Skip to main content

Emergence of a rare Dalit teacher in IIT-Kanpur "disturbed" certain faculty members

By PS Krishnan, IAS (Retd)*
Dr Subrahmanyam Sadrela, a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kanpur since January 1, 2018, and one of the rare Dalit members of the faculty in IIT group of institutions, is facing the threat of revocation of his PhD thesis, and thereby also jeopardizing his job and career.
Dr Sadrela did his BTech from the Institute of Aeronautical Engineering affiliated to JNT University, Hyderabad, and his MTech and PhD from IIT-Kanpur. The real reason seems to be revenge for his accusation of discrimination and harassment, on January 12, 2018, against four of his colleagues.
The accusation was found to be true by the three-member fact-finding committee set up by the IIT-K director in its report of March 2018. The Board of Governors (BoG) of IIT-K set up another enquiry by a retired Allahabad High Court judge. His Report of August 2018 also found that the teachers were guilty of violating the conduct rules of IIT-K and the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Thereafter, the BoG decided that the teachers violated the conduct rules, but not the POA Act, diluting the judge’s findings. Dr Sadrela filed an FIR against the four teachers on November 18, 2018.
An anonymous complaint against Sadrela emerged on October 15, 2018 alleging that parts of his PhD thesis were plagiarized. The complaint was referred by the Director to a nine-member Academic Ethics Cell.
The Ethics Cell came to the conclusion that there is no allegation of plagiarism with regard to the scholar’s research work comprising his creative and technical part of the dissertation, including detailed experiments, tables, figures and the conclusions drawn from them. The only instances of copying were restricted to certain introductory passages in several chapters and mathematical basics and preliminaries. These seem to account for 12 to 13 pages of Introduction out of the 300 pages of his PhD, according to Dr Sadrela.
The Ethics Cell ruled against the revocation of his thesis and recommended that Dr Sadrela should rewrite the passages in question in his own words and submit an updated thesis in a month, and tender an apology letter to the Director for his “misdemeanor”. This was fulfilled by him promptly.
Yet, the Senate at its meeting on March 14, 2019 voted to have his PhD revoked. If the BoG accepts the Senate’s report at its forthcoming meeting, Dr Sadrela will be stripped of his PhD and may also lose his job.
The following conclusions emerge from the above facts:
  • The emergence of a rare teacher of the SCs has disturbed the minds of certain faculty members, suffering from centuries-old caste-bias and caste-based attitudes.
  • For his temerity in intruding into the rarefied space of IIT faculty, Tthe life of a scholar and teacher from an “Untouchable” community is made difficult by harassment coming within the definition of “atrocity” under the SC and ST (POA) Act.
  • Continuing efforts are being made to get rid of him, or perhaps allow him to remain, provided he submissively accepts his humiliation, by imposing punishment out of proportion for the marginal impropriety, even though there is no plagiarism in relation to substantive part of his PhD thesis.
R Subrahmanyam, secretary, Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resources Development should consider taking the following urgent steps:
  1. Take every step possible to protect Dr Sadrela from further harassment and to get proceedings against him dropped in the light of the Ethics Cell’s report and his fulfillment of the steps recommended by the Ethics Cell.
  2. Take other steps to see that SC, ST and SEdBC members of faculties of IITs and other institutions are fully protected and enabled to carry on work and life with equal dignity. This will require continuous special care, watch and initiative by the Ministry at the highest levels.
  3. Take action against all those who have participated in the enterprise of chasing out the rare well-qualified SC teacher.
This case raises certain other important issues.
It is possible to harass and humiliate SC and ST teachers in faculties of IITs and other such higher educational institutions because they are few in number. Larger numbers will make them less vulnerable.
It is necessary to take a list of all persons belonging to SCs, STs and SEdBCs who have acquired qualifications from IITs and have a drive to appoint them to existing vacancies. There are such persons who have kept out by the recruitment process.
IITs, IIMs etc. are striving hard for autonomy. If they are granted autonomy the intolerant regime of some influential narrow-minded members of faculties will have full play against faculty members belonging to SCs, STs and SEdBCs and also students of SCs, STs and SEdBCs.
This is the same situation at micro- level that faced Dr Ambedkar at the national level in the Round Table Conference of 1932, from which certain protective Constitutional provisions for the SCs emerged in 1935, which were subsequently extended to STs and SEdBCs as appropriate to them after Independence and Constitution of India.
If autonomy is contemplated for IITs, IIMs and any other higher educational institution, it should contain effective provisions of protection and equal treatment and dignity for faculty members and students of SCs, STs and SEdBCs.
There has been no systematic effort in our educational system to educate students, teachers, recruits to IAS and other all-India and Central services and State services, and officers and personnel of various departments and public and private institutions, at the recruitment stage as well as later, about the vicious and pernicious nature of the centuries-old caste-system-with-“Untouchability”, continuing to this day, the great harm and injury it has done to the SCs, STs and SEdBCs in every aspect of life, and the constraint it has imposed on the progress of the country and its economy, and the importance of sincere cooperation with all measures of Social Justice for the three deprived classes.
It is high time that appropriate modules for this are introduced at different stages of education, training and career, covering all public activities.
These measures are important not only from the point of view of justice and fair play for the SCs, STs and SEdBCs, but also in the larger interest of social and national integration on the basis of Equality and equal dignity.
---
*Former secretary, Ministry of Welfare, Government of India. 
This article is based on the author's letter to the secretary, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India

