Shocking: UPSC training platform says tribal farmers are “brainless, have no land documents”

A few weeks after a UPSC training platform called Gamosa an animal, another controversy has erupted after a faculty at Unacademy called tribal farmers “brainless.”

In a video shared on Twitter, one can see Siddharth Singh, a faculty, in his lecture called “Mission IAS 2021 | Geography by Siddharth Sir | Biomes” talking about Jhum cultivation. He uses extremely racist language against Northeast tribal farmers. 

Talking about jhum cultivation in the UPSC training video, the faculty Siddharth Singh says “during Jhum cultivation, what happens is that these tribal people we have, these people neither have brains nor property nor land documents”.

Also Read: The Optics of India’s ‘Chinky’ medalists at the Olympics

The use of such racist language was soon pointed out by users across social media and as a result, the uploader, Unacademy, has deleted the video from YouTube. However, a clip of the controversial part remains on social media. While Biomes 2 lecture remains on YouTube, Biomes (1) lecture which contains the controversial clip has been removed.

Heenu, a Twitter user who is from Arunachal, shared the clip and called out the extremely insensitive language used by Siddharth Singh in the UPSC tutorial.  

Heenu in her post said, “Calling out @unacademy and Siddharth Arora for an unconditional apology for him on his unacceptable derogatory remark on Tribals. Seeking for a public apology ASAP. Video credit: decolonialindegniousmemes”

“So apparently tweets tagging unacademy are not visible on your feed. Instead of Reporting our tweets why can’t they just apologize. This kind of ignorant behavior from Unacademy is not intolerable. PS: I’m repeating he was siddharth Singh and not Arora.” Heenu added. 

Last month, another faculty at an UPSC training institute had called Assam’s Gamosa, a piece of cloth with woven motifs that is gifted as a gesture of respect and appreciation, an animal. The video had sparked furious anger over the lack of understanding about the northeast region among mainland Indians.