After having a discussion with Delhi University students on 27 May, 2025 the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, in a social media post, said that a practice of “not found suitable” was being followed in case of vacancies on SC/ST and OBC seats and called it a new form of “Manuvaad”. This was a very apt ideological statement. A national leader, not himself from the OBC/SC/ST background, has become a game changer in our higher education system.
REFORM IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Rahul Gandhi’s sudden initiative to reform higher education institutions marks a new beginning in contemporary India. The statement “Not Found Suitable is Manuvadi” on university recruitment after the interaction with research scholars and post graduate students came as pleasant surprise for hundreds of OBC/SC/ST scholars, getting rejected as ‘Not Found Suitable’ by the upper caste selection committees is also shocker to upper caste professors, who evolved this technic after Mandal reservations came into existence.
It was not a big meeting that he addressed, what usually a political leader of his stature usually does. He sat amidst a few students like one among them and asked what problems they faced in the present regime of RSS/BJP in the universities? It was a free-wheel discussion.
Many scholars told him that the OBC/Dalit/Adivasi students, though qualified do not get teaching jobs because the selection committees, mostly headed by upper castes (Brahmin, Bania, Kayasthas, Khatris and Skatriya) keep most reserved back log and newly released posts by adopting a simple technic “Not Found Suitable”.
Generally the open category posts do not remain unfilled because all the applicants in that category are treated as suitable and they select some among them and fill all the vacancies. But the selection committees feel sorry for not filling the other seats because they are reserved for “Not Suitables”. This idea of Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis being Not Suitable for education is age old and it is adopted by the Sanatana Dharma school. Manu Dharma Shastra turned that idea into Brahminic law. The Left Liberal upper castes had no problem using this theory against OBC/Dalit/Adivasi candidates. Now Rahul has punctured this Manuvad strategy even when it is fully operative, when an OBC Prime Minister rules the country with a new education policy.
In the RSS/BJP regime, all those affiliated to the Sangh networks, properly certified by one of powerful pracharaks gets selected as most suitable, whether one performs in the interview or not. Even for the reserved posts, properly trained OBC/SC/STs find themselves suitable in the shakas, not so much in the relevant subject. This model is akin to the model Bengal CPI (M) implemented when they were in power. Of course they were one step ahead, no caste hence no reservation.
During the non-BJP regimes, UPA ten years rule and earlier, the Congress had no shakha network of its own to systematically recruit its own ‘Suitables’.
All the Liberal and Left upper caste professor committees had their set of Found Suitable, foreign and Indian educated, caste network youth. They kept thousands of OBC/SC/ST posts as backlog with the same method of “Not Found Suitable” file noting.
In central universities, IITs, IIMS, best medical schools and so on, most OBC/SC/ST candidates who acquired their PhD in the same institute were written off as Not Found Suitable. In universities like JNU and Delhi university the upper caste Left-Liberal professors kept all the OBC/SC/ST posts as a backlog for the RSS/BJP force to come to power and fill, at least some, with their own Shakha members.
They rumoured a theory that the Shudra/OBCs own all the wealth in the villages and they only exploit Dalits, if they come into universities the merit will collapse. They reframed the Mahatma Phule time Brahmin language “If the Shudra studies Paap (Sin) will engulf Bharat. But all the professors born Punya Prada families have not improved our economy, science and philosophy to match China.
WE ARE MOST SUITABLE MOVEMENT
Taking clue from Rahu’s Samvad on Not Found Suitable a movement of the OBC/SC/ST students must start in all central universities and institutes. As Phule and Savitribai said in Film Phule India will fight the Western hegemony in the domain of knowledge only the youth productive Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasi communities occupy high end positions. Seminars, debating sessions, reading competitions, not just slogan shouting, must be organised by inviting even the upper caste professors who have been using the Manuvad strategy “Not Found Suitable” to tell the nation what makes a candidate Suitable? Should one have a Ph.D on a topic ‘Production is Pollution’.
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Prof. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a prominent Indian social activist, political theorist, and scholar known for his influential writings on caste, social justice, and the rights of marginalized communities. A retired professor of Political Science at Osmania University, he has authored several groundbreaking books, including Why I Am Not a Hindu and Post-Hindu India, which challenge upper-caste hegemony and advocate for the empowerment of Dalits, Adivasis, and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
