casteist & racist remarks appeared first on SabrangIndia.

During a high-profile technology expo meant to showcase India’s AI talent, a faculty member from Galgotias University introduced a robotic dog dubbed “Orion,” describing it as a product of the university’s Centre of Excellence.

Almost immediately, keen observers and technology enthusiasts identified the robot as a Unitree Go2 — a commercially available quadruped robot manufactured by a Chinese company, not an original research output of the university.

Videos from the summit circulated widely on social media, and within hours the episode had sparked ridicule, criticism, and questions about transparency and authenticity in India’s tech showcases.

Reports claimed that organisers asked the university to vacate its stall and even had the power at the pavilion switched off in response to the controversy — though the university later contested whether an official expulsion order was issued.

In short: what was meant to signal India’s AI capabilities became a cautionary tale about careless representation, inadequate academic ethics, and short-term showmanship.

Why it matters: Beyond a single mistake 

This episode is not just a PR (public relations) embarrassment — it also opens up deeper questions about the culture of higher education in India, the politics of innovation, and the gap between rhetoric and reality in national technological ambition.

1. Education ethics and quality control 

Universities — especially those with public visibility — are expected to uphold standards of transparency and academic integrity. Presenting an imported product as original research, even unintentionally, reflects a failure in basic accountability and clarity — a breakdown not just of communication, but of institutional rigor.

For students and faculty, hands-on interaction with advanced devices is legitimate. But conflating exposure to technology with actual development — and doing so in a high-stakes international forum — shows a worrying inferiority complex towards genuine innovation.

A Galgotias “research scholar,” Dharmendra Kumar, published a paper claiming that Covid-19 could be destroyed by sound vibrations from clapping or bells in the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceutical and Regulatory Affairs (Vol. 2, Issue 2, 2020). The claim echoed the March 22, 2020 Janata Curfew clapping exercise promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi—an idea later rejected by the scientific community as pseudoscience.

2. Government priorities in practice: Scientific progress vs the religion industry

A comparison of public spending on science, education, and AI with allocations—direct and indirect—towards religion-centric infrastructure reveals more than budgetary arithmetic; it exposes the political priorities shaping India’s future.

The Union government often cites education spending as evidence of commitment to knowledge-building. The Ministry of Education was allocated ₹128,650 crore in 2025–26, with ₹78,572 crore for school education and around ₹47,000–48,000 crore for higher education in recent years. While these figures appear substantial, they must sustain one of the world’s largest student populations, thousands of colleges and universities, and a chronically underfunded research ecosystem. Much of this money merely keeps institutions running rather than creating globally competitive laboratories, doctoral programmes or long-term research capacity.

Technology and AI funding shows a similar contradiction. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology received about ₹26,000 crore in 2025–26. Initiatives such as the IndiaAI Mission (around ₹10,300 crore over multiple years) and a ₹500-crore Centre of Excellence in AI for Education suggest ambition. Yet this funding is scattered across missions and pilots, favouring visibility and announcements over sustained investment in universities, basic science, and large PhD pipelines—the foundations of genuine innovation.

In contrast, the religion industry—pilgrimage infrastructure, temple-linked tourism, and heritage projects—commands political attention far exceeding its formal budget share. However, two factors amplify its impact. First is political signalling: religious projects are paired with high-profile inaugurations and constant symbolism. Second are off-budget flows—large temple trusts such as Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams handle multi-thousand-crore revenues, shaping infrastructure and public priorities without appearing in Union Budget comparison (s) .

The result is an imbalance where science receives headline funds but limited depth, while religion-centred projects enjoy visibility, legitimacy and multiple funding streams.

3. Spectacle Over Substance

The controversy also highlights a broader phenomenon in modern institutional and political culture: preference for spectacle over substance.

Political rhetoric around AI and technological leadership in India has grown aggressively in recent years, with grand claims about digital prowess, global tech leadership, and indigenous innovation. But when those claims are measured against reality, episodes like this reveal a gap between promotional narratives and actual research output.

Rather than noble ambition, this can resemble marketing masquerading as innovation — a dynamic that critics have long pointed to in sectors beyond education.

4. The BJP-RSS Context: Aspirations, perceptions, and overselling

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the ideological ecosystem around it, often associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have frequently championed narratives of technological self-reliance, cultural renaissance, and national resurgence. These themes have strong resonances in public discourse.

But when such grand narratives are paired with weak empirical substance, they risk becoming vacant rhetorics rather than effective policy frameworks.

The AI Expo controversy — wherein an institution aligns itself with big claims (Rs. 350 crore AI investment, “in-house innovation” at a global summit) only to be unmasked over a misrepresented robot — can be seen as a symptom of larger systemic issues: an overreliance on image management, lack of emphasis on foundational science and research, and the temptation to equate presence with excellence.

These are not problems unique to any one institution, but they are exacerbated when political discourse prioritises bravado over authentic capacity building.

Conclusion: A moment of reckoning — or repetition?

The Galgotias AI Expo debacle is uncomfortable because it holds up a mirror: it reflects not only the pitfalls of one university’s presentation, but also the gap between aspiration and achievement in India’s drive toward global tech leadership.

If the goal is genuinely to build an AI-savvy workforce and world-class research ecosystem, then substance must matter more than spectacle, and integrity must undergird promotion. This requires honest assessment, a political leadership that promotes scientific progress over religious industry, rigorous academic culture, and an intellectual climate that values long-term capacity over short-term optics.

Only then can institutions — and the nation — move beyond tall claims and hollow applause toward genuine innovation, learning, and progress.

(The author is a mechanical engineer and an independent commentator on history and politics, with a particular focus on Rajasthan. His work explores the syncretic exchanges of India’s borderlands as well as contemporary debates on memory, identity and historiography; he can be contacted on adityakrishnadeora@gmail.com)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

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Public Vs Private Education – A New Experiment By Y.S.Jagan Mohan Reddy

The post Galgotias University’s AI Expo Debacle: What it says about Contemporary Indian Education & Public Culture appeared first on SabrangIndia.

What follows is excerpted from the second Bhasurendrababu Memorial Lecture, organised by True Dialogue Debates and delivered by former journalist R. Rajagopal in Alappuzha, south Kerala, on February 15. The commemoration of Bhasurendrababu — journalist and political commentator — was inaugurated by Vijoo Krishnan, General Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha and CPI(M) Politburo member. This is not a full reproduction of the lecture, but an account drawn from it.

The purported legal documents and official letters featured here were sourced from CourtListener, part of the Free Law Project, a federally recognized non-profit organisation in the United States. CourtListener.com is a fully searchable and accessible archive of court data, including growing repositories of opinions, oral arguments, judicial financial records, and federal filings. Founded in 2010, Free Law Project uses technology, data, and advocacy to make the legal ecosystem more equitable and competitive.

On January 21 last month, at 3:28 p.m. EST — around 2 a.m. in India on January 22 — a series of documents appeared on CourtListener.com.

As many as 20 PDF files were uploaded. The files were attributed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American securities markets watchdog. To the best of available knowledge, neither the SEC — to which these documents are attributed — nor the Government of India, whose purported letters form part of the documents, has publicly contested their authenticity. These documents have remained in the public domain since January 21, 2026 (EST). Although the contents of the files are not legible on the presentation screen, the purpose here is not to dissect their details but to note that multiple documents entered the public domain on that day.

The issue relates to what is known in the United States as “service methods,” referred to in India as serving summons or notice to parties involved in a case. In this instance, the SEC sought to issue documents to Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani. The documents are linked to a civil case in which the SEC has levelled charges against Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Green’s board of directors, and his nephew Sagar Adani, executive director of the same board. The Adanis have consistently denied all charges.

The SEC filed a motion requesting a New York court to set a date permitting alternative service of summonses to the defendants. Indian nationals cannot be directly served summonses by foreign agencies like the SEC; however, defendants may waive service if they choose. The SEC stated it had approached Gautam Adani’s counsel. Yet in April 2025, it noted that “neither defendant has agreed to waive service of the summons and complaint.” In the absence of such a waiver, foreign agencies in civil matters must route service through India’s Ministry of Law and Justice under the Hague Service Convention. This made the role of the Indian law ministry crucial.

