COMMENTARY Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 5, 2021 vol lVi no 23 15 Regurgitative Violence The Sacred and the Profane in Higher Education Institutions in India P Thirumal The violence against marginalised students by a teacher at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur is intrinsically related to the Brahminic cultural psyche of elite higher education institutions in India. It stands as testimony that post-independence India’s modern secular education has failed to replace caste as an institution to build “character” in terms of the capacity for living with others. The vitality rather than the ideology of caste is the subject of this analysis, tracing the historical and social formation of these elite institutions and caste in them. I t is a widely recognised fact that elite higher education institutions ( HEIs ) practise caste. Caste is practised within or outside the classroom or in the virtual space of the Google classroom or Zoom. The practice is not merely limited to the ideational content and institutional struc- ture of HEIs. If one understands practis- ing caste as a form of sociability, then modern secular education fails to build the character of citizens who need train- ing to live in a community of others. This is an internal form of damage corrobo- rated by the external damage that the current regime is wreaking on HEIs. Pedagogy, in a multicultural and histo- rical society like ours, ought to be less constrained by a philosophy of self- consciousness and the creation of a self- positing subject. The latter objective is generally given as the excuse for practising caste and the grounds for the denial of the very being of Dalit and Bahujan students. In other words, modern secular education in post-independence India has displayed its inability to replace caste as an institu- tion for building “character” in terms of the capacity of living with others. In an analysis and description of the much-circulated story of a teacher in the Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT ) Kharagpur verbally abusing marginalised students in an online remedial English class, I want to suggest that such acts of discrimination and hostility are wide- spread and they need to be located in the cultural psyche of these elite institu- tions. Further, this intervention propos- es a Brahminic telos which guides the casteist nature of these institutions and I attempt to excavate a particular gene- alogy of these HEIs. The vitality rather than the ideology of caste constitutes the subject of analysis. Vitality of Caste The country has been witnessing an unimaginable sorrow caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media uninter- ruptedly displays visuals of horror-stricken citizens unable to grasp the virulent nature of the virus and the glaring indif- ference of the state in providing minimal facilities for coping with the infection. Many middle-class families have witnessed casualties and many have not escaped from the jaws of death. Amidst these heart-wrenching scenes of ordinary citi- zens trying to battle with COVID-19, a video was widely circulated among liberal, progressive and Dalit–Bahujan activists. The video showed a teacher at IIT Kharagpur screaming at the students who had assembled for her online remedial class on English. Several Dalit–Bahujan students have committed suicide and others have complained of a lack of access due to several reasons, including band- width, devices and allied technological tools. The video was put together by anti- caste Ambedkarite student body from IIT Bombay. The students were being given special coaching to prepare for the IIT entrance exams. Such are the compulsions P Thirumal (pthirumal6@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad.