January 30 known as Mahatma Gandhi’s martyrdom day, happens to be the birthday of Rohith vemula an outstanding Dalit (low caste) scholar, doing his PhD in Hyderabad Central University (HCU) whose suicide on January 17 sparked protests and outrage from across India.

On January 30 Rohith’s friends assembled to remember their buddy on his 27th birthday in his absence. He died 13days before and didn’t blame anybody for that. But neither did Mahatma Gandhi, when he was assassinated. The two unrelated tragedies separated by 68 long years are said to be the handiwork of one and the same Killer-Intolerance!

Those shots aimed at Gandhi on January 30, 1948, were the first violent expression of a kind of intolerance that we often come to hear these days in India. In fact, the unfinished agenda of Gandhi’s killers continues to lure and enthuse the fanatics.

They forced him to die

Facts that led Rohith Vemula to his suicide has now become clear. Rohith and four others Dalit students were charged for attacking one Susheel Kumar, an accusation that was never established but were punished for that. Let it be known that Kumar is the president of the HCU unit of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), the student wing of RSS.

Bandaru Dattatreya, a state minister in Modi’s federal government, wrote Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani, (who has come to be known as “Hindutva Resource Development Minister”), to take action against Dalit students. Because their union (Ambedkar Students’ Association) had protested against the hanging of Yakub Memon and clashed with ABVP leaders on screening of a documentary Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai.
“HCU has become the den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics” Dattatreya stressed in his letter. HRD minister on her part, directed the Vice Chancellor to act against Dalit students and her office despatched four reminders to do that fast.

As a result, Rohith and four other Dalit students were expelled from the University. With their entry in hostel, library and administrative building blocked and monthly stipend stopped, it wasn’t less than capital punishment for research scholars in the university context. After their expulsion, they formed Joint Action Committee to fight against their expulsion and lived in the open in the biting cold of Hyderabad.

Denial of stipend, with which Rohith supported himself and partly his mother and younger brother back home came like the proverbial last straw and he was driven to his wits’ end. He decided to end his life 13 days before January 30 when he was to turn 27.

All that was enough to expose the murderous situation and possibly the murderers!

Intolerance in Action

As we discuss this there are reports from other places about gross interference by various RSS Brigades in Indian universities that smack of approaching Fascism in the country. We mention below some of such instances

(1) On complaint of an RSS worker, teaching contract of Dr. Sandeep Pandey a renowned Magsaysay-award winning professor of Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) was, prematurely terminated by the university Authorities. RSS called him a Naxal & anti-national. As per reports Dr Pandey is challenging his termination on the ground that how the board could take a decision on the basis of a complaint of a person who is not a student of the IIT.

(2) In Allahabad, ABVP activists prevented a senior journalist Siddharth Vardarajan, to address seminar on “Media, democracy and freedom of speech” organized by AUSU (Allahabad University Students Union). ABVP people gheraoed and called him anti-national and Naxal. Police later rescued him from their clutches.

(3) On January 22, as PM Narendra Modi rose to address the 6th convocation at Lucknow’s Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, three Dalit students present to collect their LLM degrees, raised anti-Modi slogans in view of Rohith suicide. While police forcibly removed them from the venue and university authorities from Hostel, PM shed his usual theatrical tears and called Rohith Vemula as a son of Mother India, without referring to circumstances that led him to his death.

(4) Earlier when the Attorney General of India Mukul Rohtagi told the Supreme Court that the NDA government was opposed to the concept of granting minority status to Aligarh Muslim University, it virtually opened a Pandora’s box. This emotive matter did not confine itself to the AMU campus but within hours found an echo among students across several minority institutions

Rohith’s Last Message

With his excellent academic background, Rohith Vemula aspired to rise high and make this world a better place for the socially and economically oppressed compatriots to live in, but was driven to the darker depths of his Dalit self by number of tormentors in caste-ridden Indian society. After his death, some of the top BJP federal minsters instead of comforting Rohith’s family and friends in hour of grief, rubbed their sores by raising qualms over Rohith’s Dalit identity.

Rohith jotted few lines about his agony on a piece of paper before dropping curtain on his life. “The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity…to a vote. To a number…a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of stardust…. I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life…. My birth is my fatal accident I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty… And that’s why I am doing this.”
Many have alleged that the death of Vemula is a continuation of the long history of discrimination against low caste people which continues in twenty first century India.

“We know who killed you. It was certainly the death imposed upon you by India’s centuries’ old biased socio-political setting, adamant to acknowledge its guilt.” Wrote one of his supporters.

In the end

Such episodes are just the tip of iceberg not entirely in sight of common man. It isn’t mere an upsurge of right-wing polity in Indian democracy. Actually with minorities’ religious freedom curtailed, Dalits rights endangered, new dress and food codes imposed by mobs of ruling party and where renowned intellectuals, scientists, laureates and artists heading India’s prestigious Institutions are being replaced by RSS cadre, it is something more than what meets the eye. It is RSS sponsored Fascism!

But it also seems to be the beginning of their end. People are being beaten by rising cost of living, promised good times (Achhe din) are no where insight. India’s tolerant and inclusive society is being dissected horizontally and vertically on religious and caste lines.

Delhi and Bihar State elections results going against BJP indicate that Indian voters’ honeymoon with Modi and his brand politics may be over sooner than expected.