Rohith Vemula, a young 27 year old Ph D scholar in Life Sciences who belonged to the Dalit community but had got admission to the high profile Hyderabad Central University on the strength of his academic performance and not caste based reservations, is driven to the point of committing suicide after seven months of struggle. He writes a poignant suicide note, and weeks before that final act of desperation pleads with the vice-chancellor to give him the permission to commit euthanasia. The vice-chancellor remains unmoved. As if the death itself was not tragic enough, the subsequent events have compounded the disaster.
It has emerged that the genesis of the suicide lay in an altercation between the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) and the RSS-inspired Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. The ABVP leader complained that he had been assaulted. The local MP and the union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya, a lifelong Swayamsewak, took up the cause of the ABVP leader with the union minister for human resource development Smriti Irani. He described the activities of the ASA as ‘anti-national’. The Proctorial Board of the University first gave a clean chit to the ASA members. But then within 15 days reversed its decision and five students were punished. They were expelled from the hostel and Vemula’s stipend of Rs.25000 per month that he used to get as a junior research fellow was stopped. This is akin to robbing a poor man of his means to livelihood. At the time he committed suicide, Vemula had to receive the princely sum of Rs.175000 from the university as his dues on account of the suspended fellowship. For the son of a single mother who used to engage in tailoring as a means of livelihood, the deprivation of the stipend was like cutting off his life line. Fortunately after several days of pregnant silence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed grief at the death of this son of mother India. ‘‘I can’t imagine what his family members are going through. A mother has lost her ‘laal’ (son). Politics aside, the fact is that we lost a son. I can understand the pain,” PM Modi, visibly emotional, had said at the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow.
The nation shouid be grateful for such minor mercies.But if you expected that he would come out against the mentality that inflicted this sustained torture on the Dalit Vemula, then surely you do not know your prime minister. On the contrary, Prime Minister Modi reminded the students at the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Lucknow that even though the Dalit icon was insulted and humiliated, he did not lose patience and persevered in his struggle.
This is certainly the case, but perhaps the prime minister has deliberately chosen to ignore Babasaheb’s ultimate decision to renounce Hinduism. “Though, I was born a Hindu, I solemnly assure you that I will not die as a Hindu,” he had said and then adhered to this promise when along with millions of his followers he embraced Buddhism. This one act ensures that although the RSS school of thought does pay lip service to Ambedkar, there is a deep rooted antipathy towards him. The same dichotomy is observed when the BJP talks about Ambedkar as an icon, but its leaders and practitioners keep insulting and humiliating all his followers when they assert their individualism either through the ASA or the Periyar study circle at IIT-M.
This apart the nation expects a prime minister and the union ministers to rise above the partisan confines of their ideological moorings when they are looking at the problems that confront the nation. So, Modi, Irani and Dattatreya may be wedded to the RSS ideology and this may imply that those adhering to the Ambedkar line of thinking are ‘anti-nationals, especially when it comes to the worldview of the RSS-BJP-ABVP, but the question is whether they should adhere to this line of thinking when they have taken the oath of office and secrecy under the constitution to discharge their duties without fear or favour? Are they being true to their constitutional oath when the ministers defend this conduct?
After all is it not true that the kind of campus clash that took place between the ASA and the ABVP is a rather regular occurrence and it is only because of the RSS mentality to teach others a lesson that Vemula and four others were penalised? Can both Dattatreya and Irani assert that if Vemula had belonged to some other upper caste, he would have been given the same treatment? Will they also take action against those responsible for the social boycott of the Dalits on the Hyderabad Central University campus? Only then would some semblance of balance be restored.
For the domestic audience, the RSS worldview is passé. But when Prime Minister Modi posits India as the global manufacturing hub and invites international investors to place their hard earned dollars in the Indian economic environment, his government perhaps forgets that it does not present a pretty picture when Irani defends this virtual murder of a socially deprived scholar as a mere law and order issue. Or when she ferociously defends her so-called non interference in the Hyderabad Central University, when, in fact, her ministry has been zealously pursuing the case for action against the ASA members. Can she still claim to have acted fairly? Atrocities against Dalits are not an unknown failure of the society. This is a deep rooted social malaise. But the problem in this case is that the entire apparatus of the government is seen to be on the side of the perpetrators of the crime and not in favour of the victim. This is the crux of the problem, and that makes us ask the question as to whether this is the 21stcentury India that we want? This may not be Prime Minister Modi’s intent, but it is the inadvertent consequence of his policy to give a long rope to his ideological brethren.
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