1 Introduction

“For some people, life itself is a curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past” (Vemula, 2016). These lines are from the suicide note of Rohith Vemula, a research scholar from an oppressed caste at a public university who ended his life in 2016. There have been other cases of suicide of Dalit students in higher education institutions (HEIs) that scholars and activists understand as a reflection of how caste is embedded in the banal everyday structures and flows of higher education (HE) (Singh, 2013; Thorat, 2016). Dalit-Bahujan¹ (oppressed social castes) autobiographical accounts of experiences of exclusion in educational institutions, especially in schools, strengthen this understanding (Valmiki, 2003). These experiences that are generally perceived as casualties of personal situations, reflect the contemporary prevalent forms of everyday caste conflicts often fragmented, hidden and silenced in institutional sites (Rathod, 2021; Sukumar, 2023). This banality of these conflicts shapes the lack of systematic policy engagement with and absence of institutional mechanisms to address underlying issues. For instance, in the Indian policy context, the question of caste is primarily understood and addressed in the lexicon of access.

Enhancing Dalit-Bahujan students’ access to HE is a prominent policy concern in India. India’s National Education Policies (NEPs) have included varied recommendations for enhancing access to HE. For instance, NEP 2020 (MoE, 2020) states:

Entry into quality higher education can open a vast array of possibilities that can lift both individuals as well as communities out of the cycles of disadvantage. For this reason, making quality higher education opportunities available to all individuals must be among the highest priorities. This Policy envisions ensuring equitable access to quality education to all students, with a special emphasis on Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Groups (p. 41).

Such policy recommendations combined with the reservations or affirmative action have facilitated the entry-level inclusion of Dalit-Bahujan students in HE. However, despite an overall increase in enrolment of Dalit-Bahujan students, their representation in HE has remained comparatively low (MoE, 2022). The numbers further decrease as one moves to postgraduate and doctoral levels. Caste continues to reflect in the streaming of Dalit-Bahujan students in certain kinds of avenues (Subramanian, 2019; Rao, 2013). All India Survey on Higher Education (MoE, 2022) indicates that the number of students from unreserved category is concentrated in STEM, while Dalit-Bahujan students are concentrated in the social sciences and humanities. However, even in these areas, the percentage enrolment of Dalit-Bahujan is lower compared to students in the unreserved category. When conflated with the relatively lower transition rates of Dalit-Bahujan from school to HE, the endemic issues embedded in educational processes come to the fore.

Analysing this phenomenon, Sabharwal and Malish (2017) state: “Inequalities in educational opportunity are manifested by under-representation of the socio-economically disadvantaged and first-generation learners in elite institutions, and in the science and engineering streams, and a progressive loss of representation as one moves up the academic ladder” (p. 1). When conflated with the relatively lower transition from school education to HE for students from socio-economically disadvantaged contexts, these indices point to endemic issues embedded in the institutional processes. A study by Azam and Bloom (2009) estimated the prevalence of low transition rates from secondary to HE among Dalit-Bahujan students in India, especially in the case of rural women.

This highlights the long-standing issue of the lack of systematic policy response to caste-based inequities experienced in HE (Sabharwal & Malish, 2018; Tilak, 2015). Efforts towards increasing access of socio-economically disadvantaged students in HE have been made but the retention and degree attainment rates of Dalit-Bahujan remain low (Desai & Kulkarni, 2008). While relatively under-studied, the students’ experiences after entry in HE are increasingly being recognised as significant in their success and transition. These experiences especially include their pedagogic and social interactions in the institutional contexts (Dey, 2022).

