The 21st century Indian university Series I

The university and the punitive imagination

This is a panel discussion, the first in a series of events planned by the Lamakaan Programming Council broadly titled the 21st century Indian university. Ever since Rohith Vemula's tragic suicide, Lamakaan has been attempting to organize discussions around the role of public universities in our city with a focus on the lived experience, particularly those self identifying as Dalit-Bahujans. Among other things, we are dismayed at the a regularity with which a significant number of these students appear to be subjected to punitive action ostensibly for a variety of minor and major offences. Some times punishment is delivered through official and formal mechanisms, but as testimonies reveal, the official punishment is only the culmination of daily abuse and humiliation that is not easy to capture in words or images. These experiences point to a deeper malaise in the public university system. Lamakaan series on the 21st century Indian University brings together panel discussions and lectures to open up conversations about this crisis from multiple perspectives. The discussions are curated so as to facilitate action to claim the public university for its primary stakeholders - students from excluded identities.

In this first panel discussion, Prof. Susie Tharu, Prof. Amita Dhanda and Dr. Anant Maringanti will reflect on how disciplinary action is used in universities from the point of view of teachers and administrators. Each of them brings to the discussion, years of experience in teaching and mentoring students. Prof. Dhanda in addition, brings to the table her expertise in adminisitrative law.