Fighting between two rival political students organisations, Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) of University of Hyderabad over terror convict Yakub Memon’s hanging led to a midnight drama in which a student was thrashed and as a result ended up in suicide. Yakub Memon’s hanging triggered protests in the university by ASA whereas the ABVP was in support of the hanging. In a post on Facebook N. Susheel Kumar, president of ABVP, called the ASA students ‘goons’ for protesting the death sentence of a terror convict. Further, ABVP students lodged a police complaint against ASA at Gachibowli police station for confinement and beating. However, no specific names were mentioned in the complaint. The ABVP students also held protests by closing the gates of the university demanding action by the university administration. This clash between two groups was not for the first time.
The socially boycotted ASA’s Dalit students along with other organisations were protesting against the punishment for several days. The university administration could have sensed the gravity and feeling of the young scholars and resolved the issue. However, it appears that there was nothing in their hands at that level. Union Minister sent a note to the University management asking to maintain discipline after there was a protest by them. Later, after scuffle between two groups of students a few were suspended and expelled from hostel. Among the suspended students, one Rohith Vemula committed suicide. After his death, the entire saga took cruel turn. The entire episode gain political colour; everyone is trying to take ‘political mileage’ over this tragedy. This tragedy raised a question, why the five Dalit students were suspended by the University of Hyderabad? Secondly, under what circumstances and who was responsible for abetment of suicide? Who and when will this case be investigated for ascertaining the truth? The untimely death of scholar should not be politicised for political gain. Everyone is addressing this issue as Dalit or upper class but no one ever bothered to look at it as tragedy out of politics.
My heart was bleeding when I was reading his suicide note, in which he has stated that his fellowship dues for seven months running to the tune of Rs. 1,75,000 was stopped. Why he was not paid his fellowship money regularly every month? A thorough probe in his held up, huge fellowship money may throw sufficient light on his suicide. In what kind of society we are living in? Even after 69 years of Independence, people are still being treated on the basis of their caste and religion. People should be aware that in nation building, equal participation is required from all sides. Rohit was a brilliant boy, his letter to Prof. Appa Rao, the newly appointed vice-chancellor of the university who was once believed to be anti-Dalit by the government, shows that at the time of his suicide, he was angry, upset and depressed.
In his first letter to the vice-chancellor, written on December 18, 2015, Rohith said “give us poison or long ropes to hang ourselves”. In his suicide note, he was as gracious as Jesus was to his murders. He blamed none but himself to have been born in this kind of society. He made a major point. The higher educational institutions in India do not allow the Dalits–the historical untouchables–to study and live with dignity. Obviously, what shocked him is the letter of the Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who characterised his organisation — the Ambedkar Student Association — as anti-national, casteist and extremist. It was based on this letter that the Human Resource Development Ministry asked for action against the five Dalit students, who were said to have organised a film show on the Muzaffarnagar communal riots and also a discussion on Yakub Memon’s hanging. Let us not forget that it was just an academic discussion. Yet, members of the ABVP first disrupted that meeting and then set the political machinery in motion alleging an attack by the Dalit students on one of their activists.
After the BJP came to power this is a third major assault on Dalit rights and dignity in the country. First, the ban of Ambedkar- Periyar Study Circle of IIT Madras, then the burning alive of the Dalit kids in Haryana and general V K Singh describing them as dogs’ death. Now in Rohith’s death, Dattatreya and HRD Ministry’s perceived involvement. Rohith wanted to pen his calculated poetic, philosophical letter, telling his dear mother, brother, sister and friends that the systemic enmity for the poor and historical untouchables does not end with their enrolment in higher educational institutions. His ambition to become a science writer, learning good English in an environment of hostility does not end the environment of social boycott by state institutions created by the constitution written by his philosophical guru Ambedkar. After all, most of these institutions are manned and handled by the persons, who believe in casteist culture and exploitation.
The suicide of a Dalit student is not just an individual exit strategy. It is a shaming of society that has failed him or her. Rohith Vemula’s death comes as the sad, unforeseeable climax of a struggle that he was spearheading against communal forces. Even as Rohith being driven to death shows us the vulnerability of our most militant students, it also lays bare the true state of our educational system. A vice chancellor with a decades-old history of rusticating Dalit students, the involvement of Central ministers to settle scores on behalf of right-wing Hindu forces, the entire administrative machinery becoming a puppet of the ruling political forces, and the tragic consequences of social apathy.
This issue originated in September last year. It was not in National News as a un-precedence matter as there are always student’s union issues in every educational institution right from 1950s. Every party made use of students, who took the platform for getting trained in the ART of politics! Politicians whose names have surfaced in the abetment of suicide of a scholar should be strictly punished with immediate termination from their ministerial berth and putting them behind bars for years as they were running the hidden agenda of their political party.
