The recent weeks of administrative hostility at Jawaharlal Nehru University have been intensely volatile, yet they represent a normalcy of resistance that is deeply and organically woven into the very fabric of this institution. The sheer ferocity of the current administrative crackdown might appear staggering to an external observer, but for those of us navigating the labyrinth of this university, there is nothing anomalous occurring here. This is precisely how the establishment has always sought to territorially and intellectually define the public university, and this is exactly how organic, uncompromising resistance has historically materialized against it. The recent rustication of student representatives was merely the tip of the iceberg—a predictable, disciplinary reflex designed to stifle democratic dissent, fracture collective bargaining, and enforce totalizing compliance. The definitive manifestation of this institutional decay, however, was the Vice Chancellor’s highly discriminatory, explicitly casteist rhetoric, broadcasted with absolute institutional impunity on a February 16th podcast.
Speaking from the absolute apex of administrative power, Vice Chancellor of JNU Santishree Dhulipudi Panditshe explicitly declared, "I am proud of my affiliations with Rashtriya Sevika Samiti," asserting that the "RSS gave me a worldview which is universal and unique." She then proceeded to violently weaponize this worldview against marginalized communities, proclaiming that "UGC regulations are unnecessary" and pathologizing centuries of historical oppression by stating, "You cannot progress by being permanently a victim or playing the victim card. This was done for the Blacks; the same thing was brought for Dalits here... It is a temporary type of drug." To dismiss these statements as a careless administrative misstep, or to suggest that one must engage in polite "self-reflection" rather than intellectually annihilating this blatant casteism, is an act of sheer intellectual bankruptcy. It is a violent defense of the oppressor’s monopoly over public university spaces, and it demands an absolute, militant repudiation.
To comprehend the sheer, unadulterated violence of a Vice Chancellor labeling marginalized assertion as "victimhood" or a "drug," it is intellectually imperative to critically excavate the foundational texts of the ideology she so proudly claims as her guiding light. Her "universal worldview," inherited from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is not a philosophy of academic diversity, democratic inclusion, or intellectual freedom; it is a strict, uncompromising architectural blueprint for Savarna supremacy and ethno-nationalist purity. In his foundational manifesto, We or Our Nationhood Defined, M.S. Golwalkar explicitly outlines the parameters of this exact worldview by unapologetically praising fascist ethnic cleansing. He states with chilling clarity, "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races - the Jews".
Furthermore, Golwalkar explicitly demands that those who fall outside the dominant, orthodox Hindu fold "must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment -not even citizen's rights". Therefore, when the highest administrative authority in a premier public university attacks marginalized students for playing a "victim card" or relying on a "temporary drug," she is not engaging in an objective administrative critique; she is executing a calculated, historical political directive. She is deeply enraged because Dalit, Adivasi, and minority students are actively refusing the absolute, silent subordination that her fascist ideological blueprint demands of them. The institutional hatred for affirmative action and marginalized assertion is rooted directly in this historical decree that the oppressed must remain wholly and perpetually subjugated without claiming the rights of full citizens.
This administrative gaslighting relies heavily on the neoliberal machinery that relentlessly individualizes systemic failure—the profound, orchestrated delusion that marginalization is merely the result of "bad schooling" or a lack of personal merit that can somehow be overcome by a positive mindset and subservient assimilation. Ajantha Subramanian’s meticulous analysis in her book The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India completely destroys this fallacy, documenting how the Savarna elite have historically converted their accumulated caste capital—wealth, land, social networks, and cultural dominance—into the sanitized, modern, and seemingly objective language of "merit". Looking at the students who are systematically pushed out of these institutional spaces, one realizes with devastating clarity that "bad schooling" is not an accident of fate; it is a calculated infrastructural deficit engineered by the deliberate, violent hoarding of resources by dominant castes over millennia.
