Testimonies - 3

1. "I remember how many years ago one of my cousin brothers was beaten up in his college for coming from a SC family. We were so horrified that my father went in for an affidavit and changed our surname from the original to a new one usually heard among the upper classes of the society."

2. "I never knew it could be so humiliating to belong to the reserved categories. Not only did they (the raggers) taunt me at the beginning of the session, made my life a hell by passing insulting comments and laughing at me as and when we met at the corridor, or the canteen or the common room, but also convinced some of my class mates to avoid sitting beside me and sharing class notes with me. However I managed to make some friends and thus somehow survived in the class"

3. "I don’t know how to put it in words…Because I am good looking and more or less have an appreciable sense of dressing, they went on to the extent of calling me a crow disguised as a peacock. I could not help but burst into tears."

4. "You wont believe how degraded these people can be. Some of them from a students political organization tried to pursuade me to join their campaign and on being refused threatened to make my stay at the university impossible by attacking me for my SC background and disreputing me on issues I have never been linked with. I finally had to yield to their proposal."