A BTech first year student, named Darshan Solanki, one of us from IIT\nBombay, committed suicide on Sunday night, 12th Feb 2023. Ever since\nthen the administration and the director have been insensitive,\ndisengaged, distant and dismissive about the case. This news broke among\nstudents at 6:39 PM through an email sent by the director of IIT Bombay.\nThe email subject was \u201ctragic loss of a life in our campus today\u201d. The\nIIT Bombay director did not care to mention the name of our fellow\nstudent Darshan who lost his life. On the same night, the student\ncommunity organized a candle march from hostel 12 cone area to hostel 16\nat 10 PM to give homage to the lost soul. Then, another email was\nreceived by students with the subject line \u201ccondolence meeting for\nDarshan Solanki\u201d. We want to ask the admin, why did they hide the name\nof the student in the first mail? A person\u2019s identity is everything when\na student belongs to a Dalit community. In addition, it has often been\nobserved that higher education institutions like IITs always try to hide\na person\u2019s identity so they can hide the truth in cases like this. This\nis ironic, because Darshan had been reminded time and again of his caste\nduring his three months on campus\u2014 he tried to struggle against it but\ncouldn\u2019t bear it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the condolence meeting organized by admin turned out to be merely\na symbolic gesture implicating nothing but a hollow show-off, death is\nagain normalized by the \u2018premier\u2019 institute. The director spoke his two\nwords and resorted to petty gestures of taking the mic away to prevent\nstudents from speaking. He walked out of the condolence meeting as\nstudents were coming up to speak for Darshan. The institutional silence\nthrough murder was accentuated when the director shut students up in a\nmeeting called for the students to grieve. According to him, there is a\nplace and time for students to grieve and raise their issues, and then\nthe director would send a mail to the students to intimate them when\nthat would be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was more outrageous was that classes were not suspended while\nthe condolence meeting was going on. When students asked the director to\napologize for the insensitivity of letting classes continue, he just\nwalked out on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the statement by Darshan\u2019s senior Udaysingh Meena, then a final\nyear student of chemical engineering, it has come to our knowledge that\nDarshan was facing caste discrimination and exam depression. Darshan\nconfided to Uday that his roommate, mentors, and wing-mates were from\ngeneral category and reduced talking to him after coming to know about\nhis rank which is a marker for his category. The combined issue of\nacademic pressure and caste discrimination, along with a lack of mental\nhealth and academic support might have pushed him to take such an\nextreme step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cMy Birth is my fatal accident\u201d. <\/p>\n\u2013 Rohith Vemula<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Rohith Vemula wrote the line mentioned above, a victim of institutional murder ended his life fighting against caste discriminatory practices. Similarly, Darshan Solanki was also fighting against social evil like caste discrimination within the boundaries of IIT Bombay, rampant in higher educational institutions in India and elsewhere. It is indeed that we don\u2019t need this Institute of Eminence (IoE) like IITs; what we need is an \u201cInstitute of Empathy\u201d (which indeed calls for transformations at many levels).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
APPSC IIT Bombay<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A BTech first year student, named Darshan Solanki, one of us from IIT Bombay, committed suicide on Sunday night, 12th Feb 2023. Ever since then the administration and the director have been insensitive, disengaged, distant and dismissive about the case. This news broke among students at 6:39 PM through an email sent by the director of IIT Bombay. The email subject was \u201ctragic loss of a life in our campus today\u201d. The IIT Bombay director did not care to mention the name of our fellow student Darshan who lost his life. On the same night, the student community organized a candle march from hostel 12 cone area to hostel 16 at 10 PM to give homage to the lost soul. Then, another email was received by students with the subject line \u201ccondolence meeting for Darshan Solanki\u201d. We want to ask the admin, why did they hide the name of the student in the first mail? A person\u2019s identity is everything when a student belongs to a Dalit community. In addition, it has often been observed that higher education institutions like IITs always try to hide a person\u2019s identity so they can hide the truth in cases like this. This is ironic, because Darshan had been reminded time and again of his caste during his three months on campus\u2014 he tried to struggle against it but couldn\u2019t bear it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,14,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acdr.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}