Gatha: reservations

Law schools in India have remained largely isolated from discussions on the issues of Dalit identity, untouchability, and discrimination faced by students belonging to underprivileged and marginalized communities. The young lawyers to-be of the country have enormous social responsibility by virtue of being the torch bearers of rule of law and potential agents of social change. Alack of sensitization and awareness on issues surrounding caste and a need to extend support in academics to marginalized students in the university, especially those who are unable to utilize academic opportunities provided by the university due to language and other social barriers and disabilities led to the formation of the APPSC in 2015.

The Study Circle derives its name from three pioneers in social justice reform in India, Ambedkar, Periyar, and Phule, as their fight against various forms of social discrimination and work in the area of educational empowerment was tremendous.

Initial Journey

Over the span of a semester and a half, APPSC has organized events and programs in order to move closer to the objectives that we, as a group, set out to achieve at our inception. Some of our notable activities are talks by eminent speakers, such as Professor Sukhdeo Thorat (economist, Former Chairman of UGC and Chairman of ICSSR) and the dynamic and young Ananya Gaur and Nakul Sawhney, who have directed the critically acclaimed documentaries, Caste on the Menu Card and Immoral Daughters in the Land of Honour, which were also screened by us. We have started our independent online magazine, Savitri, named after Savitribai Phule. It is a platform to discuss opinions and counter-currents within society and provide recognition to Savitri Phule’s views and struggle. The Peer Project Guidance Program and the making of past years’ answer sheets available at the library have been some of the other endeavours undertaken by us to provide academic support to students.

APPSC organised an interactive session with Prof. Satish Deshpande, one of the most renowned social thinkers and sociologists of the country, on the topic 'identifying discrimination: How Institutions discriminate.’ He gave us his valuable insights and outlined the ways in which gender, caste and other forms of discrimination can get embedded in the institutional practice of higher education.

Ambedkar Jayanti

On the occassion of the 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle in association with the Center for Social Inclusion and Minority Rights, NLU Delhi, organised a guest lecture titled ‘Dr. Ambedkar; The Maker of Modern India’ by Prof. Dr. Raj Kumar, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Delhi. A formal tribute-paying ceremony was also organized on 14th April, 2016in the NLU Delhi campus, wherein our esteemed Vice-Chancellor and Registrar were also present.

Dalit History Month

The Study Circle celebrated Dalit History Month in April for the first time on campus. As a part of the same, a poster-making competition was organised. Students drew on various caste and minority-related issues.

On 19th April 2016, as part of Dalit History Month, the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle organised a talk in Hindi on ‘The Importance of Dalit Literature in 21st Century’ by Dr. Jai Prakash, who is a prolific Hindi Dalit writer and has a good understanding of the initial discouragement that Dalit Literature faced.

On 25th April 2016, Vira Sathidar, the actor who played Narayan Kamble in the Oscar-nominated movie Court shared his personal experience of the Indian legal system and judicial repression with students of NLU Delhi. He delivered a talk on ‘Branding Naxal and Beyond: State and Judicial Repression in India.’ He provided personal insights on the crackdown of state machinery and the legal system on voices of dissent and activists who fight against the system.

As part of Dalit History Month, Prof. Rajmohan Gandhi delivered a talk on ‘Nationalism and Some of its Meanings,’ and, in light of recent controversies, he addressed the relevance of slogans and symbols in assessing patriotism and nationalism of political identities. The students enjoyed the interactive session and had lots of interesting questions to ask Prof. Rajmohan.

Jai Bhim!

The Ambedkar Phule Periyar Study Circle at NLU Delhi is a students led initiative.

For any comments or suggestions, the group can be contacted at appsc.nludelhi@gmail.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Ambedkar-Periyar-Phule-Study-Circle-NLU-Delhi-133748560317383/?fref=ts

Ambedkar

Ambedkar Phule Periyar Study Circle (APPSC), National Law University, Delhi – Journey So Far

Law schools in India have remained largely isolated from discussions on the issues of Dalit identity, untouchability, and discrimina...

As a third-year student at Jindal Global Law School, I have lived in Sonipat, Haryana for the better part of three years. If I’m being honest, I have lived on a huge, well-guarded campus with air-conditioned rooms and fancy buildings, and the most dangerous thing I’ve faced is those enormous beetles that fly around in the summer. I’ve had a highly privileged existence, in a bubble in Sonipat for the past three years. So I’m not going to purport to entirely understand the circumstances that caused the riots that spread across parts of Haryana, including Sonipat, in late February.

