Dear prime minister, spare us the tears – we want justice for Rohith Vemula

“PM Modi tweets every minor and random thing – be it a Mayor election or wishing somebody on their birthday. But he has not said anything on issues of grave injustice, like the murders of Akhlaq, Dabholkar and Kalburgi.”

“What delayed him for so many days? Just because we protested he was forced to shed crocodile tears. He was forced to speak up merely for fear of losing Dalit votes in the 2017 elections.”

These are the words of the three students who were evicted from the convocation ceremony at Lucknow’s B R Ambedkar University for raising slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The students, who were protesting the death of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad, said they were proud of their act. Clearly, they saw through Modi’s charade.

As the prime minister began to speak at the convocation on January 22, he was greeted by shouts of the three young students who were there to receive their degrees. Ram Karan Nirmal, Amrendra Kumar Arya and Surendra Nigam screamed slogans of “Rohith ham sharminda, dronacharya ab zinda hain” (Rohith, we are ashamed that Dronacharya is still alive), evoking the myth of the forest-dwelling Ekalavya who chopped off his thumb because his guru Dronacharya wanted Prince Arjuna to be the best archer. They yelled “Narendra Modi murdabad” and “Narendra Modi go back”, demanding to know why Modi had been silent for five days on Vemula’s death.

After the three protesters were ejected, Modi said, “When there is news that a youth of my country, Rohith, was compelled to commit suicide, what his family must have gone through. Mother India has lost a son. There will be reasons, there will be politics [surrounding it] but the fact remains that a mother has lost her son. I feel the pain very well.”

But the irony is that the three young men who forced the prime minister to speak up have been meted the same treatment as Vemula. They were evicted from the university hostel room, and two of them were booked under Section 151 (disturbance of public peace) of the Indian Penal Code. Like Vemula, they have been punished for voicing dissent – for actually following the ideas of Dr BR Ambedkar, after whom their university is named. The three, one of whom is a gold medallist in human rights, ensured that their knowledge wasn’t confined to classrooms and exams, as Ambedkar had exhorted. Instead, they used it to stand up for Vemula, Akhlaque, Kalburgi and Dabholkar.

A mother’s pain

Modi’s words on Vemula raise more questions than they answer. He called Vemula “a son of Mother India” – but why, then, has he failed to sack the two ministers who got Vemula and others expelled by repeatedly calling them “anti-national”? Why not ask Amit Shah to sack Bharatiya Janata Party General Secretary P Muralidhar Rao who, in a series of tweets, demanded a probe into Vemula’s organisation, the Ambedkar Students’ Association, for its “anti-national” linkages?

A prominent BJP leader, Subramanian Swamy, called those who protested for justice for Vemula “dogs”. Can Modi tell us if Nirmal, Arya and Nigam are “dogs” or “sons of Mother India”?

Modi quoted Ambedkar’s exhortation to “educate, agitate, organise” – are not the protesters at Hyderabad Central University and elsewhere, including the three students at Ambedkar University, following his advice in true spirit? Also, how does the prime minister explain the penchant BJP leaders (VK Singh, Swamy, and Modi himself) have for dog analogies when it comes to Dalits, Muslims and those who speak up for the rights of these sections?

Modi also needs to answer if he can imagine the pain of a mother who was denied the right to bury her son according to the norms of her Mala community. As per news reports, the police cheated her and cremated him secretly, away from his grieving friends and his village. In death, as in life, Vemula was denied dignity. On my visit to the Hyderabad Central University campus, Vemula’s fellow students (the tears and rage in whose eyes were in strong contrast to Modi’s theatrics) kept asking why Vemula’s body was treated as a shameful secret to be burned in a hurry.

Modi said he could “feel the pain” of the mother who had lost her son. But can he feel the pain of Vemula’s Dalit mother when P Muralidhar Rao questions her son’s Dalit status? Why is the BJP parading Vemula’s father’s statement that he belongs to Other Backward Classes (something no-one denies)? The position of the law on the matter is clear: a person born to a Dalit mother can avail of Scheduled Caste reservations if he or she can show that they “did not have any advantageous start in life but on the contrary suffered the deprivations, indignities, humilities and handicaps like any other member of the community to which his/her mother belonged”.

