Insight Young Voices is a bimonthly Dalit magazine.

The latest issue carries an interesting article, by Anoop Kumar, on the evolution of Dalit student politics in JNU:

The reasons may be varied – the predominance of students from a particular segment of the society or the ‘party line’ with which the student activists are ideologically committed, or both. It took more than 20 years for caste to get some recognition as an issue in this campus. But this was not unique. It was, more or less, the same situation every where in the country.

Caste, for some, was an ‘archaic social stratification’ to be found only in rural areas and for some, it was part of the ‘superstructure’ and hence not worthy of much consideration. Many became aware of ‘caste’ only in the presence of Schedule Caste persons; otherwise they did not even know about their own caste origins!

However, the late 80’s and early 90’s of the 20th century saw developments that changed the campus dynamics forever. Caste suddenly became the most debated point and its presence was felt everywhere. The silence of Dalit students was broken and the tone and tenor of their speech horrified the liberals. Their anger and ‘hate’ filled language was a complete bewilderment for them. The assertion of their identity based on caste was considered blasphemous, as the caste problem was wiped away long back!