Medical students at an anti-quota protest in Amritsar. (AFP file picture)

New Delhi, Sept. 15: Surinder Meena sits in his hostel room, his door shut, reading a book on the life of B.R. Ambedkar.

The choice of subject is, of course, not incidental. The alleged caste bias against scheduled caste and scheduled tribe students at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences has led them to form a closed community, said the 20-year-old MBBS student.

“We have no other option,” added Satinder, an MD student who had just entered Surinder’s room.

Surinder said that by reading up on Ambedkar, a champion of the Dalit cause, he hoped to “rediscover a feeling of dignity, one that has been so badly dented” at the country’s premier teaching hospital.

The sombre mood in the room could not be in greater contrast to the excitement on the other side of the door — and some would say of the caste divide.

Pulse, the annual festival at AIIMS, is beginning tomorrow and it’s time for students to let their hair down.

Stalls are being set up that will serve chaat, soft drinks and pizza. But here, too, the smell of quota is unmistakable.

Youth for Equality, the organisation leading the anti-reservation protests across the country, will have its own stall, with bulletin boards highlighting the 17-day strike in May that had paralysed several hospitals.

AIIMS, the nerve centre of those protests, is once again going to see a gathering of student leaders from universities across the country who had participated in the protests against 27 per cent reservation for other backward classes in higher education.

Many in the administration, however, feel the week-long festival is not the best occasion for an open demonstration of anti-quota sentiments.

The institute, trying to shrug off a cloud of caste bias with SC/ST students alleging a rise in abuse by their general category counterparts, will have thousands of reservation protesters thronging its campus during Pulse.

Fearing a flare-up between the opposing camps, a group of SC/ST students had asked AIIMS director P. Venugopal to postpone the festival. “People — from both camps — will get drunk, and in the tense atmosphere, things are likely to be said that could lead to violence,” said Kapil Yadav, a leader of the group.

Sitting in his second-floor office, AIIMS spokesperson Shakti Gupta, however, promised “all precautions” to ensure “youthful excitement does not lead to violence”.

“We do not believe there will be any violence,” he said. “Trust our judgement.”

But the assurance is not good enough for Surinder and many like him, who plan to stay in their rooms as the rest make merry.