A preliminary statement in the documents notes that while the SEC had filed charges, India’s Ministry of Law and Justice had twice refused service under the Hague Convention. Reports had earlier indicated that the Indian government was dragging its feet. What remained unknown until January 21 were the reasons cited by the ministry — and that the matter had effectively reached a dead end.

Among the 20 uploaded PDFs was a letter purportedly sent by the Indian law ministry to the SEC. For newsrooms accustomed to covering “sealed-cover” submissions by the Narendra Modi government, this letter could well have been manna from heaven. All that newspapers needed to do was seek confirmation from the law ministry regarding authenticity and, in the event of silence, publish the document while noting that the ministry had neither confirmed nor denied it.

The purported letter stated that the SEC’s forwarding letter “bears no seal and signature and the model form bears no seal of the requesting authority.” On this basis, the Indian ministry returned the documents to the SEC.

The SEC responded, writing to the Indian ministry that the Hague Convention does not mandate a seal or signature on the forwarding cover letter. It maintained that its requests complied with the Convention. The Hague Service Convention, the SEC argued, does not require a seal or signature on the forwarding cover letter, nor does the Model Form require a seal. The watchdog resent the request.

The SEC further cited The Practical Handbook on the Operation of the Service Convention, stating that demanding a seal and stamp is erroneous and that certification is not required on the Model Form or accompanying documents.

According to the SEC, the Convention only requires the Model Form to be signed by a competent individual. Its requests met these criteria, and the optional cover letter, it argued, should not have been grounds for return.

The SEC’s cover letter was displayed — its second page unsigned — one of the reasons cited by the Indian ministry for returning the request. The SEC countered that the cover letter itself is optional and requires neither seal nor signature.

An image of the purported Hague Convention Model Form showed it signed but without a seal. The absence of a seal had been cited by the Indian ministry. Yet the form itself states “Signature and/or stamp,” a phrase the SEC relied upon in its rebuttal.

On September 12, 2025, the SEC followed up on the requests for service originally sent in February and resent in May.

In November 2025, the Indian ministry responded again, citing SEC procedures and stating that the summonses were not covered under specific categories. The requests were once more returned.

That letter appears to have been the final straw. The SEC then moved a New York court. The uploaded documents show no fresh SEC response to the Indian ministry thereafter. However, the SEC’s court filing states that the ministry’s objection to its authority to invoke the Hague Convention lacked basis.

The SEC’s move triggered rapid developments. On January 23 — just two days after the SEC approached the court — Gautam Adani’s counsel wrote to the court stating that discussions were ongoing with the SEC and requested that the court’s order be deferred.

The court agreed to defer its ruling until January 30, 2026.

Subsequently, the SEC informed the court that counsel for the Adanis had agreed to service of process, eliminating the need for the court to rule on the motion. The defendants, however, retained all litigation rights, including those concerning jurisdiction.

What was resolved in just over a week had, in fact, taken 429 days of back-and-forth since the filing of the original case. Not all delays can be attributed to the Indian ministry. During this period, Donald Trump became the 47th President of the United States, leading to some administrative flux and related pauses. Nonetheless, the sheer number of days required for what is typically a procedural step is illustrative.

Numbers, however, do not tell stories on their own.

In June, a pregnant woman named Sunali Khatun was swept up in Delhi’s drive against alleged illegal immigrants. She was “pushed back” to Bangladesh in “hot haste” within five days — even though the Union home ministry states that verification can take up to 30 days. Following intervention by the Supreme Court, Sunali returned to India on humanitarian grounds.

One process involving a tycoon consumed 429 days.
Another, involving the deportation of a pregnant woman, took only five.

The question remains: when the documents attributed to the SEC entered the public domain, what did India’s paper tigers do?

You’re right. That version became too report-like and lost the sharpness and tone of the original slides. Let me rewrite it properly — as a strong, flowing narrative that keeps everything you said, but with better rhythm, coherence and punch.

Watch the Video Presentation here:

The Silence of the Newsrooms

Let us return to the afternoon of January 21, 2026, in New York. That was when the SEC documents relating to the service of summons on Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani quietly dropped onto the internet. In New Delhi, it was around 2 a.m. on January 22. Too late for most newspapers to carry the development in their January 22 print editions.

So let us grant them that grace. Let us wait for the morning of January 23 — more than 24 hours after the SEC-linked documents had entered the public domain.

Good morning, upcountry India.

The Indian Express arrives. Page 1 is scanned carefully. No SEC-Adani service request story in sight. Perhaps the large advertisement at the bottom elbowed it out. Fine. Let us turn to the business section.

The Economy page does carry an Adani story — tiny, tucked near the bottom. But it is not the SEC development. It is a Press Trust of India report about Adani Energy’s dipping profit. The SEC story remains elusive.

By January 24 — over 50 hours after the documents surfaced — the story finally makes its way to the front page of The Indian Express. Or perhaps it forces its way in, propelled not by editorial urgency but by market tremors. The headline reads: “Adani stocks fall as US SEC plans email summons to Gautam Adani.” Investor jitters appear to have mattered more than the reader’s right to know that the SEC had moved a New York court after 429 days of procedural resistance.

The Times of India — whose parent company’s media school trained me in 1990–91 — never ceases to surprise. The story is on Page 1. Yes, it is a brief. But it is there. The brief points to Page 27.

And so begins a small expedition through the paper. After negotiating the rapids of newsprint, Page 27 appears.

There it is — a larger SEC-Adani story sailing in the Times Business section. Three columns. Five paragraphs. Placed above the “anchor” story. Yet, despite its vast in-house reporting network, The Times has opted for a Reuters report. What kept its reporters so preoccupied that none could be spared for this development? The rest of the page offers no clue.

Next, The Hindu. Usually dependable. Surely this would find space on Page 1. It does not. The colourful NDA advertisement dominates attention. Turning to the business page, the SEC story does appear — a narrow report in the second deck. Once again, Reuters. Once again, a paper with a formidable reporting network relying on a wire copy.

The Telegraph — a paper I once edited — does not carry the story on Page 1 either. On the Business page, the Reuters report sits as a single-column item.

The New Indian Express? I cannot find the story on either the front page or the business page. I deliberately say “I could not find the story,” because newspapers today scatter tiny items across labyrinthine layouts. It is possible the SEC story is camouflaged somewhere. But must readers play Indiana Jones to locate consequential news? Or should newspapers present important developments in ways that are visible and accessible?

Now to my home turf.

I cannot find the SEC story in Malayala Manorama. Malayalam newspapers, these days, seem absorbed in the gold theft at the Sabarimala temple.

Mathrubhumi, too — the story eludes me. On January 23, I also fail to spot the SEC-Adani development on the front pages of the two Left newspapers, Deshabhimani and Janayugam.

Across both print editions and paywalled online editions, the SEC-Adani story does not appear — at least not in any visible form — in The Indian Express, The New Indian Express, Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi on January 23. The Telegraph, whose e-paper is free, and some others do carry it in one form or another.

As a subscriber to the four newspapers mentioned, I wrote to their editors on the night of January 23, using the email addresses published in their pages, asking why the story had not been reported that day. There has been no acknowledgement since. I cannot even be certain that my emails reached them.

Watch the Video Presentation here:

Who Swam Against the Tide — and What the Newsrooms Chose to Chase

Let us ask the obvious question: who swam against the tide?

We return once more to the afternoon of January 21 in New York — and 2 a.m. on January 22 in India — when the SEC-Adani story broke.

Not all journalists were asleep.

At 4:28 a.m. on January 22 — less than three hours after the SEC documents entered the public domain — a journalist in India had already filed a report.

Devirupa Mitra published a detailed and comprehensive story for the news portal The Wire at 4:28 a.m., proving that where there is the will, there is always a story. It is worth noting that The Wire does not charge its readers; it relies solely on donations.

Now, about the print editions.

The news that day, in my view, was not about the Adanis. The Adanis — who have denied the charges — were part of a legal process that would unfold in court. It is an ongoing matter. Only a court of law can determine innocence or guilt, and until then, the Adanis are entitled to every protection the law affords.

The Wire struck the nail squarely on the head. Its headline placed emphasis where it belonged — highlighting that the Modi government had blocked the SEC request for several months.

