IIT Bombay tragedy shows how India’s shaming culture makes failure harder to bear

IIT Bombay student Sahil Wakode’s death has sparked a debate over caste and academic misconduct, but it also raises questions about the way society treats failure.

Sahil Wakode, a second-year BTech student in the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay, died by suicide on September 18 / X

Sahil Wakode, a second-year BTech student in the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay, died by suicide on September 18. Within days, however, his death became cannon fodder in another social media war.

Hours before his death, Sahil had allegedly been caught using ChatGPT on his phone during an examination. That incident has since become part of a larger controversy surrounding his death. His parents have alleged that he had complained of casteist remarks and harassment before his death, while a case involving alleged abetment of suicide and offences under the SC/ST Act has been registered. The circumstances surrounding his death are now being investigated.

Almost immediately, the debate divided into familiar camps. For some, this became entirely about caste. For others, it became about the cheating incident, the parents, or whether the professor was being unfairly blamed.

Maybe the investigation will eventually give us more answers about what exactly happened. I don’t know, and I don’t think people sitting on social media know either.

But nobody is asking the most important question: what makes a young person feel that one incident, one failure, one humiliation or one mistake can become so unbearable that death seems like the easier option?

The shame of failure

When I look around, I see the enormous pressure we have created around being successful. A culture of comparison, expectations, and family honour; sometimes nothing remains individual anymore. It’s not simply about a failed exam; it’s about disappointing your parents. It’s not simply about making a mistake; it’s then thinking about log kya kahenge? You don’t simply succeed as an individual; the entire family owns a piece of your success.

That makes the price of failure too heavy to bear — shame, humiliation, fear of parents, fear of society, and the fear that everything you worked for is now over. These aspects fall within shame culture.

Not shame for dishonesty, or the kind of shame that stops us from doing something unethical or breaking social trust, but shame for failure, and that is where the problem lies.

Our families and communities often shame and isolate an individual for low performance instead of shaming someone for unethical behaviour.

Growing up across urban and rural India, I have seen this belief among many people, an unspoken truth: you are golden if you achieve success, by hook or by crook, as long as you don’t get caught. I have seen too many times how society can be more accepting of immorality when it comes with success.

When success excuses immorality

Don’t we see this with monetary success? Bribery and corruption are hardly unknown in our society, yet how many people actually end relationships with family members because they are corrupt or because their wealth comes through immoral means? How often does that person lose dignity within the family simply because everyone knows that the money was earned dishonestly? Rarely.

But haven’t we all seen the opposite? One unsuccessful or poor relative who gets little dignity simply because they have not achieved much in life.

They are the people whose opinions don’t matter at family gatherings, whose advice carries less weight, who slowly become someone nobody takes seriously because they don’t have money, a successful career, or social status.

But haven’t we all seen the opposite? One unsuccessful or poor relative who gets little dignity simply because he or she has not achieved much in life? The person whose opinion matters less at family gatherings, whose advice carries less weight, who slowly becomes someone nobody takes seriously because they don’t have money, a successful career, or social status.

This is where the pressure on children begins to make more sense. Parents are often criticised for putting too much pressure on their children, and there is truth in that. But parents themselves have grown up in the same culture and understand the same rules.

They know that success brings respect and failure brings shame, and they often pass that lesson on to their children, sometimes without even realising it. They speak the same language because they, too, have learnt the same grammar of society.

Whether caste discrimination had a role in Sahil’s case or not is still something that needs to be investigated. But that does not mean caste discrimination in our elite educational institutions can simply be dismissed.

And here again, I think shaming culture plays a role. One of its most powerful tools is our hyper-fixation on “merit”, without accepting the historical and structural inequalities that made reservations necessary in the first place.

A student does not remain simply a student. His marks, rank, caste, reservation, and whether he “deserves” to be there all become part of how others judge his worth.

What do we shame people for?

The same culture of shame can be seen in something far more extreme: so-called “honour killings”. It becomes better to kill daughters than to face the shame and humiliation of society.

While it may seem that failing an exam and an honour killing don’t have much in common, both emerge from a culture in which social shame is given extraordinary power over individual lives.

Now compare this with Rajesh Ranjan, widely known as Pappu Yadav. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, he contested as an Independent and won the Purnia constituency in Bihar. In his own election affidavit, he declared 41 criminal cases against him, including attempt to murder, kidnapping, and extortion.

Here is a man with such a public history of criminal cases, and voters still considered him worthy of representing them in Parliament.

Pappu Yadav and Sahil may have allegedly done something wrong, but the public response to their actions is not comparable. Which one has faced more shame, and why? Which one has been judged more harshly, and why?

One of them felt the shame unbearable; the other did not. Society not only did not punish Yadav, but rewarded him.

What exactly produces shame in our society? Is it necessarily doing something morally wrong, or is it being seen as unsuccessful or coming from a vulnerable community?

We can have as much debate as we want about such tragic incidents, but until we address the problems at the grassroots, nothing will really change. There will be another young person, another tragedy, and then another debate for us to have.

Edited by Maryam Hassan