‘ “But I’m not guilty,” said K. “There’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.”

“That is true,” said the priest, “but that is how the guilty speak.” ~ Franz Kafka ( The Trial)

Caste and its manifestations can be a bit difficult to comprehend. Alas, it’s a tough nut to crack if you never faced condescending eyes staring you down while you waited to collect your rightful monthly welfare stipend. It’s too difficult to understand only if you were never called a ‘free rider’ on taxpayers’ money or a ‘hogger of undeserved reserved seats’ in employment and education.

Caste discrimination fails to affect you unless you have seen some asterisks defining caste identity added to your name in a roll call or university admission list. Yes, you might not understand it if you hadn’t walked from pillar to post scouting for a research guide as academics turned you down repeatedly. If the word ‘merit’ was never used as a WMD against you, it will be difficult to understand the implications of caste.

And caste surely will escape your reason if unlike Rohith Vemula of University of Hyderabad you had an option to not kill yourself.

But on February 20, 9 p.m., 210 students of Hyderabad boarded a sleeper class bogey of Dakshin Express to New Delhi to participate in Chalo Delhi, a protest called by the Justice for Rohith Vemula campaign. Shouting slogans (Rohith Amar Rahe, Jai Bhim, Phule, Kanshiram) the group was sure about one thing — that caste exists and it needs to be annihilated. The hopeful eyes of supporters and bystanders who came to the railway station to wave them by reflected a dream — that the students embarking on that train ride will infact end caste. A tryst with destiny? Where does this collective sense of wanting an end or a closure spring from?

As we chew on that, here’s what ascetic and poet Kabir wrote and sang of caste:

Tell me, O pandit What place is pure? Where I can sit And eat my meal (Translated by Dhawadkar)

Odd as it might sound, in modern academic spaces this sense of purity exists and manifests itself in forms so subtle that you could miss it completely, unless of course you are the one standing embarrassed, victimised or dejected in front of something the Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi students of educational institutions across this country are now calling “systemic failure”. Why do they call Rohith Vemula’s death an institutional murder and not a suicide? The answer to that could lie in what transpires in classrooms, group mails, chats and even informal talk within walled academic spaces.

Here’s a peek into how caste functions in corridors of our esteemed educational institutions. Overwhelmed by a sense of guilt and anger at being called a savarna (forward caste) faculty member during an outpour that rocked the campus after Rohith’s death, a senior academic of University of Hyderabad (UoH) wrote to his students: “I hate to have to stand at campus squares and beseech people to pay heed to my progressive ‘credentials’. Over the years, I have had Dalit students at my dining table, eating and writing their theses...”

It’s sometimes in semantics that modern caste resides.

In that dark moist place tucked under your rational mind you might still think that one is being held wrongly responsible for an unfortunate death. And you might want to absolve yourself as your identity in the caste spectrum stands questioned. But aren’t the students rallying against such self-absolutions? Aren’t they striking for the “guilty” to be punished? Would those holding official positions still want to dwell on personal guilt?

If the word ‘merit’ was never used as a WMD against you, it will be difficult to understand the implications of caste.

In a busy corridor where faculty members stood discussing whether to support the student strike for Justice for Rohith, a Professor of UoH puffed away at a cigarette as he explained why he signed a petition to the President of the country seeking his intervention in the matter — “Karma. It's Karma,” he said. Meaning, what was inside the university system has already spilt out for the world to see. Whether the country wants to acknowledge it or not is a different question.

True. It might help us sleep better at night if we imagine that caste is a thing of the past — a practice followed by our pre-modern ancestors. A practice that seldom exists in modern spaces. A practice which the ‘progressive’ people of modern India seldom follow. But reminding us of a stark caste reality on campuses, a senior professor of UoH wrote in a text message to renowned academic and author Professor Immanuel Ness, “Moreover, the Dalit students abused me two days back when I went to show solidarity with them. I don’t want to [be] abused by my own students again. These four boys are no Saints as they tend to project to [the] outside public.” The Professor was referring to an outpour of anger and angst that 200 faculty members of the university faced when they met student protesters in the UoH campus close on the heels of Rohith’s suicide.

In another part of the world — in the United States, Malcom X, had referred to a similar guilt syndrome. He called it the White Guilt.

“I think that the guilt complex of the American white man is so profound until when you begin to analyse the real condition of the black man in America, instead of the American white man eliminating the causes that create that condition, he tries to cover it up by accusing his accusers of teaching hate, but actually they’re just exposing him for being responsible for what exists”... Interview of Malcom X, Malcom X Network

The problem isn’t personal. It is not individual. Our problem is collective. You cannot approach it on an individual basis.

The unease or unsettling feeling that prompts one to disown caste reality manifests itself not just in ‘pure’ academic spaces but also in the country’s tackling of the caste question. Since 1996, successive Indian governments have been arguing that caste cannot come under the scrutiny of International Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). It is from within the ambit of such continual denials that Rohith Vemula wrote his last note — “My birth itself is a fatal accident”.

Students are now questioning this collective denial which Rohith brought to light, unfortunately, by his death. In a statement the Joint Action Committee of Social Justice puts it bluntly, “We have united to demand justice for hundreds of Rohith Vemulas! We appeal to all people to join the struggle in Delhi. We, the students, workers, cultural activists, intellectuals will rally in memory of Rohith’s martyrdom, to fight for justice and freedom and to realise the country of our dreams”.

Posters and banners with pictures of Rohith Vemula screaming his political slogans are now ready and his compatriots are set to take out the march even as India’s capital city is exploring the anti-national vs. nationalist dichotomy.

We could of course take a different route, a detour that is easier to digest than face hundreds of students laying siege to the country’s capital. We may take those deep breaths and try to keep a distance from it all. But in the sleeper class of Dakshin express a song which played in loop was Bob Marley’s ‘Guiltiness’.