Rohith Vemula was about 27 years
old and a student working for his Ph.D. in the University of Hyderabad. His name appeared over all news media
recently when he hanged himself in the hostel room of a friend, leaving a
suicide note. A sad event, no doubt.
Television and newspapers covered
leaders of many political parties who flocked to Hyderabad, met Rohith’s
grieving mother and his friends at the university premises and issued
statements demanding sacking of some ministers and the university’s vice
chancellor. Raising issues and grabbing
media’s attention is what all political leaders would do, but there is
something the Hyderabad-bound leaders did not do, which is worrying.
Rohith excelled in studies and
had scored high marks in the Ph.D. admission interview, according to his guide
in research. He and four other Dalit students,
all members of Ambekar Students Association, had been expelled from the
university hostel for some misdemeanor, after holding enquiries. That action did not curtail their access to
university library or labs or suspend their study programme. In this scenario Rohith took his own
life. However his suicide note does not name
or blame anyone as driving him to die.
Reports differ on whether Rohith was a Dalit or
not. Whatever the truth, we see politicians clamour
and protest more over events and issues that concern Dalit citizens than if
they relate to other citizens. Here
politicians play clever over hapless people.
Indian politicians know that among the country’s population women count about
48.5%, religious minorities roughly 20% and Dalits close to 17%. So they jump to project any issue touching a
single individual of any group as one affecting his or her whole group. With that stance the politician could portray
himself as espousing a cause of millions of people and hope to reap their votes
in big numbers in one harvest. A
controversy of this nature may attract arguments of many shades, some genuine
and some pretentious. Here it is not
easy to decide if a politician really takes up a public cause which benefits huge
numbers of people or he is blowing up an individual issue pretending it as a
group cause. Mostly irresponsible
politicians occupy the filed, make unfair choices and have a merry game for votes. They cannot be checked until our democracy
matures and our electorate becomes truly discerning to show their judgement at
election time.
Leave alone the question if
the university had a good cause for expelling Rohith Vemula from its
hostel. Any answer to that question should
not cloud an important issue about which most of our political class remains
silent. That issue is: Should Rohith not
have decided to live, stand up and strive to succeed in the wide world rather than take his life
following an expulsion from a university hostel? The battles to be won for anyone in India are
harder to go through than an expulsion from a university hostel, and Rohith
would have certainly spared his separated mother deep agony by continuing to live. And, staying alive, if he completes his Ph.D.
and does other acts of good value he will lastingly inspire many in his
community, which his rash act cannot do.
An example of braving odds and achieving heights of success more than
seventy years ago in unmodern India was B. R. Ambedkar, in whose name Ambedkar
Students Association is named – which had Rohith as member.
Stories of women traumatized
by rapes but pulling themselves up over time abound in every region in
India. And there are girls whose faces
were disfigured badly by acid attacks, mostly from males they had spurned, but they
survived the violence and live on – some even modelling garments or otherwise
succeeding to their best. We also read
about youngsters who fall in love and marry out of their caste or religion but
are harassed by families of their birth, sometimes leading to injury and
bloodshed for the newly-weds, and yet the couples stay together, get police or
court’s protection and live their lives.
Some young men serving our army or doing other security duty lose a limb
or suffer other deformity while coming under enemy fire or bomb blasts, but still
they keep themselves alive and get on.
Each one of them deserves our claps for getting over great personal calamities
and raising themselves, and they all make our miseries look smaller and our lives
brighter by comparison. If any of them
had willfully ended their lives following their misfortune, have no doubt that
our many politicians would have crowded the victim’s home and released statements
blaming the police or the government for the suicide. Because there lies a chance to bag some votes
of innocents. But those politicians
would not applaud the fortitude and courage of those troubled individuals for
facing up to life. Because that does not
get votes. Perhaps this happened with
Rohith too after he killed himself.
If Rohith lived on he could
have also spoken about the expulsion event – in any court also if it comes to
that. So, to that measure, his passing
away is a loss in public sphere. But the
saddest part of the event is that such a young man, whatever his religion or
community, took his own life in this background. Equally sad is the spectacle of our
politicians who seemed to speak for Rohith but never said they would have loved
to see Rohith live on. One of them, Rahul Gandhi, while addressing about 200
students in the campus of the university is quoted as saying that Rohith “had
no option but to kill himself” (The Hindu,
Jan. 20, 2016). Another of them, Arvind Kejriwal, said the
same thing in different words as he spoke in the university premises – that Rohith
was “forced to commit suicide” (New
Indian Express, Jan. 22, 2016). If not
anyone, at least the other four Dalit students who were expelled from the
university hostel along with Rohith and who live on, and their mothers too,
would know for sure these statements are absolutely wrong. That matters, and we should wish that the
other four students grow further, shake off a bad dream and succeed in their
lives – though neither the news media nor our politicians may remember their
names.
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