This paper comprises a part of a broader research agenda to understand the operation of caste in the structures, processes and discourses in HE by engaging with the everyday experiences of Dalit-Bahujan students. This broader research agenda spans the co-authors’ interest in making sense of how caste operates in urban educational contexts. In Indian policy and everyday discourses, there is a common-sense belief that caste becomes obliterated in an urban context, especially in HE (Sharma, 2021). However, a nascent but growing body of literature (discussed in next section) dispels this belief. Drawing from this agenda the present research is focused on the pedagogic experiences of Dalit-Bahujan students in a HEI in India. It is based on qualitative in-depth interviews of Dalit-Bahujan students. While pedagogic experiences have multiple facets, this paper takes only one aspect, the language policy at the institutional level, as a case in point. The paper is organised into five sections, including the introduction. The second section engages with the different facets of experiences of Dalit-Bahujan in HE as discussed in the literature. The third section discusses the methodology. The fourth presents the findings. The last section concludes the discussions.

2 Prisms of caste in HE: Caste-based exclusion, pedagogies and language

This paper bases its understanding of caste on Kabeer’s (2000) work that has argued that certain groups in society are set apart and locked out in realising their potential through the process of cultural devaluation. This devaluation produces disadvantages in different forms through “active dynamics of social interaction” (p. 84). It is through the process of cultural devaluation, certain groups in society are ridiculed, denied rights, declined, invisibilised and devalued, thus leading to their social exclusion. Social exclusion is a group phenomenon which distinguishes “those who belong to groups which enjoy access to resources and respect and those who do not” (Kabeer, 2000, p. 89). This social ordering and rules of distribution of power set in motion a cycle of marginalisation that remains “the most dangerous form of oppression” where a group is debarred from “useful participation in social life and thus potentially subjected to severe material deprivation and even extermination” (Young, 1990, p. 53). Guru (2000) explains this in terms of the political relation between the core and margins and notes, “On moral grounds, the relationship between the margin and the core is always of a hierarchical nature. It is dichotomous, in which the core exists only at the cost of the margin. In other words, the existence of a margin becomes the logical requirement of the core” (p. 115).

While caste-based discrimination and conflicts are well studied, the everyday routines in which caste operates in society have gained attention in the literature recently, particularly in HE. This paper draws on this literature while understanding that caste conflicts are prevalent across institutional sites, but their forms are not always overt. These conflicts are often fragmented, undefined/unarticulated and silenced. Freire’s (2000) and Delpit’s (1988) works have conceptualised how the “culture of silence” and “silenced dialogues”, respectively, omnipresent in education are instrumental in oppression of the marginalised groups and create a passive and suppressed self-view among the students from oppressed groups, while suppressing conflict and resistance. To understand ‘silenced conflict’, we draw from research in organisation studies that demonstrates how institutions and groups develop a culture of silencing and not acknowledging conflicts (Morrison & Milliken, 2000). Roth and Kleiner (1999) have argued that many organisations have an unsaid cultural practice - “don’t tell someone you have a problem unless you have the solution’’ (p. 16). These works also indicate that”those who fail to reveal their thoughts and feelings often experience stress, dissatisfaction, cynicism, and even depression… Those who do not speak up often come to perceive that their perspectives do not matter […]” (Perlow & Repenning, 2009, p. 196). These situations develop institutional pathologies leading to failure to cope and eventually being pushed-out. Thus, it becomes significant to explore how caste is experienced, articulated and silenced in HE.

Given the vast literature, the focus in this section has been restricted only on the pedagogic and social experience of Dalit-Bahujan students in HE. The impact of caste-based exclusion on psycho-social well-being and academic lives of the students is well documented even in HE (Komanapalli & Rao, 2020; Varghese et al., 2019; Sukumar, 2023). The literature agrees that marginality on account of caste, class, and gender, along with lack of facilitative pedagogical structures in HE often push-out such students (Maurya, 2018; Thorat, 2016). Further, the absence of facilitative pedagogical structures in HE not only becomes a crisis for the socio-economically disadvantaged students, but also has a bearing on democratisation of knowledge production.

