Explain choice of speakers, content: IIT-Delhi tells organisers of seminar on caste, race; institute sets up fact-finding panel

The post added that IIT-D “remains committed to national goals, academic integrity, and established institutional guidelines”.

The statement followed critical posts on X objecting to the allegedly “one sided narrative on caste”, and alleged “woke nonsense” discussed at the conference by “radical activists”.

According to the official programme schedule, the conference opened on January 16 with an introduction by Divya Dwivedi, professor (Literature Philosophy), and a welcome note by Abhijit Banerji, head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The three-day conference included keynote lectures and panel sessions by scholars and activists from Indian and foreign universities on the themes of caste-, race- and descent‑based discrimination.

On the third day, in Session 5 chaired by Gajendran Ayyathurai of the University of Göttingen in Germany, one of the papers was by Aarushi Punia, an independent researcher, titled ‘What’s common between Dalits and Palestinians?’

Other speakers in the same session included Indian American Dalit rights activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan on ‘25 Years of Racial and Caste Equity Impact of Durban on Dalit Americans’, Smita M Patil of the School of Gender and Development studies at IGNOU on ‘Intensifying the Culture: Rethinking Race and Caste’, and the Tamil writer P Sivakami on ‘The Intersectional Struggle: Decoding Caste and Gender in P Sivakami’s Narratives’.

Responding to a questionnaire over email, Professor Dwivedi wrote to The Indian Express: “The conference is academic in its aim and scope, which is to generate critical thinking on social inequalities towards an egalitarian and sustainable world, and it builds on existing academic research and publications including mine which can be looked up. The conference is devoted to promoting the constitutional values of equality, liberty, dignity and fraternity through scholarly discussion of the past and present Indian contributions towards combating social inequalities and social injustice.

“The speakers include scholars, award-winning academics, writers and artists, and participants of WCAR 2001 in Durban who have contributed to this area and have been the subject of existing academic researches.”

Meanwhile, a member of the humanities faculty at IIT-D told The Indian Express that “this is not the first time that the CPCR conference is happening, and in the past too there have been many members inside and outside of IIT Delhi who have written to the Institute’s director expressing concerns about discussing caste and race.”

However, this professor said, “This is the first time that the Institute has ever reacted by stating that it would set up a fact‑finding committee”.

The professor said “CPCR is an academic conference and has been taking place for years”, and “Just a few weeks ago, there was a conference on Hindutva on campus and no one raised any questions against such conferences.”

In its concept note, the organisers said the conference focused on “the histories and futures of the arduous and brilliant efforts of the oppressed groups,” and aimed at “comprehensive documentation, understanding and theorization of descent‑based discrimination”.