What I can tell you is that those riots were the result of protests held by members of the Jat community who sought OBC status from the State government. What I will comment on, however, is the violence that occurred during these riots – in particular, violence against women and the reactions (especially of members of the Jindal student community) to it. Violence is something that is rarely condoned officially, but which is often used as a tool in political protests to achieve certain ends. And that is exactly the problem over here – the senselessness and intensity of violence against women is doubly purposeless, as it achieves absolutely nothing with relation to the purpose of the riots.

It was a discussion about said violence that prompted me to write this article. On the timeline of our Student Council’s Facebook page, a spirited discussion began in the comments section of a link that had been posted, which detailed the alleged rape of women on the National Highway by protestors during the riots. According to numerous reports, the women had been dragged out of their vehicles and raped, and their clothes thrown away, leaving them naked and afraid. The High Court of the State had taken cognizance of these reports, and had requested the police to probe the matter.

The discussion took a different direction from what I had expected, with several students who belonged to the Jat community immediately taking pains to comment that either the women were lying and the reports were fabricated to affect public opinion, or that the rapists were not from the Jat community and had committed the act in order to defame the said community. That pained and surprised me. Here, we had reports of violent sexual assaults taking place – and so many people’s first reaction was to deny that their community was involved, and to cast aspersions on the rape victims itself. These same people, whose student lives were dedicated to essentially understanding and upholding the law, were so willing to bypass the orders of the High Court of the land, or to cast aspersions on the rationale behind that decision.

I didn’t think that this was a discussion of caste or community in the slightest; the perpetrators of the violence were unimportant, in so far as their caste identity was concerned. I was more concerned with the victims; with the fact that rape culture was so pervasive that people were more willing to disbelieve the stories of victims and numerous eyewitnesses, in order to preserve their idea of the functioning of their community. Rape culture is so deeply ingrained that intelligent students spent a great deal of time demonizing the feminists who were willing to listen to these women, and protesting that members of their community could not possibly be involved. Even if these women were not lying about the rape itself, they were most certainly lying about the identity of the perpetrators.

I, and numerous others tried to argue the point online, stating that the caste of the protestors was irrelevant. We laid emphasis on the fact that treating violence against women as collateral damage during civil or political unrest was trivializing the act of rape itself. The argument descended into a one that denigrated rape victims itself – portraying them as women who were prone to lying, and who conveniently use the backdrop of the riots to settle family scores. The fact that one of the accused (along with seven others) was said to be the brother-in-law of one of the victims was used as evidence of this. Somehow, the word of several community leaders who stated that their men would not commit such crimes, was considered the gospel truth. See, this big-shot said that no one was involved – let’s believe him because it suits our narrative, completely ignoring the fact that he has vested interests and could also have been completely unaware of the violence, since the protests spanned many districts and hundreds of thousands of protestors.

This is when such discussions can no longer be considered an effective use of the right to freedom of speech and expression. The comments thread on the article, and on many others that reported rapes, was a sad reflection of the internal thought process of a large portion of our population. When reports of rape against women come into the public eye, people rush to remove the blame from themselves – either men in general, or persons of a particular community, who want to deflect the backlash from themselves. There is not a thought spared for these women; all the sympathy is directed towards the poor men who “might” be falsely accused. The example of the riots is just one instance that exemplifies the patriarchal attitudes that perpetuate rape culture.

The subsequent derailment of the post – which could have been a productive discussion on the use of rape as a tool of subjugation and show of power during times of unrest, and the fact that people were okay with using such tools. Instead it descended into a game of “Dodge-the-Blame/Blame-the-Victim”, and several people, including women, indulged in this. Whether it was internalized misogyny or a deeply ingrained sense of caste-based identity, I am unsure; what I do know is that this is deeply problematic and that we need to change.

Madhavi Achaiah is a student at Jindal Global Law School

Haryana

“Collateral Damage”: Violence against Women

As a third-year student at Jindal Global Law School, I have lived in Sonipat, Haryana for the better part of three years. If I’m being...

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Ambedkar Phule Periyar Study Circle (APPSC), National Law University, Delhi – Journey So Far

“Collateral Damage”: Violence against Women

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Ambedkar Phule Periyar Study Circle (APPSC), National Law University, Delhi – Journey So Far

“Collateral Damage”: Violence against Women

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