Opinion Express view on caste discrimination in Karnataka school: Cast out

Tamil Dalit writer Bama spent a considerable part of her teaching career in government schools in rural Tamil Nadu, coaxing first-generation Dalit students to come to a place that had often had no place for their forefathers. No stranger to ostracism , she was aware that it took careful hand-holding. In an interview to this paper in 2018, Bama spoke of how she would begin lessons by telling her students that she loved them and would be there for them, encouraging them to learn, to be at ease occupying space in an institutional environment meant to free them of caste oppressions.

Love or patience were not the guiding motivations for the principal and a teacher of Morarji Desai Residential School Malur taluk in Karnataka’s Kolar district. They were caught on camera overseeing Dalit students clean the septic tank. Fifteen days after the incident and a day after the video surfaced, the two, and the school’s warden, have been arrested. Shock at the incident, however, would be disingenuous, given the frequency of such occurrences. Change Karnataka with Tamil Nadu and the headmistress of the panchayat middle school in Erode Palakarai was suspended last year for forcing five Scheduled Caste (SC) students to clean the school toilets.

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In Uttar Pradesh’s Auraiya, a 15-year-old SC boy died after being beaten by an upper-caste teacher in September 2022 for an alleged spelling error; around the same time, in Rajasthan, a nine-year-old died after being beaten by an upper-class teacher for drinking water from a pot meant for upper-caste teachers.

The recurrence of caste-based discrimination, violence and exclusion in educational institutions points to an alarming systemic failure. It begins with an under-representation of backward communities in positions of authority and is perpetuated by apathy towards the generational trauma of students from backward classes at an individual level. The consequences of this imbalance become further manifest at the level of higher education — in the last five years, over 13,000 SC, ST and OBC students have dropped out of IITs, IIMs and central universities for a variety of reasons, including discrimination. Greater emphasis needs to be put on sensitisation and on the strengthening of not just redressal mechanisms but also deterrents for those who transgress. Schools are a place of initiation — into education, inclusion, empathy, hope. They require role models who can rise above prejudices.