CHENNAI: Is discrimination rampant in the IIT-Madras campus? The students are divided on the issue, and social media is filled with discussions. A post by Biyas Muhammed from Kerala, who recently graduated from the institute, has gone viral. He says that though Islamophobia could be an issue, the discussion should not be narrowed down just to that aspect.
“We totally understand that the aspect of Islamophobia needs to be discussed in light of this incident, as the family has expressed doubts in that direction. But, narrowing down the totality of the matter only to this aspect is a dangerous mistake and has the potential to mislead us from the most pressing dimensions,” he wrote on social media.
Equating the suicide of Fathima to that of Rohit Vemula’s is definitely inappropriate at this stage, he wrote. “From the family’s accounts, it’s clear that there is a serious lapse on the part of TN police. At this point we should offer unconditional support to the family,” he said.
Some others say this theory has caught on due to the institution’s troubled past with discrimination and casteism. In 2017, a PhD scholar was brutally beaten up at the institution for taking part in beef fest, allegedly by students belonging to right wing groups. IIT-M again got into controversy in 2018, when members of Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle pointed out that vegetarian and non-vegetarian students were segregated at a mess hall.
One of the students on campus said on her FB page that the campus was a ‘violent space that stinks of elitism, casteism, classism and Islamophobia.’ According to her, the department is allegedly ridden with anti-Muslim sentiments. “Every academic discussion in our classrooms ends up with a reference to Pakistan and questioning of Muslim women’s agency. ‘Why are Muslims and Christians called minorities when their population is large in number while Brahmins are just two percent of the entire Indian population?’ this was a statement made by one of our staff to a Muslim woman scholar,” she explained in her post.