The tragic suicide of Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemula and the culpability of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and ABVP activists in abetting this act is a glaring example of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government’s anti-Dalit agenda. In Hyderabad, five Dalit students were expelled from their hostels and denied stipends on the basis of mere allegations that they had beaten up an ABVP leader. The leader claimed that he had to be hospitalized because of internal injuries. According to reports the medical officer’s deposition stated that the ABVP leader was operated upon for appendicitis. Union Minister Shri Bandaru Dattatreya even wrote a letter to the HRD ministry, calling the students of Ambedkar Students’ Association as “casteist, extremists and anti-national”. The University VC did not bother to cross check the ABVP account. He went ahead and suspended five students, including Vemula. According to NCRB Report, 2015, there has been a 20 per cent increase in violence against Dalits under Prime Minister Modi. Members of his Cabinet, like VK Singh, had compared Dalits to dog while commenting on the Faridabad incident in Haryana where two Dalit children were burnt alive.
Sherful Islam
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
