When I arrived at the Women’s College at Banaras Hindu University through the reservation system, I walked into a world that felt deeply unfamiliar. I was from Darjeeling and didn’t speak Hindi-Bhojpuri. Adjusting to the new environment felt tumultuous enough, but what made it hardest was the blatantly casteist conversations.
During my first year, I admired the way one of the teachers, Professor Sita Sharma*, conducted a huge class of more than 60 students, often seated confidently at her desk, her hair in a neat bob. However, I never found her classes mentally stimulating as they were quite mediocre. I remember the day she was calling out names and handing the papers to students to see what grades she had given them. She called out my first name, mispronouncing it, and eventually called out my last name. Presumably, it was easier for her to pronounce. In a class full of Pathaks, Sharmas, and Singhs, most often, the name that stood out was mine, the clear identifier of the group I belonged to. She looked at the grade before handing the paper over. I glanced at the paper and saw 19/20, quite satisfied with my grade. She turned to the class and said, “Aaj kal toh SC/ST bacche key bhi marks aa rahey hain” (Nowadays even Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe students are getting good marks). This sardonic remark has stuck with me nearly a decade after that class. For most of my upper-caste classmates, this may just have been a harmless observation about caste on campus. However, hearing this from a teacher who taught a critical subject like sociology left me shocked and humiliated. I knew my monolid eyes and facial features were read as markers that I might have benefitted from reservations.
Unlike others who were not expected to justify their merit within the class, the professor’s remark put implicit pressure on me to justify why I had scored so well. All I knew was that I was working hard and apparently doing quite well. But the teacher’s idea of merit started and ended with her assumptions about SC/ST students being unintelligent. Her sarcastic “nowadays” meant that I was some kind of a new aberration she didn’t quite approve of. She could have simply spoken to me directly and praised me. Instead, she chose to “put me in my place” to align with the casteist stereotype that sees SC/ST students as undeserving, incapable of good grades, and harmful to the academic system through our presence. Her entitlement was unfettered, enabled by the manipulative and exclusionary casteist institutional culture that legitimised it.
This wasn’t an isolated casteist remark. Once, she received a phone call during class, and told the caller that the university should be admitting “apne bacche” (our children) to PhD programmes. The children would not be her biological children but students from upper-caste families. This type of signalling of upper-caste nexus and familiality runs rampant within academic institutions. The audacity with which she was able to say this, knowing full well that students like me would be present in the class, revealed precisely whom she considered deserving and meritorious as a teacher: her upper-caste students.
Now, a decade later, as a teacher myself, I have come to terms with how teachers from SC/ST backgrounds have consistently been looked down upon—both their academic rigour and the way they speak and behave have constantly been called into question. I witnessed this pattern in every institution I studied in, saw how they were disparaged, how the papers they taught were seen as either uninteresting or not intellectual enough.
I am unsure of how I am supposed to teach if I reject the pedagogical tools given by my casteist oppressors. As a student, the classroom was never a safe space for me. It was rather the equivalent of a Roman Colosseum where I had to fight for my worth as a student and as a human being. The casteist classroom was the exhausting arena where ruthless questions and remarks were always threatening to devour me. As a teacher, how do I break free from this legacy, when the SC/ST teachers who came before me have been forced into moulds like “incompetent” and “uninspiring”? Where do I begin to critically reflect and analyse how Brahmanical pedagogy is alive in my own classes?
I teach a course on writing in a private liberal arts college to first-years, who are as old as I was when I had to put up with the casteist teacher’s class. The impact of institutional casteism for SC/ST students goes beyond just exclusion; it also pushes many students to die by suicide. One recent case is that of a Dalit teenage boy from Tamil Nadu who died by suicide after facing continuous casteist harassment and bullying by his classmates and teachers. While Dalit and tribal students across India face death and persecution, anti-reservation campaigns keep emerging, asking for economic criteria to take precedence over caste. It bears repeating that caste-based reservations are not a poverty relief or welfare scheme. They are a redressal for historical and structural caste-based exclusion and harm.
I saw these caste hierarchies reproduced not only in how students like me were treated, but also in how SC/ST teachers were treated.
The only teacher in whose presence I could ever feel safe enough to express my opinions was Dr. Madhu Gond*, from the Gond tribe, who taught me during the second year of my undergraduate studies. She was a teacher who stood her ground as she spoke with upper-caste students. I saw how they’d try to undermine her, challenging and questioning her in class. I wondered how she put up with her casteist colleagues—the ones who segregated students according to their surnames and celebrated when an SC/ST candidate didn’t get selected as a research scholar.
I only ever saw SC/ST teachers being viewed as lesser. How could I not assume that my intelligence and merit would also be challenged? For my first-ever class as a writing teacher, I came in as a strict teacher, not because I believe in strictness but because I wanted to exert extra authority knowing there’d be more upper-caste students in my class. I half expected them to grill me. I felt uncomfortable imagining they’d know I had benefitted from reservations. I was apprehensive they’d have a casteist bias towards me.
While my experience had given me no roadmap on what kind of teacher I could be, it did show me what I wanted to move away from. “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” said the Black lesbian poet and author Audre Lorde. I did not want to reproduce the casteist practices I had experienced. Having my answer scripts anonymised saved me from being assessed poorly by casteist teachers. For my students, I did not want anonymity to be the condition for fair assessment. I knew I had to claim my visibility and encourage my students to do the same. I wanted to care enough to make my classroom a space where students need not retreat under the spectre of harsh casteist judgement.
As I reflect on my own positionality, I resonate with Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s writing about the dynamics between the oppressor and oppressed in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire examines how oppressed people are conditioned to internalise the values of their oppressors, fearing to live their authentic lives. Being aware of this internalised oppression can help the oppressed see that these conditions are neither fixed nor insurmountable, but can be transformed.
I draw my inspiration from teachers like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Savitribai Phule, and Dr. Madhu Gond, who have taught me to have deep care and empathy for people. They also taught me how care and empathy cannot be equal, and how we must give more to those who need more from us. This idea of care for the most vulnerable and the most silent has allowed me to rethink and rebuild my own pedagogical tools.
*name changed
Edited by Noopur
