III.
Open Discussion
On the Continuity of Struggle and Personal Exhaustion
Student 1 raised the question: the revolution is a continuous struggle, not a single event — but those who already come from harder circumstances are already in a struggle. Is it not permissible to rest?
Speaker’s response: The goal is not to exit the struggle temporarily but to end the conditions that make the struggle necessary. Stepping back also means abdicating responsibility.
Student 2 reframed it: the aim is to change the system so that rest is no longer something one must escape the system to find. We struggle so the next generation is freer.
Speaker pointed to the fee disparity between UoH and IIIT, and the Parijat incident, as evidence that keeping one’s head down enables the repetition of harm.
On Moralising vs. Structural Analysis
Student 3 expressed hesitation about moralising a revolutionary position, and questioned whether resistance rooted in self-interest could be considered genuinely revolutionary.
Student 6 introduced a materialist framework: capitalism structures incentives and creates and rewards certain behaviours. Opposition is to the system, not to individual actors.
Speaker clarified the distinction: not “good and bad” but “oppressive and liberative” — no moral categories are necessary.
Student 7 added: even absent moral framing, there will always be people who are materially harmed. The criterion is effect, not ethics.
Student 6 referenced Mark Fisher: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” — raising the challenge of articulating what a post-capitalist incentive structure and set of desires would look like.
Speaker responded: once we understand what is wretched in the current system, clarity on what to work toward follows.
On Empathy, Privilege, and Responsibility
Student 3 asked whether acting out of empathy for others is ultimately a form of selfishness — whether we are truly revolutionary or merely self-serving.
Speaker: We do not fight for the oppressed — we fight with them. Coming from the top 1% of society carries no shame but does carry a burden and an obligation to acknowledge it. The fight begins with the self but, through sustained engagement, becomes a community concern.
Student 8 drew on experience at a more restrictive private college to question whether critique of IIIT as oppressive is meaningful by comparison.
Student 6 argued that while quantitative differences exist, the qualitative nature of oppression does not change — oppression is oppression.
Student 9 responded: if you cannot identify the systems that oppress you at IIIT, you will not be able to recognise them wherever you go next.
Speaker: UoH appears more free than IIIT precisely because that freedom was won through resistance.
On Apathy as an Engineered Condition
Student 3 noted that the NTNS Manifesto identifies apathy as a product of the system. For those in the top 1%, the system offers a viable path of apathy — there is no practical compulsion to resist.
Speaker: Those who come from marginalised backgrounds will eventually encounter the system’s limits. Engagement with BS, Ambedkar, and Phule is the route out of apathy for those insulated from direct oppression — through reading and through going to the ground.
Student 10 observed: people in Gaza did not think recording themselves cooking food was political — until the system came for them. Everyone will eventually have to choose; those who do not act choose the status quo.
Student 11 added: IIIT students are privileged by virtue of the system; with that comes a responsibility to identify and name these structures. Silence is alignment with the status quo.
On Labour, Trade Unions, and Wider Implications
Student 12 noted that most IIIT graduates will still be workers. Labour rights in India differ dramatically from those in the EU; trade unions remain a meaningful mechanism for worker power. The state actively suppresses union organising because it represents a genuine transfer of power.
Student 14 shared the example of women in a tribal village in West Bengal who, after two months of unsuccessful petitions to the DM’s office over a lack of water, brought their children and had them defecate in the office. Water was restored within two days. The point: effective resistance need not be direct confrontation; subversion is also a form of resistance.
Hunger strikes were also raised as a potentially effective form of protest within the current campus context.
Speaker cautioned against expecting protest to follow immediately from a single reading session: sustained reading and awareness must build to the point where action becomes a natural expression of collective consciousness.
On Theory vs. Lived Experience
Student 7 pushed back on the primacy of reading circles, arguing that the most significant learnings come not from texts but from real conversations outside the room — that lived experience should not be discounted in favour of the theoretical.
Speaker agreed that ground-level engagement is essential, but noted that BS, Ambedkar, and Phule are themselves records of lived experience — critical thought crystallised from life. The two are not opposed.
Student 15 noted that a conversation the previous day had illuminated aspects of their own colonial mindset — underscoring the value of both conversations and structured texts.
On Exceptionalism and the Myth of “Making It”
Student 16 named the myth of exceptionalism — “I struggled and made it, so I no longer need to struggle” — as itself a product of the system that atomises people and makes them feel exceptional and therefore exempt.
Speaker: The idea of “making it” is sold to you. Even a ₹10 crore package does not insulate anyone from the world. “To be human is to feel — if your blood doesn’t boil at untouchability, at the children of Gaza, what does it boil at?”
Student 17: The system engineers isolation and individualism at every step — the absence of conversations like this one is itself a structural feature, not an accident.
On Scope of Responsibility
Student 18 asked what can reasonably be expected of privileged individuals, and where the line lies — particularly regarding responsibility to people outside the campus community.
Speaker: Even from a position of pure self-interest, resistance is rational — the system oppresses even its relative beneficiaries in ways over which they have no say. The goal for now is to make the campus more livable, but this is a starting point, not an endpoint.
A student responded: we don’t always act on abstract moral responsibility — we act because we see people we care about being harmed. Community-building itself generates solidarity.
Speaker shared a personal example: when their university admission was cancelled due to an administrative error, it was not close friends but unaffiliated students from outside their organisation who turned out to protest. If something unjust can happen to one person, it can happen to anyone.