That, I believe, was the real story.

The central issue was how the Union government appeared to have responded to attempts to serve summons on defendants facing charges in a country that India publicly celebrates as a friend. The purported documents — uploaded and attributed to the SEC — suggest that the American watchdog contested the Indian law ministry’s objections, citing material under the Hague Convention. What remains unclear, however, is whether the Indian government subsequently challenged the SEC’s version.

Indian citizens have the right to know whether their government misled a regulatory watchdog; whether it stonewalled a legal process with implications for investors; or whether, conversely, the US watchdog’s claims are inaccurate — in which case the Indian government ought not to take that lying down.

Once again, the story was not about the Adanis. It was about the stand adopted by the Indian government.

Yet no newspaper I examined appeared to foreground that aspect. Rarely are Indian newspapers handed, on a platter, a stack of legal documents already in the public domain. Yet in this instance, most chose either to ignore the development for over 51 hours or to underplay it.

I had assumed that at least some newspapers would use the documents — after erecting the necessary journalistic guardrails.

I had assumed that some would frame the story along the lines indicated here: using documents whose authorship had not been contested until February 14, and pressing the issue of the purported position adopted by the Indian government.

But several newsrooms seem to have perfected the art of swallowing inconvenient news when it concerns powerful players. The inevitable result: readers are denied important information.

And then — bouncing back from these depths of professional despair — I discovered renewed hope.

On February 6, Mathrubhumi carried a Page 1 story that restored my faith in the data-gathering zeal of Indian print newsrooms. The newspaper reported, in meticulous detail, how National Security Adviser Ajit Doval went shopping — unannounced — and purchased banana chips. Yes. B-A-N-A-N-A C-H-I-P-S. Banana chips. In Thiruvananthapuram.

The operation, it seems, was blown open when some employees of a space agency recognised Doval and introduced themselves. Hold your breath: he reportedly exchanged pleasantries with them in Hindi and English.

Pulse racing and adrenaline pumping, I read the chips story with the thrill of watching a Mission: Impossible sequence. Mathrubhumi displayed remarkable courage in revealing what could only be described as state secrets — such as the presence of four vehicles and an ambulance stationed outside while Doval selected his banana chip supplies. The report even disclosed how much money he spent on the purchase.

Indian print newsrooms, clearly, are in safe hands — locked and loaded for the mission.

Step aside, without reservation, Ethan Hunt.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to retire.

Thank you.

Watch the video presentation here:

R Rajagopal, Senior Journalist, Former Editor The Telegraph

The post Newsrooms that Swallow Whales appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Throughout the year, CJP successfully challenged problematic impugned broadcasts of several leading news channels—including Zee News, India TV, Aaj Tak, ABP News, NDTV, and Times Now Navbharat—for airing content that relied on presumptive narratives, unverified claims, and polarising themes. These interventions led to landmark decisions where the regulator (NBDSA) ordered the removal of offensive content, issued formal warnings, and released advisories to broadcasters regarding the sensitive framing of religious and communal issues.

A notable shift in 2025 was CJP’s focus on the “war-like” rhetoric and inflammatory tickers used during coverage of sensitive geopolitical events, such as the reported India-Pakistan tensions, and domestic flashpoints. By documenting these violations in real-time, CJP not only secured apologies and content deletions but also pushed for a more robust accountability framework.

The following CJP’s 2025 NBDSA Interventions Tracker provides a detailed, channel-wise breakdown of the complaints filed by CJP and the subsequent decisions rendered by the NBDSA to uphold broadcasting standards.

CJP’s 2025 NBDSA Interventions Tracker

CJP’s 2025 NBDSA interventions: a year of ensuring accountability in media reporting

1.  Landmark decisions delivered in 2025

The year began with a series of significant decisions from the NBDSA on complaints CJP had filed regarding broadcasts that sought to communalise sensitive domestic and international issues.

• Zee News: the “Budaun Encounter” case

On January 27, 2025, the NBDSA delivered a pivotal order regarding a broadcast aired on March 20, 2024. The show, titled “Debate on Budaun encounter LIVE: Encounter पर क्यों उठा रहे सवाल?” focused on a tragic criminal incident involving two brothers.

• Fact of the complaint: CJP argued that the anchor, Pradeep Bhandari, repeatedly used the term “Talibani-style murder” and framed the entire debate around the religious identity of the accused. The show suggested a broader conspiracy rooted in religion rather than treating the incident as an individual criminal act.
• The NBDSA decision: The Authority ruled that the broadcast violated the Guidelines to Prevent Communal Colour in Reporting Crime. The NBDSA noted that linking a crime to a specific religion or using extremist terminology like “Talibani” without evidence was inflammatory.
• Action taken: A formal warning was issued to Zee News on January 27, 2025. The channel was ordered to remove the video from all platforms within 7 days and ensure the order was disseminated to all member broadcasters as a corrective measure.

• Times Now Navbharat: communalising the Israel-Hamas conflict

Also on January 27, 2025, the NBDSA ruled on two segments from October 16, 2023 on theme “Modi के खिलाफ… क्यों खडे ‘हमास’ के साथ?” and “Rashtravad: हिंदुस्तान में ‘Hamas Think tank’ कौन बना रहा है?”

• Fact of the complaint: CJP stated that how the anchors, Rakesh Pandey and Naina Yadav, portrayed Indian Muslims and opposition leaders supporting the Palestinian cause as “Hamas sympathisers.” The broadcast used leading questions to suggest that religious ties in India were fueling support for global terrorism.
• The NBDSA decision: The regulator found that the broadcaster had exceeded its limits by targeting a particular community. The NBDSA observed that the debates conflated political support for Palestine with support for a banned entity (Hamas), thereby creating prejudice.
• Action taken: The NBDSA issued a formal warning for violating neutrality and ordered the immediate removal of the content within 7 days.

Times Now Navbharat: addressing communal tones in cultural debates

• Facts of the complaint: On September 9, 2024, CJP filed a complaint against the show “Desh Ka Mood Meter: सनातन संस्कृति…कट्टरपंथियों के लिए सॉफ्ट टारगेट?” which aired on September 2, 2024. The program was flagged for its inflammatory framing of issues related to Sanatan culture and its portrayal of certain groups as “extremists” targeting religious sentiments. CJP argued that the broadcast lacked objectivity and used a sensitive cultural subject to build a polarising narrative.
• NBDSA Action: Regarding this intervention, the NBDSA delivered its decision on December 3, 2025, directing the broadcaster to remove the content from its website, YouTube channel, and all other digital links within 7 days.

Times Now Navbharat: caution against presumptive Madrasa narratives

• Moreover, CJP intervened on August 26, 2024, concerning two segments aired on August 19, 2024: “Sankalp Rashtra Nirman Ka: कराची का लिटरेचर..भारत के मदरसों में क्या कर रहा?” and “Rashtravad: भारत का मदरसा…पाकिस्तान का सिलेबस?”. The complaints cantered on the unverified nature of the claims that literature from Karachi was being taught in Indian Madrasas, which CJP argued contributed to the stigmatisation of religious educational institutions.

• NBDSA decision/action: In its decision dated June 9, 2025, the NBDSA decided to close the complaint but concluded with a strong advisory observation. The Authority emphasised that anchors must be significantly more cautious when framing programs involving religious or communal issues, particularly when claims are unverified. Furthermore, the NBDSA warned that broadcasters should strictly avoid presumptive narratives that have the potential to foster feelings of hatred or ill-will toward any community.

C.)  India TV: the Bahraich violence reporting

On September 25, 2025, a decision was reached regarding the show “Coffee Par Kurukshetra: यूपी में पत्थरबाजों की फौज कहां से आई? UP Bahraich Violence | CM Yogi” (aired October 15, 2024), which covered communal violence in Bahraich, UP.

• Fact of the complaint: CJP pointed out in its complaint that the channel used the inflammatory headline “Army of stone-pelters” and conducted a one-sided debate that demonised a specific community as “outsiders” and “aggressors” without providing space for a neutral or dissenting view.
• The NBDSA decision: The Authority found that the channel failed to maintain objectivity. It ruled that the broadcast was likely to incite communal hatred and was not a balanced representation of the facts on the ground.
• Action taken: The NBDSA ordered the removal of the broadcast from the channel’s website and YouTube within 7 days.

