New Delhi, Sept. 24 -- In a shocking incident, Sahil Wakode, a second-year engineering student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, died by suicide after being found hanging in his hostel room. This is the fourth suicide in the last seven months at the institute. The institute has removed Suryanarayana Doolla as dean of Administrative Affairs following protests by students and political activists. A case of abetment and caste discrimination has been registered against Doolla. The anti-reservation activists have flooded social media with trolls directed at the 'less meritorious students' who fail to compete with students belonging to the general category. According to them, reservation deprives other intelligent students of an opportunity to get admission in the IITs.
The parents of Sahil Wakode alleged that he had told them about caste discrimination earlier as well by the professor now named in the FIR related to his suicide. "I told him it's difficult to secure admission in IIT, and told him to bear it," said the father, Ravindra Wakode. The father further alleged that the family was not informed promptly about the death, while his body was sent to a government hospital. "The IIT administration is involved in destroying crucial evidence," he said. Sadly, it is reported that 45 students from 23 IITs have committed suicide in five years. Out of these, 28 victims were from SC, ST, and OBC communities. Something is definitely wrong with these premier technical institutions of India.
Before entering into further discussion, it should be flagged that the great engineers of medieval India were mainly Shudras - members of the lowest Varna in the caste hierarchy. The Shudras produced a steady supply of architects, builders, stonemasons, bronze sculptors, goldsmiths and other professionals. Commissioned by kings, merchants and Brahmins-who disdained all manual labour themselves-the Shudras, aided by the labour of those considered "untouchable" and outside the Varna hierarchy, built all of India's engineering marvels, including its grand temple towns, magnificent cities such as Khajuraho, Vijayanagar and medieval fort-palaces. The Harappan civilisation, which flourished much before the Brahminical caste system took root in ancient India, exhibits an advanced, grid-based urban layout with specialised zoning, standardised burnt bricks, and a sophisticated underground drainage system.
Significantly enough, the smelting traditions of various indigenous groups in India have found their way into a range of literature on iron-ore extraction. Drawings of furnaces used in Birbhum, West Bengal, were included in a journal compiled by the Irish geologist Thomas Oldham. An 1881 geology manual on India contains photographs of smelting and details about the furnaces used by the Agaria, an Adivasi community in Chota Nagpur. The Asur-an Adivasi community (Scheduled Tribe)-is believed to be India's first metallurgists. The Asuras' primary method of metal extraction-procuring charcoal from Sal trees and using it to smelt iron ore-supposedly yielded rust-free iron.
To run its administration and supply trained technical persons to British industries, the colonial rulers established engineering colleges in India. It began in 1843-44, when Civil Engineering classes were introduced at Hindu College, Calcutta, to train engineers for the Public Works Department of the Bengal Presidency. A formal Civil Engineering College was established on November 24, 1856, at the Writers' Building in Calcutta. With the founding of the University of Calcutta in 1857, the college gained affiliation and, after a brief period under the Presidency College, it was relocated to Shibpur, Howrah in 1880, becoming the Government Engineering College (Bengal Engineering College), Howrah. Thus, the English-educated Bengali Bhadroloks (mostly belonging to upper castes) entered into this new knowledge system where manual labour was essential.
It may be recalled that in 1946, a 22-member Sarkar Committee, led by businessman Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, recommended establishing four premier technical institutions across India to drive post-war industrial development. The committee explicitly urged that these colleges be designed "along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)". Based on the committee's vision, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Education Minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad established the first institute, IIT Kharagpur, in West Bengal. Even after independence, India's premier technical institutions were built copying Western models.
In her book, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (2019), Ajantha Subramanian provides interesting insights into the colonial history of engineering education and associated racialisation of caste, and the making of IITs in postcolonial India as a Brahmin-upper caste space. She also provides a critical reading of JEE, the merit-testing entrance exam, for admission to IITs and the politics of social reproduction that may be embedded in the idea of prestigious exams. The present crisis at IIT Bombay should be analysed from the historical perspective of racialisation of caste in higher technical institutions of India.
Considering the historical contribution of Sudras and Adivasi communities to the enrichment of technical knowledge, the government can establish, on an experimental basis, a few separate technical institutions, say, an Indian Institute of Traditional Technology (IITT) for students of reserved categories, as suggested by a few social media posts during the ongoing debate. Unlike in IITs, here the students will be allowed to obtain their degrees by creating real-world innovations instead of submitting traditional dissertations.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is a professor of Business Administration
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.