I have an on-demand wish list of all the things I would do if I were in Delhi for a day. I managed to check off quite a few of these during my recent fly-by-night trip. However, at the time, I was unaware of something ongoing that I would have liked to have been a part of. I would have gladly been part of a sit-down with Dr Ritu Singh at the Arts Faculty of Delhi University. There are many reasons for me to admire her, among them being her having acquired a doctoral degree in psychology, a subject dear to my heart, and a profession I was on the verge of choosing for myself. Beyond that, her resilience. Ritu Singh has been protesting for months against her illegal termination from her position as assistant professor at Daulat Ram College. She had been selected in 2019 for a temporary vacancy reserved for the Scheduled Caste category, I read. She was terminated a year later, in August 2020. She is demanding that the principal, Dr Savita Roy, be held accountable for caste discrimination. Ritu Singh is committed to her quest for justice while maintaining that this is an issue that affects us all. Justice, for her, is a community goal. Through social media, she has been instrumentalising her struggle to call attention to the deep-seated casteism that has historically afflicted education in India.

The backlash she continues to face only serves to bolster her case. I read about people sprinkling cow urine and gangajal to allegedly ‘purify’ the protest space, a practice that attests to an inherent regressiveness in Indian society. The gates of the university were locked to keep her out—I mean, how literal can casteist gatekeeping get. Through it all, Ritu Singh has maintained her faith in the constitution, written as it was by the stalwart, Dr Ambedkar.