Bengaluru: Bengaluru police have filed a case under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against senior officials of Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIM-B), including its director, on the complaint of its faculty member, professor Gopal Das.
A Karnataka government-led inquiry last month indicted the senior management of IIM-B for caste-based discrimination after Das complained of the same and asked for a probe.
A senior government official told ThePrint: “Professor Gopal Das approached us [Department of Social Welfare, Karnataka] and asked us to conduct an inquiry on the discrimination he faced at the institute. Post this, we asked the Directorate of Civil Rights Enforcement (DCRE) to conduct the probe.”
The case was filed against eight persons, including IIM-B director Rishikesha T. Krishnan, dean (faculty) Dinesh Kumar, and six others, according to the police.
IIM-B issued a statement Thursday saying it would not comment on the specifics of the DCRE report as it was yet to receive a copy of the same and gave a long response to Das’ allegations. It stated that Das received significant incentives since he joined the institute in 2018 and the charges of discrimination first surfaced after his promotion was held back.
ThePrint made calls to Das for a response but they went unanswered. This report will be updated if a response is received.
According to IIM-B, a stay order on action against the accused was issued by the Karnataka High Court Friday evening.
Das, an associate professor in marketing, joined IIM-B in 2018. In January this year, he complained to President Droupadi Murmu during her visit to the institute about being discriminated against. The President’s office directed the state to look into the allegations.
The DCRE submitted its inquiry report to Karnataka’s social welfare department on 26 November, which then shot off a letter to the Bengaluru police commissioner on 9 December, after which the police filed a case.
In its letter, seen by ThePrint, the social welfare department states three things mentioned in the DCRE report: “deliberate publicising of and revelation of the caste of the petitioner (Das) through mass email”, “denial of equal opportunity to the petitioner in the workplace” by the director and dean of IIM-B, and “non-conformity to the statutory need to establish the institutional mechanism to redress grievances” of SCs/STs by IIM-B.
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‘Professor on warpath’
IIM-B said in its statement that professor Das received significant incentives since he joined the institute in 2018, and given positions of responsibility including that of chairperson of the Institutional Review Board, member of the Career Development Services Committee and member of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee.
It also said Das taught courses of his choice across different academic programmes of IIM-B and that his allegations of discrimination first surfaced after his promotion was held back.
“Dr Das’s allegations of discrimination against the institute and its faculty arose only when his application for promotion was put on hold because of complaints of harassment lodged by some doctoral students against him. An inquiry conducted by IIM-B as per the rules, with the committee including a reputed academic from an eminent institution, found that the students’ complaints were justified,” IIM-B said.
A former faculty member of IIM-B too told ThePrint that Das has been on a “warpath” ever since his promotion was held back.
“Laws can be used or abused in different ways,” the former faculty member said, adding that he was not witness to any discriminatory practices during his 15-year stint at IIM-B.
According to the government official mentioned above, the case filed by Das could pertain to “discrimination” and not “atrocity” as defined by the SC/ST Act. “Even the DCRE report says that prima facie it is a case of discrimination and further probe was required to ascertain the same,” the official said.
This is not the first time IIM-B has faced charges of discrimination.
In October, more than 800 academics, experts, students and others from across India and other parts of the world condemned the “vindictive harassment and persecution” of IIM-B faculty member Deepak Malghan, who was facing disciplinary action by the institute for his activism and social media post. In their letter, the signatories said the IIM-B management had misused service rules to “stifle academic freedom on campus”.
In January 2020, Malghan and another faculty member, Siddharth Joshi, shot off a letter to the IIM-Ahmedabad director, stating that IIMs “have tried to hide behind the facade of ‘we do not discriminate’, but there are not enough qualified candidates from historically marginalised groups”. They also accused the institute of denying opportunities to oppressed communities and stated that “90 percent of IIM faculty members are drawn from less than 10 percent of Indian society”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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This is a serious matter and should be investigated thoroughly. The IIMs are one of the few exceptions among India’s generally moribund public-sector higher education institutions. They should be run in as transparent a manner as possible. At the same time, I would agree with the former IIM-B faculty member quoted in this article. There are many laws in India, including the SC/ST Act, that are sometimes misused. If Dr. Das’s allegations prove unfounded, perhaps he should also face some disciplinary action.