In his autoethnography, Sukumar (2008) examines the ways in which Dalit students are subjected to ridicule based on their caste names and complexion. He notes that Dalit students are often faced with derogatory terms such as ‘pigs’, ‘government’s son-in-law’, ‘bastards’, ‘son of god’, and ‘beggars’ in universities (p. 17). The experiences of ridicule become even more disturbing when caste-based discrimination and gendered violence are perpetuated on the campuses of higher learning. While recounting specific examples of the daily discrimination that Dalit girls face, Kumar (2016) shares: “In Delhi colleges, Dalit girls with deep anxiety have spoken about how they are ridiculed by the question ‘Quote se aye ho ya kothe se’ (Have you come via reservation quota or brothel?)” (p. 13). The negative attitudes of upper caste students, teachers, and administrators reflect deep-rooted caste prejudices that can drive students toward self-harm (Rathod, 2021; Singh, 2013). The experiences of caste discrimination amplify as Dalit students move-up the academic ladder (Maurya, 2018). They are given less marks, labelled ‘quota students’, have restricted peer and faculty networks, and are denied good academic guides (Sukumar, 2023). The abysmal representation of Dalit faculty and exclusion of Dalit icons in books also reflects the caste prejudices in curriculum and in institutes of HE at large (Lum, 2019).

Literature also notes that while Dalit-Bahujan students see reservation as an inclusionary mechanism to facilitate access, the perceptions of non-Dalit students and teachers about reservations continue to shape their HE experiences (Ovichegan, 2014). Dalit-Bahujan students continue to be marked by sub-caste affiliations, economic conditions, gender and rural-urban location. This is seen when Dalits from ‘privileged’ backgrounds also exclude those students whose status is considered relatively lower in intersecting caste-class hierarchies. This is seen as an attempt of the privileged Dalit students to disassociate with the larger Dalit student community and associate with non-Dalit students:

Creamy layer dalits, having a distinct edge over other members of their community, are more inclined to associate with equivalently placed persons from other – non-dalit – caste … As a result, whether consciously or subconsciously, the creamy layer dalit continues to form privileged groups in which they are comfortable (Ovichegan, 2014, p. 370).

In this context, the literature also engages with how campus culture compounds tensions between caste and class (Pathania & Tierney, 2018). While there is a good match between the cultural capital of the elites and the structures of HE, the students from socio-economically disadvantaged contexts are found to have inferior cultural and social capital and hence they struggle to navigate the institutional culture. HE remains “an elitist and exclusive field” (Pathania & Tierney, 2018, p. 224) as HEIs are hardly prepared to address structural issues within and outside the classroom spaces and thus remain silent on or silence on students’ experiences (Mahapatra & Mishra, 2019).

Language or medium of instruction is also noted as a significant aspect of Dalit-Bahujan experiences where the axes of caste and class become indistinguishably intertwined. Some scholars see English education as an empowering instrument for Dalit-Bahujan (Ilame, 2020; Omvedt, 2006; Shepherd, 2022). Studies point to high student aspiration for English education (Advani, 2009; Mathew, 2022). Kumar (1996) argues that the ability to comprehend English in a global village is seen as “marker of a young person’s eligibility for negotiating the opportunity structure” in the knowledge economy (p. 59). At the same time, those who lack English proficiency have “limited scope for moving into higher income groups and higher status roles” (p. 59). While seen to achieve equity and social justice, the denial of access to quality English education at the school level compounds the exclusion of Dalit-Bahujan students when they reach English medium HEIs. It pushes them in the situation of crisis, self-doubt and dependence on others to survive. The lack of institutional support often pushes them to become non-being in the institutes of HE which not only excludes the disadvantaged communities but also impinges upon democratisation of knowledge and process of knowledge production, and violates their linguistic spaces (Karthikeyan, 2017; Kumar, 2021; Nag, 2023).

In HEIs, both Dalit students and Dalit faculty are “ghettoised through mutual bracketing” wherein Dalit students are assigned to Dalit guides which on the one hand deprives Dalits students of the opportunities to benefit from the larger community of teachers and on the other, this bracketing restricts upper caste students to learn from the expertise of Dalit teachers (Guru, 2000, p. 112). This bracketing becomes even more complex when it intersects with the question of language. Scholars and activists like Guru (2000), Nag (2019) and others have argued that faculty members in research programmes at many HEIs opt to supervise students from privileged backgrounds who have already acquired a proficiency in English. Sukumar (2023) notes, “As tokenism, one or two students from Dalit, tribal or a religious minority are chosen to supervise by many faculties, albeit hailing from an urban, English medium background” (p. 98). This sorting and selection legitimises the cultural capital of the dominant group and marginalises the knowledge and groups, identities and experiences of those who are subordinate.

