Caste discrimination in IIT campus   Acharya Prashant (2023) - video Dailymotion

Acharya Prashant

Video Information: 10.10.23, IIM-Konversations, Greater Noida

Transcript

00:00 I am saying these are government institutes right.

00:06 Somewhere the government is responsible if there are no stringent laws in place and it

00:12 is happening again and again.

00:14 Laws relating to?

00:15 Yes, laws relating to the protection of these very students who are walking into these educational

00:21 institutes.

00:22 I mean.

00:25 Protection against.

00:26 Discrimination that is happening.

00:28 Against discrimination.

00:29 In the name of caste particularly.

00:30 Yes.

00:31 Caste you are saying?

00:35 See that, that protection has to be offered to all students at all places.

00:43 IITs are very liberal places in that sense.

00:49 I am sure the environment has not really deteriorated over the last 20-25 years.

00:56 When I was there, yes obviously the thing that you are talking of that is present.

01:05 People do know each other by their caste to an extent.

01:11 Especially the ones who are beneficiaries of reservations.

01:19 They are well known because in many of the lists the names are mentioned separately and

01:24 that is a compulsion that has to be that way.

01:27 So they are known.

01:28 But yet there is overall an environment of equality and friendliness.

01:35 We knew all our friends who belonged to the underprivileged classes and had been the beneficiaries

01:48 of reservation.

01:50 But once you are in the same hostel, often you are sharing rooms as well.

01:57 You are sitting next to each other in the common dining hall.

02:03 You are watching the cricket matches and high fives to each other.

02:08 Such things are happening.

02:11 All that even if it is mentally known, yet it gets just relegated to the background.

02:19 It stops mattering.

02:21 We knew the Meenas and the Kumars and the Aryas.

02:29 And they too knew.

02:30 But we were friends.

02:33 And one of them was particularly fond of stocking his room up with delicious goodies.

02:48 So whenever anybody in the hostel would be famished in the middle of the night, we felt

02:55 free to just barge into his room without permission and take whatever we wanted to, even though

03:01 he kept cursing us.

03:03 Because the food was sent by his mother from his village who was caring for her son.

03:12 But we would just get on top of him and walk away with all the delicious stuff that he

03:17 had.

03:18 I mean, that probably to me that indicates a genuine level of friendliness.

03:27 In my experience, even in the mid-90s, at least the IIT Delhi campus didn't have visible

03:40 levels or visible signs of caste discrimination.

03:46 And I'll be surprised if you tell me that the environment has actually deteriorated

03:53 since then.

03:54 I don't think that would have happened.

03:58 Equally, I would admit that it's not as if everything was hunky-dory back then.

04:05 We did know.

04:06 And there was this consciousness that a few of our batchmates are different.

04:15 They are different because they are here courtesy the reservation process.

04:22 So that much we knew.

04:23 We could also see that those who landed in the campus via the reservation route actually

04:31 had it tougher for them because probably their background was not as privileged.

04:41 So their CGPAs were a bit on the lower side.

04:49 Though there were some glorious exceptions, a few of the toppers belonged to the reserved

04:58 sections.

05:02 So we knew because these things were there.

05:06 And there was openness.

05:07 There was openness.

05:10 The fellow himself would come up and say, "See, here I am and I do not understand this

05:16 subject.

05:18 Just help me."

05:19 So fine, that's okay.

05:22 Just as we help anybody else, you too sit here and to the extent possible, I'll lend

05:28 a helping hand.

05:30 I do not remember even one incident where somebody was actually viciously targeted for

05:39 his caste.

05:40 No way.

05:41 No way.

05:42 That was just not in.

05:44 That was not happening.

05:46 Not because we were disciplined or obedient or courteous people.

05:51 That was just not in the air.

05:56 That's not how the whole institution vibed.

06:01 So if you say people need to be protected on the basis of their caste, yes.

06:12 But then there are other places where they are far more vulnerable.

06:17 Those are the places where the society and the government should focus on.

06:21 For example, the small towns, villages, the schools there, where there is active and very,

06:27 very heinous kind of discrimination.

06:30 Discrimination not only among the students, but sometimes even the teachers very badly

06:38 discriminate against the students.

06:40 So that's where it is still happening.

06:42 And those are the places we should rather focus on.

06:46 I just want to know a little more about karma and I'm just talking in the same sort of

06:54 a thread that I'm trying to, you know, kind of stitch here.

07:00 You wrote a book on karma as well.

