University as a Site of Resistance (Hardback)  | Released: 29 Jan 2019

The University as a Site of Resistance analyses massive protests that emerged in the aftermath of Rohith Vemula's death in Hyderabad Central University as well as the Azadi Campaign started by Jawaharlal Nehru University students in Delhi in 2016. Taking Osmania University in Hyderabad as a case study, the book provides an ethnographic account of the emergence of one of India's longest student movements - the movement for Telangana statehood. Since its inception in the 1960s to its culmination in the formation of Telangana state in 2014, students at Osmania University played a decisive role. The book discusses protest strategies, methods, and networks among students. It also examines the role played by various caste and sub-caste groups and civil society in making the movement a success. The author argues that contemporary identity based student movements are primarily cultural movements as the traditional caste and class analysis becomes redundant to explain such contemporarycollective action. The book establishes these unique resistances as New Social Movements and claim that these movements contribute to the democratization of institutional spaces. In this context, the volume provides a conceptual debate on contemporary cultural politics among university students.About the Author: Gaurav J. Pathania, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Southern California, USA Gaurav J. Pathania holds a PhD in Sociology of Education from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research examines contemporary student protests and explores caste and regional identity issues in higher education. His articles and reviews have been published in South Asia Research, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and Economic and Political Weekly. His recent projects include exploring distress and discrimination in Indian higher education sponsored by University College London, and caste and class culture on university campuses. Currently he is a post-doctoral researcher at the Pullias Centre for Higher Education at the University of Southern California and also a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.