The command over English is a prominent criterion to define merit (Sukumar, 2023). However, the notion of merit comes into scrutiny when a Dalit-Bahujan student acquires English proficiency. In such a situation, a Dalit-Bahujan student would either be considered an exception or would be doubted and their struggle would be completely disregarded. The ideology of merit continues to hold a powerful position in making Dalit students internalise that they are undeserving candidates (Lum, 2019). Therefore, the medium of instruction is one of the “potential minefields” that pushes marginalised groups to dropout from HEIs (Sukumar, 2023, p. 20). However, the engagement with the intersection of caste and class in the context of medium of instruction in HE is at its nascent stages. In this context, this paper focuses on exploring this dimension.

3 Methodology

This study has been conceptualised within the conventions of qualitative research. Qualitative research is a form of social inquiry where the purpose is to understand and gain meaning out of human experiences. It tends to involve researchers in collecting data through looking at documents, observing or interviewing participants in their natural setting where the issue is being experienced by the participants (Creswell, 2007). Hammersley (2013) points out that qualitative research is “aimed at discovering how human beings understand, experience, interpret, and produce the social world” (as cited in Sandelowski, 2004, p. 893). This research aims to explore the narratives of Dalit-Bahujan students to map their educational experiences while taking the medium of instruction as a case in point. It involved examining the narratives of these students to understand their experiences of inclusion and exclusion within a public university setting.

4 Students’ pedagogic experiences

5 Discussion

Educational institutions which are aimed at countering and compensating structural deprivations, perpetuate a sense of inadequacy among the marginalised students. The perpetual sense of inadequacy creates self-doubt, and is detrimental to students’ well-being, readiness to seek and use opportunities. The students from socio-economically disadvantaged contexts grow up in conditions of deprivation and often internalise their subservient and inferior position in the society. The conditions of deprivation and marginalisation not only reflect how certain stratifications, hierarchies, histories of relations and identities of people are formed but how power and control is embedded in larger social structures of the society.

While the upper caste and class students “fit into requirement easily” in the institutes of HE (Mahapatra & Mishra, 2019, p. 356), Dalit-Bahujan students are in a constant “fear of being treated as an inferior category among the educated” (Jayaram, 1993, p. 103). Students from disadvantaged contexts experience various forms of violence or conflicts in education that may not take overt identifiable forms. These conflicts are refracted through policies, pedagogy and knowledge – and may be understood as epistemic violence or conflict.

HEIs are considered as spaces where knowledge is produced and shared. However, this production and sharing is often in a particular language which only students from privileged backgrounds can meaningfully participate in. Thus, the question of medium of knowledge production requires thinking on whose lives and voices are to be included in the curricular and pedagogic processes. The voices from the margins will not be able to occupy centrality in HE unless these become a part of academic writing. The findings from our interview-based study point that a considerable gap between the socio-economic backgrounds of the students and institutional knowledge and pedagogical structures are rarely systematically thought about in HEIs. This study indicates that the proficiency in English acts as an axis of exclusion that operates by silencing articulation of conflict by creating self-doubt.

Students bring a rich repertoire of knowledge in their own language(s) to classrooms. English as a sole medium of instruction closes the avenue for students to access, produce and share knowledge other than in English. The decision in which language knowledge must be produced lies with the universities rather than the students which on the one hand empowers students who had done their schooling from elite English medium private schools, and on the other constantly constructs lack of English proficiency as a disability for the others. While the massification of HE in India has facilitated the entry of a diverse student population, the institutions remain ill-prepared to include diverse student populations and struggle to offer them institutional support (Sabharwal & Malish, 2018; Varghese et al., 2019). As large numbers of students are entering HE in India, HEIs will have to adopt a multi-faceted approach in meaningfully engaging a diverse student population.