1.  CJP’s 2025 NBDSA interventions

• Network 18 (News18 MP Chhattisgarh)

Complaint Date: May 14, 2025

Theme of the show: “India’s air strike Pakistan: Operation Sindoor में मारा गया आतंकी Mohammad Iqbal | India Pak War,” dated May 7, 2025.

• Facts of the complaint: On May 14, 2025, CJP moved a formal complaint against News18 MP Chhattisgarh regarding its May 7, 2025, broadcast titled “India’s air strike Pakistan: Operation Sindoor में मारा गया आतंकी Mohammad Iqbal.” The complaint alleges that the channel grossly misreported the death of Maulana Qari Mohammad Iqbal, a respected religious scholar and teacher from Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir, by labeling him a “most-wanted terrorist” and “top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander” killed in a purported airstrike.

• However, official statements from the Poonch Police and independent fact-checkers confirmed that Iqbal was a civilian who died due to cross-border shelling and had no links to militancy. This broadcast constitutes a severe breach of the NBDSA’s Code of Ethics, specifically the principles of accuracy, impartiality, objectivity, and the right to privacy.

• CJP demanded an immediate on-air corrigendum, a formal unconditional apology to the deceased’s family, and the permanent removal of the defamatory content from all digital platforms to redress the significant moral and journalistic failure. 

• Action Taken: Response was received from the channel, video removed and apology rendered by the channel.

• ABP News

Complaint Date: 15.05.2025

Title/Theme of the show: “India Pakistan War Update: श्रीनगर और लुधियाना में ब्लैक आउट” Dated May 8, 2025

• Facts of complaint: On May 15, 2025, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) filed a formal complaint against ABP News for broadcasting misleading visuals during its May 8, 2025, segment titled “India Pakistan War Update.” The channel allegedly aired four-year-old footage of Israel’s Iron Dome system from 2021, falsely presenting it as real-time evidence of Indian air defences intercepting a drone attack in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.

• This misrepresentation, identified by independent fact-checkers like Alt News, constitutes a severe violation of the NBDSA’s Code of Ethics regarding accuracy, impartiality, and neutrality. By prioritising sensationalism over due diligence during a period of heightened national anxiety, the broadcast risked inciting public panic and glorifying military violence through fabricated success.

• Furthermore, the report disregarded specific Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) advisories against real-time reporting of defines operations and the spread of disinformation. CJP argues that such reckless journalism compromises national security and erodes public trust in mainstream media. Consequently, the organisation demands an immediate on-air corrigendum, a formal public apology from the channel, and the permanent removal of all contentious content from digital platforms to prevent further circulation of this disinformation.

• Aaj Tak

Complaint Date: May 14, 2025

Title/Theme of the show: “पाकिस्तान पर भारत पर भारत का चौतरफा हमला, Lahore-Karachi में भारी नुक़सान [India’s All-Around Attack on Pakistan, Heavy Losses in Lahore-Karachi]” dated May 9, 2025

• Facts: On May 14, 2025, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) filed a formal complaint against Aaj Tak for broadcasting misrepresented and sensationalised content regarding “Operation Sindoor.” On May 9, senior anchors Anjana Om Kashyap and Shweta Singh presented footage claiming to show a Pakistani drone attack being repelled in Jaisalmer and an “all-around attack” on Lahore and Karachi. These segments utilised the sensational headline: “पाकिस्तान पर भारत का चौतरफा हमला, Lahore-Karachi में भारी नुक़सान.”

• Technical verification revealed a systemic failure in journalistic due diligence. Specifically, on May 7, the channel aired visuals of seven missiles allegedly being launched in Bahawalpur, Pakistan. Reverse image searches confirmed this footage was actually from a Sputnik Armenia report dated October 13, 2023, depicting Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The Israeli Air Force’s official records further corroborated the origin of the clips.

• NDTV

Complaint Date: 15.05.2025

Theme/Title of the Show: “India-Pakistan Tension: पाकिस्तान के खिलाफ भारत का जवाबी हमला शुरू” dated May 8, 2025

• Facts of the complaint: On May 15, 2025, CJP filed a formal complaint against NDTV regarding its May 8 broadcast titled “India-Pakistan Tension: India Attacks Pakistan Breaking.” The complaint alleges that NDTV aired visuals falsely depicting a Pakistani air attack being foiled by Indian air defines systems in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. However, independent fact-checkers, including Alt News, established that the footage was actually a four-year-old video from 2021 showing Israel’s Iron Dome system.

• CJP asserted, in its complaint, that this constitutes a gross violation of the NBDSA’s Code of Ethics and Broadcasting Standards, specifically breaching principles of impartiality, objectivity, and neutrality. By presenting recycled foreign footage as real-time military action without due diligence, the channel disseminated dangerous disinformation during a sensitive national security crisis.

• Further it was argued that “this irresponsible brand of journalism” not only misled the public but also violated Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) advisories against real-time reporting of defines operations and the spread of misinformation. Consequently, CJP demands that NDTV issue a prominent on-air corrigendum, a formal public apology, and immediately remove all related digital content from its platforms. The organisation emphasised that such lapses can provoke mass panic and compromise national security, necessitating urgent corrective action to restore journalistic integrity.

• Times Now Navbharat

Complaint Date: May 15, 2025

Theme/Title of show: “#BharatPAKWarBREAKING: भारत-पाकिस्तान युद्ध पर अमेरिका का बयान- ‘हम भारत को नहीं रोक सकते’ [U.S. statement on the India-Pakistan war: ‘We cannot stop India]” dated May 9, 2025.

• Facts: On May 15, 2025, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) filed a formal complaint against Times Now Navbharat regarding a May 9 broadcast titled “#BharatPAKWarBREAKING: भारत-पाकिस्तान युद्ध पर अमेरिका का बयान- ‘हम भारत को नहीं रोक सकते’.” The channel aired visuals allegedly showing a Pakistani air attack being foiled by Indian air defines systems in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan; however, fact-checking established that the video was actually four-year-old footage sourced from a 2021 YouTube upload by NSFchannel, likely depicting Israel’s Iron Dome.

• The complaint highlights that the footage was presented with a tone of real-time urgency and lacked any disclaimers or source identification, creating a false narrative of active military escalation. This broadcast constitutes a gross violation of the NBDSA Code of Ethics—specifically regarding accuracy, impartiality, and neutrality—and disregards the MIB advisory dated April 25, 2025, which prohibits real-time reporting of defines operations and the dissemination of disinformation.

• India TV

Complaint Date: May 16, 2025

Title/Theme: “Pakistan Drone Destroyed in Rajasthan: राजस्थान के रामगढ़ में गगराया गया पागकस्तानी ड्रोन [Pakistani drone shot down in Ramgarh, Rajasthan] IND Vs PAK” dated May 9, 2025.

• Facts: On May 9, 2025, India TV broadcasted a segment titled “Pakistan Drone Destroyed in Rajasthan: राजस्थान के रामगढ़ में गगराया गया पागकस्तानी ड्रोन [Pakistani drone shot down in Ramgarh, Rajasthan] IND Vs PAK.” The complaint filed before NBDSA on 16.05.2025 highlighted that the channel used a four-year-old video of Israel’s Iron Dome Air Defence System (originally published on May 11, 2021, by @NSFchannel) to represent a current drone intercept in Jaisalmer. The broadcast lacked any “file footage” disclaimer, creating a false narrative of real-time military success.
• Consequently, on May 29, 2025, the channel admitted the error, removed all digital content, and issued a public apology.

The 2025 Media Sentinel: CJP’s Crusade against ‘Digital Hate’

This, in 2025, continuing with its systematic monitoring and well-researched interventions, CJP emerged in the vanguard against the digital-ised hate era of Indian television. By moving beyond isolated protests and focusing on the systemic weaponisation of newsroom aesthetics, CJP urged the News Broadcasting & Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA) to deliver its most significant set of accountability orders to date.

The year 2025 has established that communal polarisation is no longer a “risk-free” revenue model for broadcasters. Through sustained legal interventions, CJP has turned the NBDSA from a silent regulator into an active arbiter of truth. Broadcasters are now on notice: every sensational ticker, unverified “war” clip, and biased panel will be documented, challenged, and eventually dismantled in the interest of constitutional harmony.

