The advice still rings in my head like a bell, “It is okay to feel angry but you must put that anger and passion into something constructive, not destructive.” For a long time I carried my anger, unsure where to place it. Now, I am laying it down, starting with the memory of a classroom and a professor whose voice was silenced by a suspension order.

I remember him as a man who spoke to us in a language that belonged to neither of us. He used to teach us in a tongue that felt borrowed, stiff with the effort of assimilation. I remember sitting there wishing he would just speak naturally, wishing the bridge of communication was not so fragile. But perhaps that struggle was part of the lesson.

It was in his classroom that I first let my guard down. I spoke the word Dalit not as a label of shame, but as a lived experience. He did not just listen, he built a fortress around my words encouraging me to take up space. For the first time I felt safe enough to be seen.

Outside that fortress however the whispers were cold. “What is he even teaching?” my peers would ask their voices laced with skepticism about his merit. I am haunted by the memory of my own silence. How I nodded along as a silent traitor to the man who gave me a platform. I should have challenged them. I should have unmasked the myth of "merit" and shown them the invisible scaffolding of social, political and economic privilege that holds it up.

The breaking point came in the central canteen. We were gathered around a table when a classmate let a jagged comment slip, “Well he’s only here because of the quota, isn’t he?”

Heat rose in my chest. I did not argue. I did not educate. I simply stood up and walked away leaving my fury at the table. Later when that student apologized I realized my mistake. Walking away felt like a victory in the moment but it was a tactical retreat that won no ground. If we "cancel" the ignorant how do we move the world? We must engage with those who are ignorant not because they deserve our labor, but because the movement cannot breathe without dialogue.

When I arrived at Jamia I expected a higher consciousness. These were Social Work students right?

Surely, they understood the soul crushing weight of caste? Instead, I found a stagnant pond. The debates were stuck in the mud of "merit vs reservation." When we discussed liberation from casteism, they reached for Gandhi leaving Ambedkar’s name in the shadows.

It was infuriating. I used humor as a shield laughing to keep from screaming. I told myself it was useless to talk to walls that only echoed back words like "Harijan" and "non-violence." I blamed my silence on mental fatigue, the sheer exhaustion of explaining your humanity to people who treat it like a political theory.

But I see now that hopelessness is a luxury I cannot afford. Revolution is not a quiet afternoon tea but it is a grueling, uphill climb. We are allowed to rest, but we are not allowed to quit.

One afternoon, during a heated debate regarding the Sabarimala temple that evolved into a critique of Brahmanical patriarchy, some of my peers argued that the caste system was established solely for work efficiency.

They further claimed that the prohibition of women entering the temple was divinely ordainedand should not be questioned. After the discussion I found one of my professors and vented my heartbreak. "I don't understand," I said. "Where is the Dalit Muslim solidarity? How can they not see?"

He looked at me with a steady, sobering gaze. "Perhaps," he suggested, "it is because many here, in the Social Work course, come from privileged backgrounds. And perhaps it is because, on the streets, the hands that carry out the violence sometimes belong to those who are also marginalized."

That conversation was a mirror. It forced me to look at the fractures in our shared struggle. How do we build a bridge across such deep canyons of misunderstanding?

The answer is as simple as it is difficult. We talk! We stay at the table. We engage not because it is easy, but because the oppressor does not care which of us it destroys first. To survive, we must find each other in the noise.

-El is currently pursuing her studies at Jamia Millia Islamia and she is a student of Professor Virendra Balaji Shahare. She is a firm believer in the necessity of radical empathy. To her, a functioning heart is one that remains passionately committed to challenging oppression in all its forms.