The Colonial Mindset Within: UGC’s Anti-Discrimination Rules

Originally Published: The Galliyo Ka Gazette Feb'26

“For the next 10 years, we have to move ahead with the goal of freeing India from the mentality of slavery.” - Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Introduction

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, during the 1938 Congress Presidential Address in Haripura, said, “The first thing to do is to change the composition and character of the bureaucracy. If this is not done, the Congress Party may come to grief. In every country, the Ministers come and go, but the steel frame of the permanent services remains. If this is not altered in composition and character, the governmental party and its Cabinet are likely to prove ineffective in putting their principles into practice.” His words have aged well. Bharat inherited a colonial bureaucracy, and little was done over the decades to alter its character and mindsets. The new UGC rules against Discrimination are riddled with colonial remnants. 

In this piece, we shall examine the rules and unpack the eerie similarities to the colonial framing of them. We shall also look at the real concerns the rules attempt to address and how they could be better addressed through pragmatism and by heeding the recommendations of the past Government reports. 

Genesis of the Rules: Where the Plot was Lost

The very origin of the new rules lies in the deaths of Rohith Vemula in 2016 and Payal Tadvi in 2019, two students who were victims of discrimination. The PILs filed by the mothers of both students were represented by Senior Advocate Indira Jaising. Their plea did not seek new regulations; instead, it sought strict enforcement of the existing UGC’s 2012 rules. Those rules had provisions for the creation of Equal Opportunity Cells to handle complaints of discrimination, particularly against Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) students. The petitioners alleged caste bias in admissions, evaluations, hostel allotments, and campus life. They claimed there was the near-total failure to implement the 2012 framework, with the absence of meaningful monitoring, sparse Equal Opportunity Cells, and zero integration with accreditation bodies like NAAC. The matter languished till 2025 when Justice Surya Kant and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan pulled up the UGC for non-compliance and demanded data on cells, complaints, and actions. In response, the UGC indicated it was drafting updated regulations.




By February 2025, the UGC released a draft for public consultation. The document retained the core focus on caste-based discrimination against SC and ST students, aligning directly with the PIL's emphasis and didn’t fall into the pitfall of expanding into unrelated categories in a sweeping manner. The draft commendably modernised the language by defining discrimination as “unfair, differential, or biased treatment” based on caste or tribe identity. While critics of the draft criticised this as more ambiguous than the 2012 rules, the streamlined phrasing, in fact, allowed for flexibility to institutions in interpreting and applying the rules contextually, reducing the risk of overly legalistic paralysis.




Equity Committees, under the draft, were to be chaired by the head of the institution and include roughly ten members, with at least one from an SC or ST background. The structure sought broad stakeholder inclusion, such as the faculty, students, and administrative staff, building up a sense of collective responsibility rather than a very adversarial framing. The draft pushed for awareness programs, sensitization workshops, and annual reporting on equity measures, laying the foundation for cultural change without micromanaging campuses. It laid down procedural fairness where the complaints would be investigated by the committee, with sufficient opportunities for both sides to present their side of the argument and evidence. This was based on the principles of natural justice enshrined in Indian law, preventing hasty punishments that could ruin careers or reputations on unproven allegations. The absence of automatic severe sanctions such as suspension, expulsion, or criminal referral for every complaint reflected a measured approach that prioritised resolution over retribution.




Indubitably, a sensible provision was the introduction of penalties for demonstrably false or malicious complaints. The draft stated that anyone filing a false claim of discrimination could face a fine determined by the Equity Committee. This provision wasn’t punitive for genuine victims but a necessary safeguard against abuse, a common concern in grievance mechanisms worldwide. In environments, especially where personal rivalries or academic competition can colour perceptions, such a deterrent helps preserve credibility and prevent the system from being weaponised. The draft didn’t impose rigid, uniform structures, such as mandatory half-SC/ST/OBC committees or automatic appeals to national commissions at every stage. Through this, it created enforceable obligations and avoided overburdening smaller institutions.




