Presenters
Yadav Apeksha - Department of Social Work, Delhi University, Delhi, IndiaDr. Sudhir Keshav Maske - Department of Social Work, Delhi University, Delhi, India
Panel
120 – Pedagogy from the Margins: Critical Perspectives from South AsiaAbstract
The Indian social order is based on the caste-based hierarchy. Most of the Indian universities often operate as “Academic Agraharas,” perpetuating (Brahmin-Savarna) upper caste dominance. Most of these universities are overrepresented by the upper castes. This paper is a study conducted in different higher educational institutions in India. An auto-ethnographic methodology was adopted to understand the lived experiences of Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi (DBA) faculty and scholars in these institutions. The deliberate reinforcement of caste and patriarchy in these spaces manifests through Ideological State Apparatuses. The presence of DBA communities in these academic agraharas is not a matter of right but is an abnormality, a token charity begrudgingly extended to them. DBA students and faculty endure systemic alienation, institutional violence, and relentless casteist hostility. For them, campuses become battlegrounds of survival, where navigating casteist hostilities and asserting dignity is an isolating, relentless struggle. They are persistently signalled by Brahmin-Savarna patriarchal structures that they do not belong here – turning classrooms into caste rooms. Amid this, DBA voices persist as powerful agents of resistance, challenging the “Agraharas” of academia and demanding institutional accountability to prevent systemic violence and oppression. The Ambedkarite feminist lens was adopted as a theoretical frame to envision pedagogy as a site of emancipation and resistance. It advocates for equal spaces for dialogue, discussion, and debate to challenge the traditional knowledge systems and confront institutional casteism and patriarchic dominance. The insights gained from the lived experiences of DBA educators and scholars would be used to foster solidarity and advance more inclusivity and transformation into structured oppressive institutional systems. The authors have taken liberatory emancipatory positioning to uproot the exclusion of DBA.
