Microaggressions, curriculum gatekeeping, and faculty marginalisation: an autoethnographic study from India

This autoethnographic article looks at the way in which caste and gender come together to result in everyday exclusion experienced by a woman professor of lower caste in the department of a central university in northern India. Based on three years’ worth of reflective journals, records of critical incidents, and teaching reflections, the analysis highlights two key episodes: opposition to the inclusion of Dalit feminist and marginalised scholarship in the core curriculum, and an increase in caste-gender microaggressions after the author's caste identity was made public. The study makes use of three frameworks: Critical Caste Theory, Intersectional Stigma Theory, and Liberatory Pedagogy. Each of these frameworks deals with the structural, affective-identity, and pedagogical aspects of exclusion, respectively. The analysis shows that caste does not function through open prohibitions but rather through ordinary academic practices, curriculum classification, informal speech among colleagues, delays in procedures, and the manipulation of time – methods which gradually undermine professional credibility while the institution at the same time maintains its dedication to meritocracy and neutrality. The article states that lived experience can serve both as a source of data and as a method of teaching, provided that it is handled with careful methodology and ethical self-reflection. Instead of making generalisations about all Dalit women academics, the narrative is presented as a specific counter-story that sheds light on the affective and institutional dynamics which are normally omitted from standard research.