Related

CJP files complaint with six news channels for spreading misinformation, making false terror links: Operation Sindoor

Broadcasting Bias: CJP’s fight against hatred in Indian news

Human Rights Day 2024: CJP’s Fight for Access to Justice in India

The post CJP’s 2025 Hate Watch: leading the fight for accountability in the digital media appeared first on SabrangIndia.

At the centre of the controversy are two distinct but intertwined developments:

1. AISA women leaders alleging verbal sexual abuse and threats inside and outside a police station. There are videos of this abuse circulating online
2. YouTuber Ruchi Tiwari claiming she was attacked by a mob of nearly 500 people while covering the protest.

As FIRs have been registered and political leaders have entered the fray, the struggle has increasingly shifted from what happened on campus to who controls the narrative of victimhood.

The Protest: UGC equity regulations and campus tensions

The protest on February 13 was organised by the All India Students’ Association (AISA) and allied groups demanding implementation of the University Grants Commission’s (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026.

The regulations — intended to strengthen safeguards against caste discrimination affecting SC, ST and OBC students — were recently stayed by the Supreme Court of India, which observed prima facie concerns of vagueness, particularly in the definitional scope of caste-based discrimination, and directed that the 2012 framework would remain in force pending further hearings.

Details may be read here.

Students supporting the regulations have emphatically argued they are essential to address structural caste bias within higher education. Opponents –many who have led aggressive and violent protests against their implementation –claim certain provisions are “vulnerable to misuse.”

This mobilisation was framed as part of a broader “Adhikar” campaign asserting dignity and institutional accountability.

The Flashpoint: Ruchi Tiwari’s presence and the confrontation

According to reports in The Print, tensions escalated when Ruchi Tiwari, who runs the YouTube channel Breaking Opinion, arrived at the site to cover the protest.

Tiwari describes herself as an “independent ground reporter”. Her channel, which has over 59,000 subscribers and more than 460 uploaded videos, frequently features a privileged caste lens depicting confrontational campus coverage, particularly around reservation, caste debates and identity politics. One of her recent YouTube Shorts is titled: “They want reservation but say don’t indulge in casteism.”

She has alleged that before she could begin reporting, individuals began calling out her name, asking her full identity and caste, after which a crowd surrounded and assaulted her. In statements to ANI (an agency that has increasingly been called out for its right-wing bias) , she claimed nearly 500 people attacked her, that she was held by the neck and arms, subjected to rape threats, and that there was an attempt to push her into a vehicle with its door open — which she described as an attempted abduction and “mob lynching.”

Videos online show pushing and scuffling. However, the full sequence remains disputed.

AISA’s Counter-Version: Provocation, altercation and selective framing

AISA has rejected Tiwari’s allegations as “false and motivated.”

According to statements cited by The Print, AISA leaders allege that the confrontation began when Tiwari engaged in provocative questioning and allegedly made casteist remarks referencing the Mahad Satyagraha led by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. AISA further claims she harassed a Dalit journalist named Naveen and attempted to snatch his camera.

Some circulating videos, according to AISA, show Tiwari striking Naveen and later pushing or punching AISA activist Anjali during the confrontation. Another clip shows activists holding Tiwari while attempting to escort her toward police presence.

AISA has argued that several clips being widely shared omit audio or preceding events and therefore reshape public perception.

It is at this point, AISA claims, that the narrative began to shift — from a protest demanding caste equity to a viral storyline of a “woman journalist attacked by Left mobs.”

Another video from the February 13 incident at Delhi University exposes the conspiracy of Sanghi-Casteist-Feudal goons against students demanding equity and social justice. These goons threatened AISA activists and DU students with vulgar abuses inside the Maurice Nagar Police… pic.twitter.com/ObROzq3H4r

— CPIML Liberation (@cpimlliberation) February 14, 2026

Condemn the right-wing assault and hooliganism against Comrade Anjali in DU! Today, AISA DU Secretary Anjali was physically assaulted by a right wing group. Despite the heavy presence of Delhi Police and CRPF, the attackers were given a free hand.

This violence is the clearest… pic.twitter.com/0AS2xYOyIZ

— CPIML Liberation (@cpimlliberation) February 13, 2026

Statement of Communist Party of India -Marxist Leninist- Liberation:

The Police Station Incident: Allegations of sexualised abuse

The most serious allegations, however, concern what happened later at Maurice Nagar Police Station.

AISA leaders Anjali and Neha allege that when they went to file complaints, a right-wing mob gathered outside the police station premises. According to AISA, the crowd swelled from dozens to hundreds, shouting slogans and issuing rape and death threats.

AAP MP Sanjay Singh publicly condemned the episode on X, sharing a video and alleging that in the presence of police personnel, AISA women leaders were abused with explicit insults directed at their mother and were told to “remove their clothes.”

देश की राजधानी दिल्ली में थाने के अंदर, पुलिस वालों के सामने AISA की महिला नेता अंजली और नेहा को मां की गाली देते हुए कहा गया, “कपड़े निकाल।” एक बिहार की बेटी, दूसरी उत्तराखंड की — दोनों सवर्ण हैं, लेकिन वंचितों के हक की आवाज उठाना उनका गुनाह हो गया। अगर यह घटना पंजाब या बंगाल… pic.twitter.com/JgRZ9cgf99

— Sanjay Singh AAP (@SanjayAzadSln) February 15, 2026

Singh questioned how such an incident could occur in the national capital and linked it to broader concerns about women’s safety. He alleged that the targeting of the two women leaders was connected to their vocal advocacy for marginalised communities.

AISA has termed the episode “state-sponsored hooliganism,” alleging that activists were effectively confined inside a room for hours while threats were issued outside. Anjali was reportedly taken for a medico-legal examination.

Delhi Police, according to ANI, has registered two FIRs — one based on Tiwari’s complaint and another based on a complaint by a female AISA student — under sections relating to assault, voluntarily causing hurt, wrongful restraint and common intention under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

UGC का समर्थन कर रही दिल्ली यूनिवर्सिटी कि छात्राओं को दिल्ली पुलिस के सामने थाने में भद्दी-भद्दी गालियां दी जा रही हैं। UGC के नए प्रावधानो का महत्व इसी बात से लगाया जा सकता है कि दलित और पिछड़ों के हुकूक का उलंघन ना हो… pic.twitter.com/Qs8e7eew71

— Ashraf Hussain (@AshrafFem) February 15, 2026

ABVP, DUSU and administrative responses

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has maintained that Tiwari was present in her professional capacity and was attacked for asking questions. Its Delhi state secretary described the episode as an attack on media freedom and characterised Left-affiliated campus politics as violent.

Aryan Maan, President of the Delhi University Students’ Union, condemned the alleged assault on Tiwari and called for a fair and impartial investigation. DUSU leaders have stated that violence has no place in campus politics.

Meanwhile, Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh described the incident as a matter of concern and urged the university community to maintain social harmony. He confirmed having spoken with student and teacher groups as well as police authorities.

मैं दिल्ली विश्वविद्यालय के सभी शिक्षकों और विद्यार्थियों से अनुरोध करता हूं कि वह आपस में सौहार्द बनाए रखें। कोई भी ऐसा काम न करें जिससे आपसी मनमुटाव बढ़े और राष्ट्र व विश्वविद्यालय की छवि को नुकसान हो।

दिल्ली विश्वविद्यालय में कल जो घटना हुई वह चिंता का विषय है।…

— University of Delhi (@UnivofDelhi) February 14, 2026

The Larger Question: When violence becomes a narrative weapon

What unfolded at Delhi University is no longer simply a dispute about who pushed whom in a scuffle.

It is a case study in how protests over caste equity are rapidly reframed into spectacles of disorder; how women activists alleging sexualised abuse must compete for credibility against viral video clips; and how digital ecosystems determine which injury becomes the “real” one.

At stake is not merely the credibility of AISA or the veracity of Ruchi Tiwari’s claims. It is the deeper question of whose victimhood travels faster, and why.

