From shadows to the stars

"You're university students. Go and study instead of wasting time on protests." Many of those involved in protests demanding justice for Rohith Vemula have been given this unsolicited advice. Their idea of education is very narrow. There's a difference between studying and becoming educated. The students of a university should be educated, not be studying. By educated, I mean that one should become aware of the many different phenomenon that occur in a society - structures, discrimination, hierarchy, inequality and bias and not just limit themselves to academics. The idea of a university, where people from different social spheres interact, is to facilitate the understanding of such phenomenon. A person who 'studies', will just read what's in a book and reproduce it on a piece of paper. If your idea of education is the latter, then you probably should go to a private institute and not a university. The students in University of Hyderabad have le...

"Giving these Muslims so much importance is making them quite arrogant," said a savarna woman casually, in response to my statement that the Hyderabad Metro Rail stations would be having name plates even in Urdu, apart from Telugu, Hindi and English. Obviously, my initial reaction was, "WTF!?" But also, I thought, "How the hell does having name plates in Urdu equal giving 'too much' importance to Muslims?" Half of the Hyderabadi population is Muslim, predominantly Urdu speaking. Shouldn't that be reason enough to have name plates in Urdu? What does 'too much importance' mean? (That's a rhetorical question, I know what it means. Most savarna or maybe even most Hindus have a feeling of injustice that the government appeases minorities (more specifically Muslims) and neglects Hindus) Such is the prejudice and bigotry that is nonchalantly spouted in secure savarna spaces. Spaces where the savarna and also usually upper-mid...

With all the furore over nationalism and anti-nationalism in India, recently, I observed a very curious incident. I was participating in a quiz contest conducted by the School of Economics in the University of Hyderabad. The first round was an audio round. The questions rolled by and one of them happened to be the recital of India's national anthem. As the anthem was playing, I joked with my teammate that because we weren't standing up, we would now be considered anti-national (although to many, being a student of University of Hyderabad could be enough to deem me as anti-national). We chuckled and I looked around. Nobody was standing up.. but then my sights rested upon a man. The only man among all the participants, organisers and audience who was standing up for the national anthem. He also happened to be a Muslim. This could mean two things 1) the said man in a "true Indian" ("despite" his Muslim identity, if you catch my drift..). Or...