"This person has to be lynched"
- How "liberal" students of Asian College of Journalism attacked Dr. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

During my year at ACJ, Prof. Kancha visited campus around the time of the bridge collapse at Kolkata, in September 2018. A thread +

Prof. Kancha spoke about the lack of caste awareness among Bengalis. He spoke about how the entire country has a faux impression that Bengal is the "intellectual" centre of the country, a center of communist ideals, and yet every single thinker ignores the issue of caste. +

He made a valid point: not a single Bengali "revolutionary" is a Bahujan. Zero. From Raja Rammohun Roy, to Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, all are Bengali Brahmins who "fought" only for the rights of the Brahmin-Savarna elites. +

His talk, which came at the wake of a bridge collapse at Kolkata, also involved, in his typical mince-no-words fashion, a comment on Bhadralok architecture: (something along the lines of) "Despite their intellectual prowess, the Bengalis cannot even build a bridge properly." +

This triggered almost half the students in the room, especially the Bongs. The next 20 minutes, those elitist caste-privileged kids launched a vicious attack on Prof. Kancha. None of the students put forth logical counter arguments, it was pure heckling of a Bahujan icon.+

One of the Bengali kids got up looking all proud and quoted some random statistic about building collapses in the South...and this evoked a barrage of hostile cheer from the others (???) +

The worst was yet to come. I later learnt that in one of their group chats, the hate reached to the extent of one person sending a message that read "This person has to be lynched". I was shocked, but not surprised. +

Why wasn't I surprised? Because anyone speaking social justice, the Dravidian movement etc. only invoked contempt from the ACJ kids. If we look at the average student's caste/class location, it is easy to understand why. +

Yes ACJ is indeed a toxic space. But, is the administration the sole reason for that? ACJ kids will never admit this, but they are among the primary contributors to the said toxicity. It is not a stretch to say that ACJ is hell for Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi students. +

This fantastic piece by @mondalsudipto for Al Jazeera captures just how brahminical the ACJ is. Their attempts at bringing diversity is farcical, and barely makes any difference.
( https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/05/indian-media-dalit-news-dalit-reporters-170523194045529.html)

From the faculty to the students, the question of caste is a non-starter at ACJ. No one talks about it. How will they, when almost every teacher (and student) is a Brahmin-Savarna? +

This has been in my mind for more than a year. Finally had to get it out. Might invite a lot of hate for it, but it had to be said. ACJ is yet another Brahmin bastion, and, more often than not, a traumatic experience for Dalit-Bahujan-Adivasi students.

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