When allegations of rape threats and sexualised slurs inside or outside a police station struggle to command sustained outrage — while a competing claim of assault dominates headlines within hours — it reveals something structural about public discourse. Gendered abuse against politically inconvenient women often dissolves into “partisan noise.” Caste-based mobilisation is quickly recast as mob aggression. And campus politics becomes content.

This is not to prejudge the outcome of the FIRs. Due process must determine individual liability. But focusing exclusively on the procedural neutrality of “both sides have filed complaints” risks obscuring the larger asymmetry: narrative power in the digital age is unevenly distributed.

A protest demanding the restoration of equity regulations meant to protect SC, ST and OBC students has been displaced by a battle over viral footage. The structural issue — caste discrimination in higher education — has receded behind the spectacle of confrontation.

This shift is not accidental.

Related:

Campuses in Revolt: How the UGC Equity Stay and Criminalised Dissent Have Ignited Student Protests Across India

The stay of UGC Equity Regulations, 2026: The interim order, the proceedings, and the constitutional questions raised

Higher Education: How Centre is Undermining State Autonomy & Politicising UGC

‘Diluted Existing Rules’: Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadvi’s Mothers Slam UGC’s Draft Equity Regulations

Academic Freedoms at Risk: Federalism and autonomy challenged by UGC’s VC appointment guidelines

The post UGC Guidelines 2026: AISA Protest at Delhi University followed by sexual abuse allegations amid police presence appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The notice did not specify the grounds for the ban but The Wire’s founding editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, who attended the meeting, was informed orally before he was invited to speak that the grounds for blocking the cartoon were that it spread rumours/unverified information that would affect the defence, security, reputation of the country and India’s relations with foreign countries.

The Wire then presented its views to the IDC – which includes senior officials from the ministries of defence, home, information and broadcasting, external affairs, IT and law, as well from the MOD/army.

The Wire has also handed over a written submission to the IDC, which is appended below.

§

The Wire received a notice by email at 6:55 pm on February 10, 2026, purporting to be an “opportunity to appear and submit its comments/ clarifications” before the Inter-Departmental Committee with regard to a ‘request’ for blocking of certain social media URLs where a 52 second animated cartoon was posted by us.

We have been directly informed by one of the social media platforms that the blocking order they received explicitly cites Section 69A of the Information Technology Act.

No ground on which the blocking is permissible or sought or to be considered has accompanied the notice to us or to the social media platforms. Though couched as a hearing on a ‘request’ to block, the fact is that the blocking of the URLs mentioned in the Annexure to the notice has already occurred more than 22 hours prior to the notification to the Wire of this “opportunity”. In other words, this is an ex post facto notice.

At the hearing on February 11 2026 at 3 pm I was told orally that the grounds were – spreading rumours/unverified information that would affect defence, security, reputation of the country and India’s relations with foreign countries. Since this was brought up for the first time, I am placing my written submissions on record.

I was not informed which part was rumour, and how it affected any interest. Can a critical perception of the Prime Minister by a section of the people of his country be inimical to national interest? When has a cartoon video caricaturing a leader or the government ever been viewed in that light? Only a paranoid administration can even suggest this.

The content blocked is a 52-second cartoon clip, containing a humorous depiction of the Prime Minister, whose decision to absent himself from a Parliament debate on account of a purported physical threat from women Opposition MPs (including that they may use their teeth to bite him!) has been widely reported and commented upon.

The Prime Minister is a political personality answerable to the people. The manner in which he deals with questions raised by the Opposition or other issues is eminently a matter for the media and people at large to criticise, discuss – and even mock. To suggest that the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy needs to be protected from a satirical 52-second video or that the nation needs to be protected from it is an insult to the Indian State.

The protection of an elected leader in a democracy from criticism or even mockery is not the function of law and indeed not contemplated by Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, under which the order to block access to our cartoon was purportedly made. The Supreme Court has repeatedly noted the importance of uninhibited public debate, even that expressed through “sarcastic and sometimes unpleasant sharp criticism of Government and public officials”. (D.C. Saxena v. Chief Justice of India, (1996) 5 SCC 216, para 30)

In any event, there is nothing in the video which can be said to affect even remotely the interests of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order. Neither the executive nor the IDC can direct the blocking of content on grounds not recognised by Section 69-A. There is no legitimate power to block the URLs and the blockage you have ordered is an abuse of authority.

The only power available to the executive for blocking of content under the Intermediary Rules, 2021 comes from and is also limited by Section 69-A of the Information Technology Act (IT Act). Rule 16 of the IT Rules, 2021 merely operationalises the manner of exercise of the power and cannot go beyond the limits of the IT Act.

Section 69-A(1) reads:

“(1) Where the Central Government or any of its officers specially authorised by it in this behalf is satisfied that it is necessary or expedient so to do, in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above, it may subject to the provisions of sub-section (2), for reasons to be recorded in writing, by order, direct any agency of the Government or intermediary to block for access by the public or cause to be blocked for access by the public any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource.” (emphasis supplied)

It may be recalled that the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1 had upheld the constitutionality of Section 69-A upon the twin conditions that a block should be effected by a reasoned order relatable strictly to the limited grounds enumerated in Section 69-A, and a pre-decisional hearing given to the originator, where the originator is identified or identifiable. None of this has been done.

Your attention is also drawn to the fact that the cartoon only refers to issues already in the public domain and is a simple light-hearted presentation of the issues and use of words that the news media in India has been full of. Absence from Parliament of leaders of government has always been a matter of both comment and concern. Moreover, scores of news items, videos,TV debates and discussions in the social media have used the very words in the video in recent times and as such there is nothing in the cartoon clip that is not already in the public eye.

Since you are now saying that our cartoon has been banned for spreading rumours and unverified information that adversely affects national security, I have appended a list of several reports, including one going back to December 2023, which use words drawn from General Naravane’s book, which I imagine is the source of maximum concern/embarrassment for the prime minister. Not once have these words been denied, either by the government or the general, and scores of reports which reproduce these words – or rumours/unverified information as your IDC may call it – are currently in circulation. But it is The Wire’s 52-second cartoon which has been banned!

In the past, India’s leaders have welcomed and enjoyed satire at their own expense, and the mark of a confident leader is exactly that. This manner of blocking is as unfair to the ruling dispensation as it is to the media houses and to the very essence of freedom of expression.

You may recall that in the past when I have appeared before the IDC for post-facto hearings – first on the forced deletion of an extract from Caravan magazine and then on the blocking of The Wire’s website and the deletion of a story on CNN’s reporting about a downed Indian Rafale jet – neither the proceedings of the same nor the conclusions (reasoned or unreasoned) arrived at after the hearing, have ever been communicated to me, which again is a gross violation of the powers entrusted to the executive government by the IT Act and Rules.

While on the subject, I wish to bring to your notice that The Wire’s entire Instagram account was blocked for a period of time, and when I sought an explanation from the Joint Secretary, MIB, on February 9, I was told “We have not blocked your account.” Since the order to block content came from the MIB, triggering the blocking of the account itself for a while, a public official should surely have given a more transparent answer.

Since the point is a fairly obvious one, which is that the content blocked has no nexus with any of the stated objectives of Section 69-A IT Act, the blocking order must be rescinded with immediate effect. Also, it is only fair that the decision upon these proceedings should be communicated to The Wire, without delay, along with a copy of the order already issued under Section 69-A of the IT Act forming the basis for the blocking of the URLs mentioned in your notice.

LK Advani kept a diary during the Emergency which he published later under the title, A Prisoner’s Scrapbook. There is an entry from August 31, 1975, lamenting the closing down of Shankar’s Weekly, India’s premier satirical publication, that I wish to share with you.

The last issue, dated August 31, carries an editorial captioned ‘Farewell’, in which writes Advani: “Even the word emergency does not find a place in the editorial. But there can scarcely be a more devastating indictment of the emergency than this piece. Shankar writes, inter alia… ‘Dictatorships cannot afford laughter because people may laugh at the dictator, and that wouldn’t do’.”

In the end, I wish to say this. Democracies do not fall in a single dramatic moment. They erode slowly and quietly when those entrusted with power fear laughter and start taking action against it. Before you sign your names on to whatever decision you take, I ask only that you consider whether the Constitution you took an oath to serve was designed to protect authority from satire — or to protect citizens from the abuse of authority.