Subramanian demonstrates how embodied cultural capital functions as symbolic capital precisely because the violent social conditions of its acquisition are deliberately disguised, misrecognized simply as legitimate competence and innate brilliance. The upper castes have encashed their traditional caste capital, converted it into modern educational credentials, and now possess the supreme audacity to believe themselves to be completely "casteless". When the marginalized are commanded not to "play the victim," they are being demanded to silently accept a rigged, inherently unequal system where accumulated caste advantages remain entirely hidden and unquestioned. Simultaneously, centuries of historical and structural disadvantages are weaponized against them as individual, moral failings. This is not administrative guidance; it is the intellectualization of bigotry.
“Healing this historical wound does not begin with polite dialogue or subservient self-reflection; it begins with aggressively ripping the weapon from the oppressor's hands.”
Sitting safely at the apex of this rigged institutional hierarchy, the administration possesses a vast, sophisticated theoretical vocabulary to justify its actions, but it entirely lacks the epistemic standing to define the reality of structural oppression. In the brilliant theoretical exposition The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory, Gopal Guru establishes that the epistemology of the marginalized is intrinsically rooted in the inescapable lived experience of humiliation—an experience fundamentally defined by absolute necessity and a complete, suffocating lack of freedom or choice. Guru completely annihilates the hierarchy of knowledge production, describing a pernicious, deeply casteist divide between "theoretical Brahmins"—the privileged elite who claim the universal right to theorize, define reality, and dictate terms—and "empirical Shudras"—the marginalized who are relegated to merely supplying raw data and enduring the actual, physical violence.
The podcast’s attempt to pathologize the marginalized as drug-addicted victims is an act of pure epistemological imperialism. It assumes the arrogant, unquestionable position of the Theoretical Brahmin, sitting at the helm of the university, demanding that the marginalized accept patronizing, abusive definitions of their own lived reality. But those who have never lived a single day under the crushing, suffocating weight of caste cannot, and must not, dictate how the oppressed should respond to it. When Dr. B.R. Ambedkar confronted M.K. Gandhi in 1931, he shattered this exact illusion of upper-caste saviorism, pointing out that those in power fundamentally cannot comprehend a reality they have never been subjected to. History consistently dictates that mahatmas, like fleeting phantoms, raise dust, but raise no level. The wounds of caste are not historical artifacts waiting to be politely debated in academic seminars; they are bleeding daily in our classrooms, our hostels, and our administrative blocks.
We know exactly what this institutional violence looks like in practice because it has been empirically proven and meticulously documented in premier institutions across the country, serving as a terrifying, undeniable mirror to our own reality. The Thorat Committee Report on AIIMS laid bare the grim, statistical reality of institutional casteism, proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that what the oppressor designates as a "lack of merit" is actually the documented, statistical execution of deep-seated caste bias. The report revealed that a staggering 84 percent of respondents mentioned that evaluation in practicals and viva-voce was blatantly unfair, and 84 percent explicitly stated their grades were negatively affected directly because of their caste background. Subjective internal assessments are actively weaponized by Brahminical faculties to deliberately fail marginalized students, systematically severing their academic arteries.
The report further documented how SC/ST students are subjected to such severe, relentless abuse and hostility that they are forced into spatially segregated quarters, noting that "several students belonging to the SC/ST categories have shifted to the two top floors of Hostels 4 and 5 leading some sort of segregation on caste line," effectively creating modern, institutionally sanctioned ghettos on campus. 88 percent of these students reported severe social isolation, being systematically barred from private dining messes and entirely excluded from the organizing committees of cultural festivals like PULSE.
Crucially, the Thorat Report dismantles the entire gaslighting narrative of "victimhood" by proving empirically that the administration does not punish weakness; it actively, violently punishes political assertion and democratic resistance. The report highlighted the devastating case of Ajay Kumar Singh, a student who openly protested against the harassment of SC/ST students and was subsequently failed in three final-year subjects by biased faculty as a direct, calculated retaliation. Similarly, the report documented the case of Dr. Ajitha Gill, a resident doctor who supported pro-reservation demonstrations and was summarily terminated from her research position without cause, simply for daring to stand with the oppressed. When Dalit and Adivasi students assert their political agency—when they protest, organize, and demand their constitutional rights—the administration violently retaliates by failing them, terminating their jobs, and destroying their livelihoods. The administration does not despise "victimhood"; it despises assertion. It weaponizes the term "victim card" to psychologically break the very students it is actively attempting to crush for daring to look the oppressor in the eye and demand accountability.
