A for “Apart”: Caste, Touch, and the Fight for Belonging in Schools and Universities

For children from the Dalit community, life is shaped by the heavy weight of caste. Their struggle begins not in hidden corners, but in the open spaces of schools, where everyone is supposed to be equal. For many, school means learning letters like “A for Apple,” but for them, it starts with “A for Apart”—a harsh lesson in being separate. Other students make friends easily, laughing and playing together. Children from the Dalit community wait, hoping for a sign that it’s acceptable to sit next to them. For other students, belonging feels natural, like a right. For children from the Dalit community, it’s something they fight for, like winning a prize in a challenging game.

Belonging comes from feeling equal—like you matter as much as everyone else. But for people from the Dalit community, that feeling is absent in others. Children and teachers from other backgrounds see them as less, so their warmth and welcome remain distant. They feel it in every look or silence: they’re present, but not treated equally. This gap makes belonging a dream they chase, not a truth they live.

Children from the Dalit community quickly understand that their presence is questioned. Their names surprise others. When they speak, they are teased instead of smiled at. Their bodies make others step back. They don’t just walk into schools; they arrive, and others always make them feel like they don’t truly belong. Friendships break easily. Their presence is allowed, but not welcomed. Speaking up feels risky.

Caste shapes how they touch, how they connect, and how they long to feel at home in places meant for learning.

The Classroom: The First Place of Caste

Schools are meant to teach reading and writing, but for students from the Dalit community, they often teach pain and separation. The classroom, a place for growing minds, becomes a space where caste rules hurt children from the Dalit community. Here, they are treated as less than human—humiliated, beaten down, and made to feel inferior. Teachers and classmates forget they are children, seeing only caste instead.

Recent events show this clearly. Just three days ago, on November 2, 2025, in Shimla’s Rohru sub-division, three teachers at a government primary school assaulted an 8-year-old boy from a Dalit background. They beat him repeatedly for over a year, causing his ear to bleed and damaging his eardrum. In a cruel act, they placed a live scorpion in his pants in the school toilet as punishment. The boy screamed in agony, but the teachers dismissed it as a “lesson.” This horror, charged under the SC/ST Act, highlights ongoing caste violence in schools, where the touch of children from the Dalit community is seen as polluting.

In August 2024, in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar, a 6-year-old boy from a Dalit background was forced to clean the school toilet by teachers due to “hatred” against Dalit children and then locked in the classroom after school hours until his cries alerted villagers. The principal and teacher were suspended, but such incidents reveal how children from the Dalit community are assigned menial tasks no one else faces. These acts strip away childhood, turning schools into jails of shame.

In the school classroom, humiliation starts in small ways: a teacher scolding a student from a Dalit background harshly, classmates staying quiet, or the school ignoring the problem. The intelligence of children from the Dalit community is doubted before they even speak. For example, a student from a Dalit background’s question might be brushed off, while others receive kind answers, teaching them that only some belong. In cases like the scorpion attack, it’s not random cruelty; it’s a shared act to remind everyone of the hierarchy, where Dalit bodies are treated as less human. The cases of humiliation and discrimination of children from the Dalit community show classrooms as places that teach division instead of freedom. Humiliation here isn’t accidental—it’s built in, treating children from the Dalit community as less human to maintain traditional hierarchies.

The Meaning of Touch: When Touch Becomes Untouchability

Touch is a simple way people show love, care, respect, kindness, acceptance, togetherness, and belonging. It’s a warm hug, a friendly pat, a shared moment. For most children, touch feels safe. For children from the Dalit community, it’s a wall turned into untouchability. A teacher slides a notebook across the desk to avoid touching a student from a Dalit background. A classmate wipes their hands after a quick touch, acting like it’s dirty. Food is placed on the ground, not handed over. These actions teach children from the Dalit community that their touch is dangerous to others. In the Shimla scorpion case, the teachers didn’t just hurt the boy—they violated his body as if it deserved no respect, putting poison where no one should touch.

French sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote that society divides the world into two unequal categories: the sacred and the profane. The sacred is protected, revered, and surrounded by rituals. The profane is ordinary, polluted, something to be kept away. In a society where caste operates, this division takes a violent, everyday form: privileged caste bodies are treated as sacred, whereas Dalit bodies are treated as profane. Durkheim helps us understand the symbolic logic of purity and pollution, but caste adds a dimension he did not theorize: violence against human bodies. In caste society, the sacred–profane divide is mapped onto flesh. Dalit bodies carry the burden of being treated as pollution itself. Untouchability shows how Durkheim’s idea becomes a lived reality: the boundary must be defended, even if it requires humiliation. Touch, which Durkheim sees as a medium of collective bonding, becomes, under caste, a weapon of exclusion. “Belonging depends on touch, and touch depends on purity.”

