Jadhav said it was wrong to say that the caste system was irrelevant today. “Anyone who believes that should take a look at matrimonial advertisements in the newspapers, where there are castes, sub-castes and even sub-sub-castes,” he said.

Talking about how India once was the economic superpower with a 31.5 per cent share of the global gross domestic product (GDP) in the year 0001 (the first year of the first century), Jadhav said this global share came down to merely three per cent in 1991. Although this is commonly blamed on the British rule, Jadhav said the major reason was the caste system as the British ruled India only for 150 years.

“In a country where only 3-4 per cent of the country’s population have the opportunity to fully realise their potential, and the remaining 96 per cent cannot do so simply because of their birth into a particular caste, such a drop in development is bound to take place. Thus I see no other stronger reason for the precipitous decline of India since ancient times,” he said.

Jadhav said that the university was undertaking a massive project to revise the syllabi of all undergraduate and post graduate courses, and that this revision would be completed in a phase-wise manner till June 2010. “Caste discrimination should definitely be a part of the revised curriculum of the social sciences. Even in Europe and the USA, these aspects are part of the Indology curriculum,” he said.

Political scientist Ghanshyam Shah said during the inauguration that although there were many sociology departments across the country that discussed only caste, their approach was that of “caste from above.” Moreover, he also cautioned that although there was a need for sociologists to go beyond academic texts to new pedagogical methods like documentary films, one had to be careful while dealing with these methods. “Documentary films require some element dramatisation, and hence tend to portray realities in black and white, although this may not be so. It is the sociologists’ job to challenge this critically,” said Shah.