This ideological hoarding and institutional violence materializes into direct administrative policy, exposing the lethal, highly coordinated nexus between neoliberalism and Hindutva that is systematically tightening its grip on higher education. As Anand Teltumbde forcefully argues in his book Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva, the privatization of education and the preservation of Brahminical hegemony work in perfect, devastating tandem. Neoliberalism requires the violent withdrawal of the state from public goods like higher education, while Hindutva provides the cultural distraction and ideological justification to keep the oppressed divided, distracted, and subjugated.
The podcast attack on UGC regulations as "unnecessary and irrational" is not an administrative critique aimed at improving efficiency; it is a fascist dog-whistle for the complete dismantling of the public university. UGC regulations are the very mechanisms that mandate constitutional reservations, ensure accessibility, and hold rogue administrations accountable to the law of the land. By advocating for their removal, the RSS-aligned administration seeks to bypass the Constitution entirely and revert the public university into an exclusive, gatekept agrahara, effectively locking out the working class, the Bahujans, and marginalized minorities forever. M.S. Golwalkar expressed a visceral, deep-seated hatred for the democratic, inclusive Constitution, mocking the idea that the country belongs to everyone equally as the "Serai theory"—treating the nation like a mere public inn. Scrapping UGC regulations is the modern administrative manifestation of this exact hatred for the democratic "Serai," an attempt to ensure the university belongs only to those who already possess the generational caste capital to inhabit it.
Furthermore, as Dr. B.R. Ambedkar explicitly noted in his seminal work Annihilation of Caste, caste is not merely a division of labor, but a violent division of laborers graded one above the other in watertight compartments to deliberately prevent social mobility and crush human potential. Operating within this suffocating, rigidly graded space, one realizes profoundly that physical disability is fundamentally a manifestation of social disability—a truth that perfectly mirrors the structural exclusion of caste. The university is architecturally, academically, and institutionally constructed to withhold deserved space from anyone outside its privileged, ableist, and Savarna norm. The environment actively disables the person by refusing to yield democratic space, and then the administration has the sheer audacity to blame the marginalized for failing to assimilate into a structure that was explicitly designed to destroy them. It is an act of institutional war masquerading as academic rigor.
Ambedkar warned the nation with prophetic clarity that you cannot build a nation or a morality on the foundations of caste, because anything built upon such a rotten foundation will inevitably crack and never be a whole. There will be no polite submission to an administration that actively orchestrates structural exclusion and violence. There will be no sanitized, purely theoretical debates with those who deny the material reality of marginalized students while actively dismantling collective rights and futures. This university cannot claim to be a beacon of democratic learning while its highest office operates as an unhinged megaphone for right-wing, caste-supremacist propaganda. The democratization of these spaces was paid for with the blood, sweat, and relentless struggles of the oppressed, and it is a legacy that must be fiercely defended. The resistance against this Brahminical-fascist offensive is not a reaction; it is the absolute, uncompromising baseline of political assertion, and it will not waver until the last remnants of this institutional tyranny are dismantled.
To those in power who demand that the oppressed sit quietly, self-reflect, and stop playing the "victim," let the response be absolute and unforgiving. As Malcolm X stated: "If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made." The administration, wielding the blade of Brahminical fascism, demands that we stop complaining about the blood while they actively twist the knife deeper into our backs through exclusionary policies and the dismantling of our public institutions. They dare to call our agony a "drug," when it is their ideology that is addicted to our subjugation. They do not want progress; they want our silent submission to the slaughter. We refuse to accept the scraping of our constitutional rights as "academic reform," and we absolutely refuse to let the architects of our exclusion dictate the terms of our resistance. Healing this historical wound does not begin with polite dialogue or subservient self-reflection; it begins with aggressively ripping the weapon from the oppressor's hands. The demand for the Vice Chancellor's resignation is not a plea for sympathy, nor is it a temporary drug—it is the uncompromising extraction of that knife, and the militant assertion of our right to reclaim the university that is rightfully ours.