Many stakeholders and observers, even among critics, acknowledged that with refinements based on the 391 public suggestions received, it could have become a model for anti-discrimination policy in educational institutions. However, the petitioners opposed the February draft. Indira Jaising, in a September 15, 2025, Supreme Court hearing, sought many amendments to the rules, which included personal liability of the head of institutions for negligence, grievance committees with substantial marginalised representation and grant withdrawal for non-compliance. 

The Colonial Plot of Surveillance & Division

The final draft of the rules by UGC, gazetted on 13th January, included several of Indira Jaising’s suggestions, besides mesmerising its nostalgia for colonial surveillance and ‘divide and rule’. The creation of “Equity Squads” and “Equity Ambassadors” to report any form of discrimination from amongst peers is very dangerous when combined with certain other provisions of the rules. The heart of the problem lies in:




1. Absence of protections for those who are from the general category;

2. Absence of a mechanism for reputation reparation and punitive measures against abuse;

3. Absence of protections for those who are male. 




Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on 27 January sought to assure the people that any kind of harassment and misuse the UGC guidelines would not be allowed, it does little to repel the widespread fears of their misuse against the 'General Castes' simply because the notification released on 13 January is clear that only the students belonging to the SC, ST and OBC communities can claim they were subjected to "caste-based discrimination". This framing builds upon the British colonial logic of the“oppressors” and the “oppressed”. Such framing not only destroys equality before law but also institutionalises discrimination akin to how the British administrators, such as Herbert Risley, transformed the fluid, localised caste system into a rigid, monolithic, and enumerated category through censuses and policies such as the Criminal Tribes Act and the Punjab Land Alienation Act. 




The amount of discretion a member of these “equity squads” would have is unprecedented. In the absence of provisions against false complaints and abuse, coupled with the absence of a mechanism for reputation reparation, the rules are sure to be a hard-coming boomerang. Moreover, such a form of surveillance would stifle cohesion amongst students as well as cohesion amongst faculty. In a competitive environment such as universities, such an amount of discretion is at best alarming and at worst vicious. 




Furthermore, the large ambit to classify something as discrimination stems from a very colonial bureaucratic mindset of saving one’s job, to not be blamed for a ‘restrictive’ drafting of the definition/s. It is this mindset that asks for keeping things as broad as possible. A mindset that takes the assigned letter for drafting rules in a literal and absolute sense, without putting sufficient thought into the nuances of the provisions proposed. The mindset of ‘bureaucracy’ needs to shift to the mindset of ‘public service’; from ‘by the book’ to ‘for the people’. In the case of UGC rules, while the onus of accountability falls upon the political class, the ‘invisible hand’ of the bureaucrat who refuses to become a public servant must be held accountable. The erroneous behaviour and, in places, the incompetence of the bureaucrats destroy the credibility of leaders.

Conclusion:

The current controversy is best handled by a broader stakeholder consideration & dialogue instead of bulldozing the rules through. The bureaucracy needs to be called out, and we must head in the direction of reform. The priority should not only be to jettison the archaic, obsolete and anachronistic narratives of the “oppressed” and the “oppressor” but also, as Netaji Bose would advocate, to provide nationalistic, spiritual, and cultural education to public servants and the larger students. It is only through a great sense of responsibility, nationalism and sensitivity for others that all forms of discrimination can be addressed. Nationalism and collective responsibility shall always prevail against discrimination. Lopsided punitive measures to tackle discrimination would only give birth to more cleavages and show seeds for discrimination in places where it never existed, eventually leading to an unintended rupture. Discrimination, in its crude form, stems from the paucity to transcend micro-identities, from the incapacity to visualise a national awakening for shared responsibility and above all from an education system that focuses on enrollment statistics and literacy rates over providing quality tools for national building. The day the student on the last mile has quality tools for grasping the culture and the history of his country, shall then the discrimination in this country end.