Recently, several media outlets published a news story that some students had put up “Vegetarians Only ” posters on the walls of the canteen of Hostel 12 at IIT Bombay. The media outlets sourced the story from social media posts of controversial campus group ‘Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC)’. As per the reports, APPSC activists removed the posters by tearing them apart. Following the cue of APPSC, the media outlets termed it a case of ‘casteism’. “The need to demarcate separate eating spaces with an idea of purity is to reinforce the superiority of savarnas on campus and deem their eating habits better than those of DBA students,” the group wrote on X (earlier Twitter).

After the controversy became viral, Newsum approached several students residing in Hostel 12 to find out the facts. The findings turn out to be the exactly opposite of what was being propagated. Following are the facts:

Firstly, the issue is not related to the canteen, but to the mess. There are 70 tables in the common mess of Hostel- 12,13 and 14. Out of these 70 tables, only 6 tables are marked for vegetarian students for more than 7-8 years. Only on these 6 tables, students are asked to not bring non-veg food items. The practice was adopted as several vegetarian students, especially students belonging to minority Jain community, used to find eating extremely difficult with meat be consumed next to them. Many students and their visiting parents also find the smell of meat uncomfortable. The idea behind these 6 marked tables is to make the mess more-inclusive and to respect the cultural diversity. Any student with no meat in his plate can sit and eat on these tables; caste, as propagated by the Ambedkar-Periyar-Phule group, plays no role at all. The remaining 64 tables are marked open for all type of food served at the mess.

A former student of the hostel told us that he himself would sometimes choose to sit at the vegetarian-marked tables if fish was being served (as he didn’t like the smell of fish).

Students told Newsum that the Ambedkar-Periyar-Phule group, which is notorious for its caste-based politics in the campus, had been trying to disrupt the mess culture by giving it caste spin. Many activists of the group would bring meat at these tables and would create ruckus when confronted. This is when some concerned students put the simple reminder message that the 6 tables were marked for vegetarian food only. The activist students tore apart the message and started using it to target certain castes. Their propaganda was quickly picked up by several media outlets and was blown out of proportion making it difficult for vegetarian students in the campus.

A student said that he was extremely furious seeing an inclusive practice being propagated as an exclusivist one that too on behalf of a group (Ambedkar-Periyar-Phule Study Circle) that is notorious for its open hatred toward certain communities.

The activist group also shared that RTI queries and email reply from the General Secretary had showed that there was no policy for ‘food segregation’ in the institute. Reacting to this, a vegetarian student said, “If it is true, then the institute must formally adopt a policy to mark some tables for vegetarian students so that such students can live in the campus with dignity and without being harassed by ‘hate groups'”.

(We haven’t published names of the students to protect them.)