Society considers the privileged caste’s touch a blessing, whereas the touch of a Dalit is a threat: food is thrown, notebooks are pushed with fingertips, and, in extreme cases, the body is used as a site for humiliation—as in the scorpion incident. “The touch of a Dalit is allowed for labour but never for love.” Durkheim writes that when sacred and profane mix, society reacts with punishment because the boundary is considered more important than the person. Untouchability is exactly that boundary, violently protected. Sundar Sarukkai explains that untouchability is the enforcement of this sacred–profane divide on human bodies. The Dalit body becomes a site on which society practices its obsession with purity. Gopal Guru further argues that only Dalits can reveal its emotional brutality: what is denied is not just physical touch, but the desire for closeness, warmth, and recognition. Thus, caste does not merely prohibit physical contact—it criminalizes the Dalit body.

Caste builds walls around feelings, keeping Dalits from belonging. Their presence makes others uneasy because belonging means treating them as equals, and equality scares those who hold power. Belonging grows from that equal feeling—knowing you’re seen as human, worthy of the same laughs and hugs. Others lack this warmth toward them. Their eyes hold back, their hands stay away, because, deep down, caste whispers they’re not the same.

Universities: New Places, Same Caste

Universities talk about fairness, freedom, and equality, but caste sneaks into every part. Privileged caste students come with connections, family ties, and old friends, which we call social capital and cultural capital. Belonging comes easily to others; students from the Dalit community have to build it, often apologizing just for being there.

Friendships are determined by identity. If students from the Dalit community stay quiet and hide their caste, they might fit in for a while. But if they’re assertive—if they speak up about injustice—they are isolated. Others frame them as angry, the troublemakers who ruin the fun. This isn’t fair play; it’s caste at work, punishing boldness to keep Dalits small. Theorizing this, it’s identity policing: universities promise free speech, but Dalit voices become “issues” for others, not ideas, echoing school humiliations in grown-up forms. The ideas of scholars from a Dalit background are called “just stories,” their papers ignored, their voices left out of major discussions. Universities may look new, but they carry old caste rules, hiding them behind words like so-called “merit.” From school to college, the fight to belong remains the same.

The Fight to Belong

Schools, colleges, and universities promise learning and growth, but they often play a cruel role in keeping caste alive, quietly pushing students and scholars from the Dalit community to the edges. In these spaces, they always wanted to become “part,” but they are always kept “apart,” where their sense of belonging and their ideas are always kept “apart.” These places, meant to lift everyone up, become stages for discrimination, where exclusion is woven into everyday life. In schools, teachers—who should guide and protect—join in this harm. A pause before answering a student from a Dalit background’s question, teaching only caste-privileged heroes while ignoring heroes from marginalized backgrounds, or giving children from the Dalit community tasks like cleaning instead of learning—these small acts teach shame. In horrors like the scorpion in pants or forcing a boy from a Dalit background to clean toilets, teachers treat Dalit bodies as profane toys, violating them to enforce so-called sacred lines. These moments pile up, making children from the Dalit community feel less human.

In universities, ideas from a scholar from a Dalit background are dismissed as “not academic,” with privileged caste students favored for projects or praise, or events planned without Dalit voices. Scholars from the Dalit community find their work stolen or sidelined, their names missing from important panels. Assertion gets them framed and isolated, friendships lost to identity’s weight. These quiet slights add up, keeping caste strong behind a mask of fairness.

Participation is stolen in subtle ways. Students from the Dalit community are left out of group plans, told about opportunities too late, or given minor roles while others lead. From school games to college clubs to university talks, they’re present but not included, their energy drained just to stay in the room. Belonging fails because the feeling of equality—that shared human spark—is absent in others’ eyes toward them.

This isn’t the end, though. The fight for belonging means breaking these patterns—demanding schools teach equality, teachers lift every voice, and universities open their doors wide. It means touch that welcomes as sacred for all, friendships that last beyond frames, and spaces where Dalits aren’t just seen but valued as equal. As Babasaheb Ambedkar dreamed, a true democracy needs belonging for all. Only then can “A for Apart” become “A for Acceptance,” turning schools and colleges into homes for every heart, where profane and sacred blur into one human whole.

Akhilesh Kumar is an Ambedkarite activist and a PhD scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, pursuing his research at the Centre for Dalit and Minority Studies.