For the past week, students at Ashoka University, Sonepat have been protesting for the implementation of social justice and affirmative action such as reservations for marginalised castes, and a caste census for the varsity’s students and staff.
While public universities in India are Constitutionally mandated to reserve admission seats and employment positions for students and employees from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Castes (OBCs), private universities are largely exempt from following affirmative action policies — leading many critics, particularly those from SC/ST/OBC communities to term these spaces as elite and discriminatory.
These sentiments appear to have reached their zenith at Ashoka University and seem to have been amplified by the growing popularity of a socio-economic caste census in the country — prompting the varsity’s students to demand a caste census and reservations in the university.
As a result, on March 20, which happens to be the 97th anniversary of the Mahad Satyagraha led by Dr BR Ambedkar, members of the Social Justice Forum, an independent student organisation in the university, launched the protest inside the campus — which gradually moved outside its gates.
Prelude to the protest
According to a media statement from the Social Justice Forum, these demands stemmed from a previous demand for an anti-discrimination cell on the campus. Here is the sequence of events, as explained by them:
The forum brought the demand to Vice-Chancellor Somak Raychaudhury through an official email, with signatures from 200 students, faculty and staff members on November 7, 2023.
However, the vice-chancellor, in response to the demand, told the forum on November 17 that the administration has been working to establish a Student Grievance Redressal Cell in line with the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines, as well as an Equal Opportunities Cell to address incidents of discrimination, with elected student representatives comprising both committees.
Responding to this on December 4, the forum expressed its concerns about the composition of the cells and whether they could truly represent students from marginalised communities, as the university at large lacks it. To support their apprehensions, they cite data from a 2019 report by The Edict, an independent newsletter from the university, which stated that over 88 per cent of the Young India Fellowship cohort of 2018 comprised students who were upper caste and that students from minority religions were also under-represented. The forum then calls for the implementation of a caste and religion census on the campus.
Then, the vice-chancellor responded to this demand the very next day, on December 5, reiterating the university’s commitment to establishing the Student Grievance Redressal Cell and the Equal Opportunities Cell, and that “various other matters” such as the caste census on campus would require further discussions with various stakeholders.
About three months later, the forum wrote to the entire student body on March 12, calling for a sit-in-protest on March 20 due to the failure of the vice-chancellor to set up the Equal Opportunities Cell within the timeline promised. “Representation is a non-negotiable aspect of any university campus and any underrepresentation, especially in the form of “caste blindness”, is a threat to the diverse discourse and community Ashoka wants to foster,” the Social Justice Forum said, in its email to the students.
The protest
Thus, the Social Justice Forum, along with students of the university, sat for their protest on March 20 in the atrium of the campus.
According to a representative of the Social Justice Forum, the demands of the protestors as follows:
Implementation of an annual caste census for students and staff, which is the first step in the struggle to demand reservations
Sanction of funds and organisation of an annual Ambedkar Memorial Lecture event on campus, where guest speakers and panellists from marginalised communities would be invited to speak on themes of social justice (similar to Tata Institute of Social Science’s Ambedkar Memorial Lecture)
Removal of the late fee penalty policy of Rs 200 per day of delay including a block on the defaulters’ access to their Google classroom account and mess coupons
As part of the ongoing protest, the Social Justice Forum and its allies even disrupted a talk by Sanjeev Bikhchandani on March 22, one of the founders of the university, by calling for a caste census while his session was going on, the representative says.
Upon making the call, amidst slogans of “Brahmanwaad, Baniyawaad; Murdabaad, Murdabaad” (Death be upon Brahmin and Baniya supremacy) and “Jai Bhim” (Victory to Bhim/Dr Ambedkar), the representative said that the protestors headed back to their protest site.
It was only after this disruption, that the vice-chancellor called for a discussion on the same day with the Social Justice Forum about their demands. “(The Vice-Chancellor’s) silence up and until the disruption directly translates into the comfort that this administration enjoys in ignoring legitimate demands for change arising from marginalised student groups, and then retaliating rather than responding once it is forced to confront them,” the forum said in its statement.
However, the representative of the forum claimed that all their demands were rejected by the vice-chancellor in the meeting.
“The demand for a caste census was rejected on grounds that it would cause divisions among students and that it is against the foundational principles of the university, and the demand for the abolition of the late fee was rejected as the administration is convinced of its effectiveness in curbing fee defaulting,” the representative explained.
They were also told that while 35 per cent of students did not reveal their caste location in their admission forms and 12 per cent of the upcoming batch of students were from the SC/ST/OBC categories.
As for the demand for the annual Ambedkar Memorial Lecture, the representative claimed that the vice-chancellor assured them that the administration is considering introducing an annual event on the themes of social justice, but did not confirm whether it would focus on themes of caste discrimination.
Following this, the Social Justice Forum moved its protest outside the campus on March 26. They claim that as per the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), data of Ashoka University for 2023 showed that only 7 per cent of the varsity’s students belonged to the SC/ST/OBC community.
“The Social Justice Forum notes this is due to the university’s reluctance to conduct a comprehensive caste census and insistence on using their available admissions data, which already makes it evident that there is a severe underrepresentation across SC-ST-OBC students as opposed to their proportion in the national population,” the forum says.
In the meanwhile, the administration of the university announced the set-up of the Equal Opportunity Cell today, March 27, seemingly in response to the protests. However, the Social Justice Forum maintains that the cell was not part of their demands and that this development is just an attempt by the university’s administration to sanitise their image. The protests would continue until their demands are met, they say.
Solidarity and a case for Constitutional morality
When asked about the composition of the protest, the representative said that around 70 to 150 students had joined the protest, and 50 students stayed at the protest site throughout the entire protest.
“We even had signatures to our demand for a caste census from more than 60 faculty members — but these came in only after the protest started,” they said.
The Social Justice Forum, through its Instagram account also announced that the student government of the university extended its solidarity to the protests.
Another member of the Social Justice Forum, who was part of the protest, says, “There are many of us who even slept the night at the protest site. We are not going to move until the university listens to us, and are willing to intensify the protests if need be.”
According to the representative of the forum, this protest calls out the lack of Constitutional morality and democracy within the university.
“Private universities are not expected to have any forms of affirmative action, despite reservations being Constitutionally mandated. Are they comfortable in not ensuring proportional representation, as enshrined in the Constitution within them? These spaces are built on prejudicial foundations, and we aim to resist them,” the representative explains.
