Write Mind | Educational Malpractice Has No Caste. Why Does The Investigation?

A student’s death has reignited the debate over caste, academic discipline and the SC/ST Act. But should allegations take precedence over an impartial investigation?

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Let us begin where the law begins and where—increasingly—it ends up going awry.

The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, was born from a legitimate and urgent socio-cultural reckoning—a response not to the failings of this civilisation, but to the social practices that had, over centuries of distortion and colonial manipulation, deviated from its very core. What is being disputed—and what the data now demands we dispute openly—is what the Act has become in practice.

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In 2023, cases registered under the SC/ST Act peaked at a five-year high of 53,372. Of these, 60 per cent ended in acquittal or discharge. In 2020, the Rajasthan Police formally declared that more than 40 per cent of cases filed under the Act in the state were fake. In February 2024, the Allahabad High Court, while quashing a 2016 FIR filed by an assistant professor against her colleagues, imposed a fine of Rs 15 lakh on the complainant and observed that a professor “had to pay a very heavy price for asking an Assistant Professor to take classes and teach properly" and was made an accused in a “frivolous and malicious criminal case" for eight years.

And then there was Rohith Vemula. His death in January 2016 at the University of Hyderabad became the defining political flashpoint of that decade. Nationwide protests. Prominent western media coverage ensuring India’s social fabric was painted in the darkest possible hues. Rahul Gandhi mounting a parliamentary campaign. Smriti Irani being vilified. The BJP and the RSS were indicted: not by any court, but by the court of........

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