Thank you.

Annexure

Recent news items on the controversy in parliament

1. Lallantop
2. ⁠Jansatta 
3. ⁠National Herald 
4. ⁠Hindustan Times 
5. ⁠Deccan Herald 
6. ⁠The Federal
7. ⁠NDTV
8. ⁠Outlook 
9. ⁠The Leaflet 
10. The Organiser 
11. India Today (December 2023 report quoting the same words which were referred to in Parliament)

Courtesy: The Wire

The post ‘Democracies Erode When Those Entrusted With Power Fear Laughter and Start Taking Action Against It’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

— Rohith Vemula

It has been ten years since Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder.^[1] That emptiness is not his alone. It is the lingering feeling many from marginalised communities carry with them when they enter India’s so-called “elite” institutions –- IITs, IIMs, NITs, and Central Universities.

A 2022 survey in the Quint conducted at IIT Bombay following the Institutional Murder of Darshan Solanki found that one in every three SC/ST students had been asked about their caste identity.

Faculty spaces in these institutions reflect a similar imbalance. Despite constitutionally mandated reservations for SC, ST, and OBC communities, faculty positions continue to be dominated by those from the general category, as reported by The Hindu.

Under representation in these institutions

Under-representation is not incidental; it is structural. In at least two IITs and three IIMs, nearly 90% of faculty positions are held by individuals from the general category. In six IITs and four IIMs, the figure ranges between 80–90%, according to a report by The Wire, based on an RTI filed by Gowd Kiran Kumar, National President of the All India OBC Students Organisation.

The culture of exclusion within India’s elite institutions is not declining. It has been firmly entrenched.

Source: MHRD Data and a report in Quint, November 28, 2019

Faculty recruitment across IIMs has witnessed a significant decline between 2019 and 2026.

OBC, SC, ST – FACULTY IN IIM’s

This was first put out on social media. Verifying this we found that, according to a report in The Print on “The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports titled “2025–26 Demands for Grants of the Department of Higher Education” as of January 31, 2025, 28.56 percent of the total sanctioned teaching faculty positions (18,940) remained vacant across IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), Central Universities, and other higher education institutions.

The data further reveals that 17.97 percent of the 11,298 Assistant Professor positions (entry-level posts) are vacant, 38.28 percent of the 5,102 Associate Professor positions (mid-level posts) remain unfilled, and an alarming 56.18 percent of the 2,540 Professor positions are currently unoccupied.

The question then is stark: Why are SC, ST, and OBC positions left unfilled even when institutions have vacancies and eligible candidates are available?

When questioned about their recruitment processes, many institutions claim to follow a “flexi” system. When asked why reservation policies are not implemented, some have anonymously stated that hiring is done purely on “merit”. This raises a troubling question, does “merit” imply that candidates from marginalised communities are deemed intellectually unfit to teach in elite institutions? It is also frequently argued that an “adequate talent pool” is unavailable.

The experience of Subrahmanyam Sadrela illustrates the deeper structural problem. After completing his M.Tech and PhD from IIT Kanpur, Sadrela joined the institute as an Associate Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department in January 2018. Soon after his appointment, colleagues reportedly remarked that his selection was “wrong”, that he did not deserve to be a faculty member, that his English was inadequate, and that he was mentally unfit. In April 2019 nearly a year after he raised allegations of caste-based discrimination on campus, he was accused of plagiarism in his thesis and threatened with the revocation of his PhD degree, as per a report in ­the Times of India. A detailed investigation by the Directorate of Civil Rights Enforcement (DCRE) and reported by the Mooknayak said that the corroborated allegations of caste based discrimination inside IIM – B made by an associate professor Dr Gopal Das were vaild.

A significant portion of the 2025 data is not available online. Most publicly accessible information is from 2023–24, with limited material from early to mid-2025. This absence itself is telling, particularly as the pace of erosion of transparency –by institutions under the union government–appeared to accelerate in 2025, as per a report in the Wire.

RTI data from 2024 revealed that no SC, ST, or OBC faculty members were recruited in 2023 at IIT Bombay. Further, 16 departments at IIT-B did not admit a single student belonging to the ST community in the 2023–24 academic year. Shockingly, in five departments at IIT-B, no ST student had been admitted in the last nine years. This data was shared by the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC), a student group at IIT Bombay, based on an RTI response received on February 6, 2025. In a post shared on X (formerly Twitter) on 9 April, the group alleged that IIT Bombay “Is violating reservation norms despite the MMR (Mission Mode Recruitment) announcement.”

Notably, no information was put out by the Circle regarding 2025 data on PhD enrolments or faculty recruitment. The Circle, which had consistently been active in raising questions of injustice, appeared to fall silent on these figures. Speculations can be made that the voice of the student group was curbed by the institute. Established in 2017, the Circle had positioned its X account as a strong voice responding to issues affecting students within and beyond IIT-B. 

The death of Darshan Solanki, a Dalit student at IIT-B, further intensified concerns. His father claimed that caste-based harassment led to his son’s suicide. However, the committee constituted by the institute concluded that the suicide was linked to poor academic performance, stating that none of Darshan’s close associates had reported instances of caste-based harassment. It must be noted that the committee did not include a single external member; it comprised only IIT staff. The inquiry was entirely internal. To many, it appeared a complete white wash.

Similar patterns of hostility have surfaced in other premier institutions. Students at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, reported that casteist messages such as “SC/ST leave the campus” and “Jai Parshuram” were circulated by fellow students on unofficial WhatsApp groups. Memes targeting Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar were also shared.

When anonymous complaints were submitted, the institute’s director and faculty reportedly responded that since the complaint had been made anonymously, it could not be entertained. This was conveyed by a senior official on the condition of anonymity.

If students are made to feel this unwelcomed within these institutions, why would they not drop out? Why would faculty members not resign? 

The dropout rates of SC, ST, and OBC students in these elite institutions are often attributed to financial difficulties or “excessive academic pressure.” Yet, the lived experiences of students suggest a far more troubling reality.  Following Darshan Solanki’s death, a survey was conducted at IIT Bombay. Students were asked a series of questions about campus climate and discrimination. One such question, along with several responses, is reproduced here. These responses reveal the brutal reality of a systemic failure—one that institutions attempt to downplay or conceal, even when exposed by the deaths of students like Darshan.

1.  What Has The Survey Revealed?

• On being asked if anyone has hurled “caste/tribal slurs or abuses or discriminated against you on campus,” 83.5 percent students said ‘No’.
• While 16.5 percent students said that they had, in fact, witnessed such instances, 70.4 percent students said that they had not witnessed anyone else being discriminated against on campus
• Nearly 25 percent, or one in every four students, said that the fear of disclosing their identity has stopped them from joining an SC/ST forum or collective.
• As many as 15.5 percent of students said that they have faced mental health issues arising from caste-based discrimination.
• Nearly 37 percent of students said that they were asked their Joint Entrance Exam (JEE)/ Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE)/ Joint Admission Test for Masters(JAM) /Undergraduate Common Entrance Examination for Design (U)CEED rank by fellow students on campus in a bid to find out their (caste) identity.
• 26 percent of students were asked their surnames with the intention of knowing their caste.
• 6 percent, or one in every five students, said that they feared backlash from the faculty if they talked back against caste discrimination.
• 2 percent, or one in every three students, said that they feel SC/ST Cell needs to do more to address casteism on campus.
• Nearly 25 percent of the 388 students, that is one in every four students, did not attend an English-medium school in class 10.
• Nearly 22 percent of students are first-generation graduates from their family.
• Nearly 36 percent of students foretell that open category students perceive their academic ability as ‘average’. This is in contrast to 51 percent SC/ST students perceiving the academic ability of open category students as ‘very good’. (Source: the Quint)

There is a powerful story from the Solomon Islands that when people wish to uproot a tree, they gather around it and hurl abuses at it until the tree withers and dies. Whether or not this myth holds true for plants, its metaphor is painfully relevant in the context of India’s elite institutions.

An unwelcoming, hostile environment does not merely push students to drop out; it drives faculty members to resign as well.

