Nine held for remarks on Ambedkar in skit

P Krishnakant, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Bengaluru South, said seven students, the principal and the programme organiser were arrested by the Siddapura police on Monday.

The Bengaluru Police on Monday arrested nine people, including seven students, and the principal of Jain University‘s Centre for Management Studies (CMS), for allegedly making derogatory statements against Dr B R Ambedkar and the Dalit community, during a skit performed at the college event last week.

Bengaluru Police arrested nine people, including seven students, and principal of Jain University‘s Centre for Management Studies (Agencies/Representative use)

P Krishnakant, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Bengaluru South, said seven students, the principal and the programme organiser were arrested by the Siddapura police on Monday.

The accused have been identified as Sujal, Naima Nagriya, Gaurav Pawar, Pranav Palliyal, Rishab Jain, Smruthi RB, Ashish Agarwal and Principal Dinesh Nilkant.

“The accused have been booked under various sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and 153A, 149, 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC),” Krishnakant said.

Last Saturday, a video of six students from the university performing a skit that allegedly showed Dalits and Ambedkar in a derogatory manner went viral and caused outrage on social media.

Siddapura police in Jayanagar also registered a first information report (FIR) under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, against the principal and senior officials of the university on Saturday.

The skit, staged during the university’s ‘Youth Fest’ by The Delroys Boys, a theatre group from CMS, allegedly mocked people belonging to the Scheduled Castes, and called Dr BR Ambedkar ‘Beer Ambedkar’.

“BR Ambedkar? Hey no no, it’s Beer Ambedkar.”

Another dialogue was, “Why to be a Dalit when you can be the lit? On a date, there also she did not let him eat from the same plate,” the characters said in the play.

“Girlfriend asked him how he arrived here so fast. He says, Hey baby, it’s because I am from the Schedule Caste,” is another dialogue making fun of the SC community in the play.

“You hey, Dalit, don’t touch that water, you don’t get a drop, forget about making a quarter.”

Some college students who watched the skit while it was performed on February 4 started an online petition on Jhatkaa.org, calling it an “incredibly casteist and insensitive” skit.

“It is unacceptable that the script for the performance went through multiple rounds of approval before being enacted on stage. The same insensitive script was enacted on February 5 by the same contingent at another college fest, sponsored by Under25 in Bengaluru,” read the petition.

“We demand that they publicly apologise for their actions and take concrete steps to educate themselves and others on the importance of inclusivity and sensitivity towards marginalised communities. The promotion of harmful and offensive content has no place in any educational or public platform, and goes against the ideals that Ambedkar and others have fought so hard to uphold,” it said.

Dalit organisations and leaders slammed the video.

“Casteist slurs are not satire!Students at Jain University, Bengaluru, insulted Babasaheb and made casteist humour against the SC community. Such casteist & insensible skits are an attempt to mock the Depressed Classes,” Suraj Kumar Bauddh, an anti-caste activist, said.

National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the Congress party, staged a protest at the college premises and defaced its name boards on Sunday.

Meanwhile, higher education minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan has asked the department’s principal secretary to conduct a detailed probe into the alleged incident and submit a report.

“The incident which has been said to have occurred was very unfortunate. Babasaheb Ambedkar is the architect of the country’s constitution. He is respected by the whole world. It is unacceptable if he is disrespected,” Narayan said on Monday.