State

The modern public university in a democracy faces the challenging task of producing and disseminating knowledge. Though the public character and universality of knowledge seem to be threatened today by both the state as well as the market forces, the university cannot afford to remain an apolitical institution in a democracy. There are lessons to be learnt in the debates surrounding the development of German universities and the idea of a university as the idealist philosophers have conceptualised.

This article begins with issues of mourning and commemoration that arose in the context of the killings in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. It then relates them with questions regarding the worth and visibility of Black life. It then connects the political present with the political economy of race and the experience of state violence as these have structured urban America. The article ends by discussing issues posed by the social facts of caste atrocity and Black killings. It probes the relationship between dehumanising violence, political subjectivity and social justice.

The recent electoral history of UP that has witnessed the growth of parties representing the lower and middle castes speaks of a politics of more competition and democracy. But as this paper argues, though peasant and caste mobilisation may have challenged upper caste/ class domination, this has not necessarily promoted policies of public expenditure for services benefiting the poor, nor has there been implementation of developmental programmes that address their vital concerns.