Vipin V. Veetil resigned from IIT Madras in July, 2021. He had joined in 2019 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) in August the previous year. In his resignation email to the institute’s authorities, Veetil stated that his sole reason for quitting was caste-based discrimination allegedly faced from senior Brahmin faculty members within the department. However, the committee constituted by IIT Madras concluded that there was “no evidence of decisions being biased due to caste discrimination,” reasoning that most faculty members had “hardly interacted” with Dr. Veetil.

This was not the first instance. In January 2022, Veetil had also resigned after rejoining the institute in August 2020.

In another case, K. Ilanchezhian, a senior assistant director at the institute, filed a complaint alleging that his office space had been shifted to a students’ hostel, while his original office was allotted to an ‘upper’ caste research assistant.

Similarly, the Director of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Chennai, was booked at the Taramani police station under the SC/ST Act following allegations of caste discrimination against a colleague.

In 2024, an FIR was registered under various provisions of the SC/ST Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita by the Bengaluru Police in a case alleging caste-based atrocities and systemic discrimination at IIM Bangalore. Eight individuals were named, including the institute’s Director and seven professors. The Directorate of Civil Rights Enforcement (DCRE), in its investigation findings dated December 20, 2024, confirmed systemic caste-based harassment faced by Associate Professor Gopal Das, a globally acclaimed Dalit scholar at IIM Bangalore, as per a report in the Mooknayak.

These cases represent only the tip of the iceberg.

Data on PhD enrolments in these institutions reveals that only a small number of students from SC, ST, and OBC communities have been able to secure admission into these prestigious doctoral programmes

Source: Table showing the 2022 PhD admission data of 13 IIMs obtained by RTI filed by APPSC IIT Bombay, The Wire

Scholarships for SC, ST, and OBC students are delayed and the students often get the amount after the end of their semesters. It has become an annual tradition for students to receive their scholarships after the end of their academic semester as reported in The Hindu. Minister Subhas Sarkar in this winter session of the Lok Sabha presented statistics that reveal the harrowing figures about dropouts by marginalised students studying in central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology, and Indian Institutes of Management.

In response to a question raised by BSP Member of Parliament (MP), Ritesh Pandey in 2023, the government disclosed that over the preceding five years, a staggering 13,626 SC, ST, and OBC students had discontinued their education.

The data further revealed that in Central Universities alone, 4,596 OBC students, 2,424 SC students, and 2,622 ST students had dropped out during this period. In the IITs, 2,066 OBC students, 1,068 SC students, and 408 ST students discontinued their studies. Similarly, in the IIMs, 163 OBC, 188 SC, and 91 ST students dropped out, reported SabrangIndia.

As stated before, no data for 2025 is accessible as of now, online.

Background

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal central government agency on matters relating to reservation, issued an order in 1975 exempting certain scientific and technical posts from the reservation policy.

Siddharth Joshi, an IIM Bangalore doctoral alumnus and researcher who co-authored a paper with IIMB Professor Deepak Malghan on caste bias in IIMs, noted: “In 1975, an exemption was granted to IIM Ahmedabad by the Department of Personnel and Training with respect to reservation in faculty positions. While IIM Ahmedabad had expressly sought this exemption, other IIMs simply assumed that they were also exempt and began not implementing reservations in faculty recruitment.”

Institutions have frequently justified the marginal representation of SC and ST faculty by arguing that there is a lack of a sufficiently qualified applicant pool, as reported by the Quint.

However, marginalised communities remain underrepresented in these institutions both as students and as faculty. They are subjected to grave mental harassment on the basis of caste identity, by peers, by authorities, and by colleagues. At the same time, institutions routinely deny the existence of discrimination and attempt to curb voices that raise these concerns.

The deeper truth is this: people from marginalised communities are seldom truly accommodated within these spaces. They are rarely made to feel that they belong. They are otherised – their culture, language, and food practices subtly or overtly looked down upon. In these elite institutions, they continue to remain “they,” never fully accepted as “us.”

UGC Guidelines: Context, Counter-revolt and protest 

It is in this overall context of entrenched exclusion and othering that recent developments around the much-needed UGC guidelines 2026 need to be understood. Brought in following a rigorous human rights battle in the courts –spearheaded by the mother of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi—they evinced visceral reactions from sections of the privileged caste elite. The union government, without putting up a spirited defence of its own enacted guidelines capitulated in its arguments of caste elite organisations in the Supreme Court. The Court too was prompt to stay implementation of these measures that would go a long way in addressing entrenched exclusion. Dozens of campuses across the country have seen spirited protests against this capitulation. Chandrashekhar Azad of the Bhim Army party even held a demonstration at Jantar Mantar on February 11 demanding that the 2026 Guidelines be implemented without change. Read references to this issue here, here and here.

Conclusion

“One out of three SC/ST students reported being asked about their caste,” revealed an IIT Bombay survey conducted in 2022.

Many students from the general category have reportedly hurled casteist abuses at SC/ST students. These elite institutions increasingly resemble exclusive spaces of savarna dominance. Yet, reports such as Caste-Based Enrolment in Indian Higher Education: Insights from the All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) are published, claiming that nearly 60% of seats in higher education institutions are occupied by students from marginalised communities (p. 11 of 26).

While the AISHE data indicates a rise in enrolment from marginalised communities in recent years, it fails to answer a fundamental question: which institutions are being counted? Are these Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges in urban peripheries, or institutions located in remote rural areas? Or are we speaking of IITs, IIMs, NITs, AIIMS, and Central Universities, the institutions that command prestige, resources, networks, and opportunity?

The distinction matters. A BSc degree from IIT Bombay can open doors to high-paying corporations and global opportunities. A BTech degree from an under-resourced college in a remote district often cannot. Access to elite institutions translates into access to power.

Meanwhile, over 13,000 SC, ST, and OBC students have dropped out of higher education in recent years. In Central Universities alone, approximately 4,500 OBC students, over 2,400 SC students, and nearly 2,600 ST students discontinued their studies. In the IITs and IIM’s, India’s premier institutes of learning — renowned not only for academic excellence but increasingly for caste discrimination and student suicides – around 2,000 OBC students, 1,000 SC students, and 408 ST students dropped out. At the IIMs, 163 OBC, 188 SC, and 91 ST students discontinued their education reported SabrangIndia.

The disbursal of fellowships and scholarships is frequently delayed, often reaching students only after the semester has ended. Students are made to feel undeserving and unwelcome—by faculty and by peers alike. They are shunned for their caste identities. They are made to feel like outsiders, as though these institutions belong only to certain classes and castes. Even their food practices are policed and mocked, as has been reported in several IITs. Sabrangindia has frequently reported on this alienation and discrimination.

Faculty positions in these institutions are overwhelmingly occupied, often 80 to 90 percent—by those from the general category. Those who dominate these spaces frequently go on to hire within the same social circles, reproducing exclusion in the name of “merit.” It becomes a vicious cycle. Even when scholars like Gopal Das or Subrahmanyam Sadrela manage to reach the other end of this black hole, the system finds ways to pull them back.

Nearly 79 years after Independence, sections of our people continue to be treated as second-class citizens within spaces that claim to represent the pinnacle of knowledge and progress. India prides itself on constitutional morality, yet its elite institutions often operate within what increasingly resembles an internal apartheid.

How long will this continue? How long will students like Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadvi, Darshan Solanki, and countless others be pushed into a system so steeped in humiliation and mental harassment that death appears to them more bearable than a life stripped of dignity?

That is the question we must confront.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this resource has been worked on by Natasha Darade)

[1] A suicide born of distress, mental and other torture and alienation at the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on January 17, 2026 inspired the Dalit students movement to coin the term “institutional murder” as this was the last of many and the beginning of several such deaths with institutions of higher learning in India

Related:

Campuses in Revolt: How the UGC Equity Stay and Criminalised Dissent Have Ignited Student Protests Across India | SabrangIndia

A Long Battle, A Swift Stay: The Fight for Equitable Campuses | SabrangIndia

My birth is my fatal accident, remembering Rohith Vemula’s last letter

Rohith’s death: We are all to blame

To Live & Die as a Dalit: Rohith Vemula

The post Cementing exclusion: What the numbers say about SC, ST, OBC presence in India’s elite institutions appeared first on SabrangIndia.