Who owns knowledge in India?
India's Constitution promises equality, abolishes untouchability, and opens higher education through affirmative action. Yet many Dalit and marginalized students enter universities only to discover that admission does not always bring acceptance. They may be called "quota students," presumed intellectually inferior, denied supervision, socially isolated, or forced to prove that they belong in institutions to which others appear to possess a natural right.
Stories of Manu and Caste in Indian Universities investigates the religious, historical, and institutional roots of this continuing exclusion.
George Anthony Paul examines the educational hierarchy found in the Manusmriti, the relationship between varna, guna, svabhava, knowledge, and service, and the political enforcement of differentiated social duties. He then follows these ideas into fourteen carefully documented case files from institutions including the University of Hyderabad, JNU, AIIMS, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, and Indian medical colleges.
Rather than treating every allegation as a proven fact, the book distinguishes between established institutional findings, judicial records, criminal allegations, contested causal accounts, and unresolved claims.
Readers will discover:
- How sacred restrictions on knowledge became social presumptions about intelligence and authority
- How reservation can be transformed from a constitutional remedy into a mark of humiliation
- Why opaque grading, supervision, and complaint procedures can preserve exclusion
- Ten practical reforms for protecting vulnerable students
- How Christian missionary education breached caste-controlled access to literacy and learning
- Why the gospel of Jesus Christ offers a direct answer to inherited purity, superiority, and exclusion
This is not an accusation against every Hindu, professor, or university. It is an evidence-based prosecution of an idea: that birth may determine human worth, intellectual authority, or rightful access to knowledge.
The Constitution opened the university gate. This book asks why the ancient gatekeeper can still be found inside.
