Caste Discrimination at IIT-Madras? Asst Professor Complains to OBC Commission
Vipin P Veetil says he was prevented from teaching a course even as a Brahmin faculty member was allowed.
At 22 years, Vipin P Veetil travelled across Europe on an Erasmus Mundus post graduate scholarship. At 31, he finished his PhD in economics from George Mason University, Virginia and by the age of 33, he was a post doctoral fellow at Sorbonne University in Paris.
Despite his impressive academic track record, the most difficult question Veetil faced within one month of joining IIT-Madras in 2019, as an assistant Professor in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, was -
“What is your caste?”
Veetil recalls that the question was put to him by a professor of economics who had taught at IIT-M for over 10 years.
This and other such incidents led the IIT-Madras faculty member, to resign on 1 July 2021.
Alleging caste discrimination, Veetil told The Quint in an exclusive interview, “In IIT-M, you can be blind about your caste but others may not be blind about it. They will know or would want to know”.
Veetil has now withdrawn his resignation and is back at IIT- Madras to fight out the complaint he had lodged in July. The 36-year-old assistant professor who hails from Kerala belongs to the Maniyani (OBC) caste.
The faculty member's allegations about caste discrimination come at a time when the Centre is planning to introduce 27 percent OBC reservation in medical and dental courses across the country.
Complaint at OBC Commission
Veetil has also filed a fresh complaint (a copy of which is with The Quint) with the OBC Commission in New Delhi, requesting the body to investigate the reported case of caste discrimination. In the complaint dated 5 August, Veetil writes, “This letter does not capture all of the discrimination I have faced at the department or the caste dynamics which regulates and shapes our lives at the institute. These will hopefully come up in the course of our interaction during the investigation”.
The two-page complaint could possibly be first of its kind, as it is a faculty member of the institute who has raised an allegation of caste discrimination before the OBC commission.
Earlier, in 2015, a section of IIT-M’s students had accused the institute management of caste discrimination when the administration de-recognised Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle (APSC).
APSC now functions as an independent student body in IIT-Madras.
While Veetil is gearing up for a long legal battle, what stands out about his journey in IIT-Madras is that, it appears, caste continues to haunt individuals who hail from historically marginalised Dalit-Bahujan communities even when they do well, academically, without constitutional safeguards such as reservation.
