Beyond Access and Inclusion: Dalit Experiences of Participation in Higher Education in Rural Punjab

Keeping constitutional egalitarianism and social justice as primary goals, Indian state has emphasized on making education more inclusive by improving accessibility of socially marginalized sections. When the exclusion has multi-prone dimensions with social, economic and cultural overlapping factors, the present study attempts to observe how much inclusion the process of formal accessibility has provided in a real sense. In this context, the article aims to interrogate the journey of higher education of Dalit in rural Punjab. On the basis of a case study of a government institute, an attempt is made to understand the challenges of Dalit students’ participation in higher education by looking at their day-to-day struggle in terms of social inclusion, financial constraints and sharing of institutional spaces. Based on the qualitative data, collected by semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, the article primarily endeavours to explore what happens after reaching inside the walls of a higher education institute by looking inside processes such as classroom participation; peer interactions; and intersectionality of class, caste and gender. Underlining the significant role of caste in defining the educational experiences of Dalit students and hidden culture of silence in higher education, the findings underscore that emergence of class along caste lines, different face of patriarchy for Dalit females, inaccessibility of affirmative action with daily financial challenges, make the process of inclusion still a distant dream.