Comments

Anonymous said…
Why compromise on quality. Was he recruited without reservation through normal recruitments? Is his research comparable to other profs at IIT. These things need to be confirmed first
Anonymous said…
It would be nice if the author had gone through the complete story without
giving it a caste angle. A Ph.D. student's thesis had a very large
portion of his thesis copied from other thesis and publications. It was not
limited to the introduction only. Even if it would have been in
introductory chapter only, it would have been a strong case of plagiarism.
Only a couple of years back another M.Tech. thesis/degree of a general category

student was revoked by the senate/board. There was no signature campaign or
blogs etc. in support of the student because plagiarism is plagiarism
irrespective of the caste or religion of the student. Senate standing body
entrusted with recommending the awards of the degree (SPGC) found that the
thesis has to be withdrawn and recommended to the Academic Senate which
agreed with the recommendations of the SPGC and Senate recommended to the board for revocation of the degree since a Ph.D. degree without a thesis
has no meaning. It is unfortunate that the author has not tried to find all facts and precedence.
Anonymous said…
It is untrue that SC, ST or OBCs are not there in IITs. They are, but most of them have never declared themselves to be belonging to these categories as they have come through general category. I myself belong to OBC but no one in my family have ever used the reservation and nobody in IIT faculty know about it.

In this case, when looking at plagiarism, caste should not be looked at. In fact in this case Dr.Saderla's thesis supervisor should be held responsible for allowing the plagiarism and not mentoring the Dr.Saderla with proper ethics. And the supervisor is a general category high cast person. He should be punished for not doing his work with integrity and honesty.

I how you can understand why I am choosing to be anonymous.
Anonymous said…
The problem is much bigger. Just look at all the directors of IITs. Why mhrd is not selecting sc/st/obc persons for these positions . Is it not bared on presumption that that only higher caste persons can be in leadership role. If we can have reservation in parliament then we can have it in directorship position also.

TRENDING

'Enough evidence' in Indian tradition to support legal basis for same-sex marriage

By Iyce Malhotra, Joseph Mathai, Sandeep Chachra*  The ongoing hearing in the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage provides space for much-needed conversations on issues that have hitherto remained “invisible” or engaged with patriarchal locker room humour. We must recognize that people with diverse sexualities and complex gender identities have faced discrimination, stigma and decades of oppression. Their issues have mainly remained buried in dominant social discourse, and many view them with deep insecurities.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Our Representative Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Victim of communal violence, Christians in Manipur want Church leadership to speak up

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ*  The first eleven days of May 2023 have, in many ways, been a defining period of Indian history! Plenty has happened in a rapid-fire stream of events. Ironically, each one of them are indicators of how crimes and the criminalisation of society has become the ‘new norm’; these include, the May Day rallies with a focus on the four labour codes which are patently against the rights of workers; the U S Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its Annual Report on 1 May stating that conditions for religious freedom in India “continued to worsen in 2022”; the continued protest by the Indian women wrestlers at Jantar Mantar for the expulsion of the chief of the Indian Wrestlers Federation on very serious allegations; the Elections in Karnataka on 10 May (with communalism and corruption as the mainstay); the release of the fake, derogative and insensitive film ‘The Kerala Story’; the release of World Free Press Index on 3 May which places India

Unlike other revolutionaries, Hindutva icon wrote 5 mercy petitions to British masters

By Shamsul Islam*  The Hindutva icon VD Savarkar of the RSS-BJP rulers of India submitted not one, two,or three but five mercy petitions to the British masters! Savarkarites argue: “There are no evidences to prove that Savarkar collaborated with the British for his release from jail. In fact, his appeal for release was a ruse. He was well aware of the political developments outside and wanted to be part of it. So he kept requesting for his release. But the British authorities did not trust him a bit” (YD Phadke, ‘A complex Hero’, "The Indian Expres"s, August 31, 2004)

Polygamy in India "down" in 45 yrs: Muslims' from 5.7 to 2.55%, Hindus' 5.8 to 1.77%, "common" in SCs, STs

By Rajiv Shah Amidst All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) justifying polygamy, saying it “meets social and moral needs and the provision for it stems from concern and sympathy for women”, facts suggest the the practice is down from 5.7 per cent of Muslim families in 1961 to 2.55 per cent in 2006.

India joining US sponsored trade pillar to hurt Indian farmers, 'promote' GM seeds, food

Counterview Desk  As many as 32 civil society organisations (CSOs), in a letter to Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and India joining the trade pillar, have said that its provisions will allow the US to ensure a more favourable regulatory regime “for enhancing its exports of genetically modified (GM) seeds and GM food”, underlining, it will “significantly hurt the livelihoods of Indian farmers.”

Modi govt 'wholly untrustworthy' on Covid data, censored criticism on pandemic: Lancet

By Rajiv Shah*   One of the world’s most prestigious health journals, brought out from England, has sharply criticised the Narendra Modi government for being “wholly untrustworthy on Covid-19 health data”, stating, the “official government figures place deaths at more than 530 000, while WHO excess death estimates for 2020 and 2021 are near 4·7 million.”

Savarkar 'opposed' Bhagat Singh's, Netaji's dream of India, supported British war efforts

By Shamsul Islam* In a shocking development, the student wing of the RSS put the busts of martyrs Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose with Savarkar's on one pedestal at the University of Delhi late in the night on August 20, 2019. Bhagat Singh sacrificed his life for a socialist-democratic-secular republic and Netaji raised Azad Hind Fauj (INA) consisting of people of all religions and regions for armed liberation of India.

Undermining law, breastfeeding? Businesses 'using' celebrities to promote baby food

By Rajiv Shah*  A report prepared by the top child welfare NGO, Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI), has identified as many as 15 offenders allegedly violating the Indian baby food law, the Infant Milk Substitutes Feeding Bottles, and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 1992, and Amendment Act 2003 (IMS Act), stating, compliance with the law “seems to be dwindling by the day.”