The sense of academic merit: Dalit students at South Asian Universities

Abstract

South Asian universities – as is the case with universities all around Asia and beyond – are characterized by an increasing heterogeneity of students on the one hand, and by disparities in resources shaping the pathways to and pathways through academia, on the other. Students’ experiences in India and Nepal are significantly molded by caste, class, gender, race, ethnicity, and other differentiating markers that are decisive for their sense of (non-)/belonging and the modalities of inclusion and exclusion. Caste, class, gender, and other disparities affect significantly how constellations within university social spaces contribute to, or counter-balance, students’ disparities in life-chances. How such complexities are experienced and how they shape the socio-spatial constellations inside and outside of university ‘classrooms’ can only be captured by grasping how embodied, emotional, and sensorial knowledge shapes students’ experiences of (non-)belonging.