Unseen but Seen: The Invisibility of Belonging

Who is an Ashoka student? I asked myself this when I wrote my admissions essay. On a campus where more than 94% of undergraduates come from financially privileged backgrounds, what does it mean to be included? And what does the inclusion of disadvantaged students mean? In 2022, students from disadvantaged backgrounds made up 11.4% of Ashoka's undergraduate population. By 2023, that dropped to 6.8%, and in 2024, it stood at 5.54%. Is the Ashokan experience of these 5-6% students really the same as the rest of students? Is there student solidarity across the spectrum of these two classes?

The image of a standard Ashokan is one painted with privilege. If we compare the statistics of Ashoka with the 49.5% reservation for disadvantaged social groups mandated in public universities, the picture is bleak. However, Ashoka offers generous financial aid. Yet, the structural outcome of less representation still creates a student profile shaped by privilege that upholds an unspoken standard of who ‘truly’ belongs at Ashoka. In this backdrop, privilege, then, becomes invisible because it is the norm. However, it’s not just numerical invisibility that a ‘non-standard’ Ashokan experiences. As “Sound of Scholarship” insightfully observes, Ashoka uses a strategic language of merit that strips away social, historical, and cultural contexts. In its own words, it offers aid to "exceptional and deserving individuals coming from all walks of life." But this framing sanitises caste and class differences under the banner of individual brilliance. The result is a caste-blind model of equity.

In the absence of caste as a recognised framework for identity and experience, students from marginalised caste backgrounds are often forced to view and project themselves as 'casteless' to fit in. This creates a form of symbolic alienation, where one’s social location is rendered unintelligible to the broader community. The institution does not deny students' narratives, but it lacks the linguistic and conceptual infrastructure to receive them. Consequently, the student also lacks the language to accurately name what Ashoka chooses to not see and name.

As Akeel Bilgrami (2006) argues, institutions often uphold dominant identities through "unacknowledged partiality" — a form of seeming neutrality that subtly enforces conformity. In the Ashokan context, marginalised students internalise self-distancing in order to conform to an unspoken norm. The result is a psychological splitting: between the self as it is lived, and the self as it must be performed. What is lost is the possibility of wholeness. This is not only a story of systemic casteism, but of epistemic and cultural erasure. A potent question to then ask here is: is it possible to build true solidarity within the Ashokan community by omitting caste identity? Does the sharpness of critical thought still hold its critical vitality if caste is left unseen?

Students often talk about privilege and inequality in campus discussions, but seldom reflect on how their own positions uphold those systems. As Bilgrami writes, "defensive commitments" to privilege can masquerade as neutrality but are in fact active reinforcements of hierarchy. For example, attendance at caste census discussions organised by various collectives has historically been low. Students from privileged castes and classes may express support for equality but disengage when it comes to self-implication. This superficial engagement, instead of building solidarity, deepens isolation and polarisation. Is it possible then to truly include and realise belonging without caste consciousness? Current institutional frameworks for inclusion treat it as a fixed outcome measured through admission statistics and scholarships, but inclusion is not static — it is a dynamic, relational process. Can a person from the lower castes actually belong at Ashoka if they can’t relate to other students? If there’s no space in language to see, acknowledge and articulate one of the most important facets of one’s identity, how can the student truly belong? Where should they belong? In fractured language, vocabulary and identity?

Sociologist Zuleyka Zevallos argues that social identity is formed relationally —  not in isolation, but in response to how others see us. When the numerically dominant culture erases the caste-ed relationship minority students have with themselves, the students internalise that identity. They learn to perform compromises to disguise their caste as a conditioned response for belonging. This leads not just to alienation, but also defensive identity formation, where a disadvantaged student either overidentifies with their unseen marginality (in face of being devoid of it) or underidentifies to fit in. As a friend once told me, "It's only here that I remember I'm a Muslim." Her words resonate far beyond religious identity. They speak to the broader condition of being "reminded" of one's marginality in spaces that claim to be neutral. This undermines both individual belonging and collective cohesion.

This dynamic can be seen operating at the level of institutional inclusion policies too. In the United States, debates about over- and under-identification of minority students in special education reveal that context shapes visibility. In some settings, being noticed for your historical disadvantage can mean opportunity; in others, it means stigma. At Ashoka as well, institutional storytelling around inclusion often veers into tokenism. Students from the Academic Bridge Programme (ABP) are regularly spotlighted in brochures, newsletters, or campus events as “success stories.” While intended as celebration, this practice can leave students feeling singled out. After an interview for The Indian Express, a student from the Academic Bridge Programme (ABP) expressed discomfort with the way their story was published: "They asked about my experience and then printed personal details about my background. It felt like exposure, not inclusion." Others shared similar concerns: "Everyone here is nice, but when you're made a story, it feels like you're made different." This approach risks veering between two extremes: overidentification (turning underprivileged students into narratives of inclusion), and underidentification (neutralising their distinct struggles to the point of erasure). Being unseen and when seen, as tokens of philanthropically championed inclusion. Neither path fosters true inclusion.

Yet, this article is not a criticism of Ashoka alone. Rather, Ashoka serves as a mirror for a structural issue in Indian higher education, where elite institutions, despite their best intentions, replicate the exclusions of the society from which they emerge. Elite universities in India, whether private or public, are not built in a vacuum. They arise within a society where caste, class, religion, gender, and language shape who has access to resources. Inclusion is not merely a matter of policy, goodwill or philanthropy. True belonging cannot be engineered solely through institutional mechanisms, whether in elite private universities like Ashoka or in public universities with constitutional representation on paper but entrenched casteism within their walls. Both models, while different in design, often fall short in practice.

This is not a call to replicate caste-based quotas or to model elite private institutions on public universities. Instead, it is a call for elite spaces to critically examine the cultural assumptions that shape their ideas of neutrality and inclusion. Ashoka has the potential not only to adopt the mechanisms of the state, but also to innovate on the question of belonging by acknowledging that symbolic erasure is a structural harm —  not just to the student but to the broader sense of community. As “On (Mis)reading the Increasing Caste Visibility in Elite Colleges” sharply points out, the problem is not caste visibility itself, but the alienating violence of caste invisibility in elite Higher education institutions (HEIs). True inclusion cannot ask marginalised students to accept the sanitisation of their histories and identities. It must begin by acknowledging and valuing their lived experiences. Being unseen cannot exist as a condition for belonging. If it does, it just results in a broken mirror of inclusion & student cohesion. True belonging still remains unmaterialised, despite generous philanthropy and goodwill.

(Edited by Madiha Tariq & Nikita Bose)