#iits

haha. okay. so i'm the creator of a little isat au / webcomic called island in the sky, and today i was making a new sideblog for me and some friends. what do you know, i change the header and suddenly that sideblog just gets deleted. i look around tumblr to see if i can find it and suddenly island in the sky and my other isat-related sideblog are deleted too! the one that had two other people on it who were mods!

Discrimination is not necessarily a one-off, high-pitched melodramatic event of hurling abuses at somebody. It is a layered and continuous process that happens through every day doses, steadily creating an atmosphere of “us” and “them”. It takes subtle seemingly innocuous forms such as a smile combined with a frown, a wince, a hand gesture, or just silence.

Islands in the Stream || Melissa and Henry

The tragic case of Darshan Solanki should serve as a reminder to lakhs of elite alumni from the IITs to pause and reflect on the blind spots of biases thay may have had during their student days. Being key institutional collaborators, it is equally important for the faculty at the IITs to re-imagine classrooms as spaces free of meritocracy and discriminatory judgements. Building empathy and fostering a culture of equality, dignity, and fraternity cannot happen through short orientation programmes. These should be built-into the curriculum at the IITs and should become the DNA of campus life for learning spaces to be sanctuaries. These are not just moral imperatives but can also play a huge role for a healthier and prosperous India.

A few thoughts about IITs