Divide Rules

Fathima Latheef’s death brought to the fore the discrimination faced by IIT Madras students

- LAKSHMI SUBRAMANIAN

THERE IS A SANCTITY about the IIT that is missing in most other centres of learning. But now this idyllic situation is being threatened,” said P.V. Indiresan, then director of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, attacking the reservation policy during the 20th convocation in 1983. Giving special treatment to students from the scheduled castes and tribes, he said, was lowering the academic standards of institutions like IIT Madras. Made in the presence of president Giani Zail Singh, Indiresan’s comment was welcomed by most of his staff members.

That line of thought continues to lurk in the shadows of the IIT Madras campus. It came to the fore with the death of Fathima Latheef, a first-year postgraduate student of humanities and development studies. Hailing from Kollam in Kerala, the 19-year-old was found hanging in her hostel room on November 9. Initially, it seemed that she had killed herself over academic pressure. But a few days later, her father, Abdul, said, “For my daughter, her name itself was the problem.” A bright student, Fathima, he said, was harassed by her professors, whose names she had allegedly mentioned in the notes on her phone. In one note, she allegedly wrote that Sudarshan Padmanabhan was “the cause of my death”.