07:03 And karma is something that probably this is the only thing that I believe in.

07:06 I personally don't believe in the religion that is given to me or, you know, the caste

07:15 system that we talked about.

07:17 I don't believe in hierarchies that the society has imposed on me.

07:22 But the only thing that I believe probably in is in the karma and the doing, in what

07:26 you are doing.

07:28 How do we then make sure that we keep this fear, the love and the discipline that we

07:36 spoke about and sort of continue doing the karma that we are supposed to do?

07:44 You know, karma that you are supposed to do is conditioning.

07:48 There is nothing that you are supposed to do.

07:49 That's very anti-freedom.

07:50 What do you mean by supposed to do?

07:54 Nobody is supposed to do anything.

07:56 That I'm destined to do.

07:58 There is nothing that you are destined to do.

08:00 Only liberation is your destiny.

08:02 There is, I mean, that's a bit like the varna vyavastha that I have been assigned a particular

08:09 karma and I am to do that all my life.

08:12 You know, if I am born in a cobbler's family or I come from an ironsmith's place or I come

08:20 from a trader's place, then that's what I'm supposed to do all my life.

08:24 No, no, no, no such obligations, not at all.

08:29 Karma is action.

08:31 The freedom of the actor decides the quality of the action.

08:36 That's it.

08:37 When we talk of action, there is always an actor behind it, right?

08:44 The action is just an expression of the actor, a manifestation of the actor.

08:51 If the actor is all right, we don't need to worry about the action.

08:55 But we worry about the action so much.

08:57 We talk of karma so much.

08:58 We don't talk of the karta, the doer.

09:02 So it's the karta that matters, not the karma.

09:06 So the actor has to be taken care of.

09:09 That actor is the ego.

09:11 That actor must be healed.

09:13 If the actor is healed, everything falls in place.

09:17 Right.

09:18 How do we heal?

09:21 By looking at the disease.

09:24 That's how it starts, no?

09:25 You look at yourself and figure out how you are.

09:29 You look at your thoughts, your feelings, your impulses, reactions, actions, and then

09:34 you see how you are.

09:37 And given that freedom is your nature, when you will discover sickness and bondages within,

09:44 there is something within you that rises to rebel and heal.

09:52 You say, "No, no, no.

09:54 Unacceptable.

09:55 Unacceptable.

09:56 I look at myself and what I see is not very pretty.

10:00 So nothing doing.

10:03 The picture must change."

10:06 Right.

10:09 One more aspect that probably is connected to this, about healing, is detachment, is

10:16 what I understand.

10:18 And this is something that I have kind of understood from my own life, as to if you

10:23 detach from the things that is causing trouble to you, it actually eventually helps you.

10:29 So the pursuit of becoming a filmmaker was so burdening on me at some point that I couldn't

10:35 focus on things that was in front of me.

10:39 This is something that the society puts on you, the people around you put on you, your

10:45 family puts on you, and you yourself put on yourself.

10:49 How do you then detach from these things to become the true self that you actually are?

10:57 You have to begin with attachment.

11:01 Detachment is the result, the obvious result, the effortless result of true and honest observation

11:11 of attachment.

11:13 If you can observe your attachments with honesty, detachment just follows.

11:21 Detachment is not something you have to work for.

11:24 Detachment lies in challenging attachments.

11:28 And you cannot escape away from your attachments.

11:31 You have to go right up to them and confront them.

11:35 You have to see how you are attached and what all ways, and when you see the very process

11:40 of attachment, and when you see the futility of it all, then you say, "No, no point being

11:48 attached."

11:49 And that's detachment.

11:50 You cannot be detached if you have first of all not observed the entire flow, the crest

12:02 and the trough, how at some point you feel indifferent and then there is that association

12:09 over time and coincidence and random chance, and you stay in mental touch with something

12:16 and over a period of time a sense of identity develops and that's what you call as attachment.

12:22 And then you see how hollow, how substanceless all that is.

12:28 Then you just smile and something drops.

12:32 That's detachment.

12:35 Detachment therefore must never be talked of.

12:37 One must always talk only of attachments.

12:41 But we want to avoid the disease and yet gain health, which is not going to happen.

12:47 When you go to a physician, he would never offer you health.

12:52 All that he talks to you about is just disease, disease and disease.

12:57 And if the disease can be diagnosed and treated, health is the natural output.

13:03 [music]

13:10 [music]

Caste discrimination in IIT campus Acharya Prashant (2023)

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