Abstract: Until recently, public universities in India were almost exclusively attended by upper castes, turning them into bastions of privilege. But in the wake of struggles led by Dalit-bahujan groups, they have been forced to democratize access. While most accounts of inequality in this milieu focus on the experiences of marginalized students, my talk will focus on the privileged. It will ask: how do upper caste students continue to shore up advantage through a public university that has democratized access? It will address this question through a critical examination of elite extracurricular activities - a space almost exclusively inhabited by upper caste students. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it will show how the segregated sociality engendered by such activities enables upper castes to accumulate advantage. Specifically, it will highlight the role of such spaces in enabling upper castes to hoard both symbolic power and dominant social capital. In doing so, the talk will examine questions of access and inclusion in higher education through an account of caste privilege.

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