Vemula’s mother said that his father had abandoned the family before his birth, and she single-handedly brought him up. The Supreme Court’s verdict in January 2012 in Rameshbhai Dabhai Naika versus State of Gujarat specifically mentioned cases of “a pregnant tribal or Scheduled Caste woman, abandoned by her forward caste husband, who would go back to her people and community” as cases in which the offspring would be doubtlessly Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe.

Modi’s teary-eyed performance and choked voice was belied by his careful choice of words. He often flaunts his own caste status, calling himself “ati pichde parivar mein paida hua gareeb ma ka beta”; he referred to Ambedkar as “Dalit maa ka beta”. But he was careful not to call Vemula the son of a Dalit mother – something that would have silenced his party leaders who are accusing Vemula of falsifying his Dalit status.

At Hyderabad Central University, the students’ movement distributed copies of Vemula’s writings and Facebook posts. One of those holds a clue as to how he viewed his identity and his relationship with his mother’s life and struggle:

“Who is Gurram Jashuva and why is it important to remember him on his death anniversary day (July 24th)? Mahakavi Gurram Jashuva was the first compelling organic Dalit voice in Telugu literature, who exposed the hypocrisy of caste ideology. Jashuva was born to a Dalit (Madiga) woman and Golla (BC) father. He, in his whole life strongly asserted his mother’s identity and voiced for abolishing of untouchability and for women’s rights… He was humiliated, subjected to an intense mental agony and treated as a literary outcaste by the scholarly world that was dominated by the upper castes….”

No doubt, Vemula had every legal right to claim a Dalit identity and avail caste-based reservations, as established by the 2012 court verdict. Yet, the police are inquiring into his caste status and BJP leaders are calling Vemula and his mother liars, much in the same way that the meat in Akhlaque’s fridge was investigated. For them, the victim – whether Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim or women – is the accused.

But more than that, it is clear from Vemula’s post on Jashuva that it was probably a conscious political choice for him to “strongly assert his mother’s identity” as a tribute to her struggles in bringing him up, as a way of embracing Dalit identity with pride. It is this that the BJP leaders and social media hecklers, with their Manusmriti mind-set, simply cannot begin to grasp.

Ambedkar and Modi's politics

On November 12, 2015, Modi was greeted with protests in London. While there, he parried questions from the press by quoting Ambedkar. A post by Rohit on the same date reads: “Wherever Modi was welcomed with strong protests, he brings out Ambedkar’s name. Modi’s mentioning of Babasaheb’s name and social justice term in UK Assembly is frustratingly ironical when his party members kill Dalits and Muslims on a daily basis.”

Hearing Modi quote Ambedkar at the BR Ambedkar University, even as Dalit students raising slogans in Ambedkar’s name were evicted from his presence, one was reminded of Vemula’s post. Vemula was an activist of the Ambedkar Students Association. His ideology informed his activism. He helped organise a protest against Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s disruption of the screening of a documentary on the Muzaffarnagar communal violence, because for him Ambedkar was not just a political prop. He remembered that Ambedkar wrote: “If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt be the greatest calamity for this country. It is a menace to liberty, equality and fraternity. It is incompatible with democracy. It must be stopped at any cost.”

Vemula was branded “anti-national” in life, as in death, for having organised a protest against Yakub Memon’s hanging. He did so because Ambedkar declared that “the proper thing for this county to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether”, and because the hanging of an innocent man for crimes committed by others affronted his sense of justice. If Vemula is being branded anti-national for opposing death penalty and opposing the vision of Hindu Rashtra, will the BJP admit that, by the same yardstick, Ambedkar too would have to be called anti-national?

Vemula understood the spirit of Ambedkar’s philosophy. Modi, with his RSS training, simply fails to. One of the most glaring examples of this failure is the description used by Modi to praise Ambedkar. In a hagiography of former RSS chief MS Golwalkar, Modi described Ambedkar as a “modern Manu”. The man who burnt the Manusmriti, who abhorred and rejected all that Manu stood for, is called the modern Manu. Modi simply could not understand what an insult to Ambedkar that was. How could he? The RSS taught him, after all, that Manusmriti should have been India’s Constitution (as mentioned in the issue of November 30, 1949 of RSS mouthpiece Organiser).

The point is that Modi and his party can’t have it both ways – they can’t use Ambedkar as a shield when faced with questions about their lack of respect for the Constitution, and at the same time brand political activism in the name of Ambedkar as “anti-national”.

Branding dissent as disloyalty

There are many who argue that Vemula’s suicide can’t be blamed on administrative and government decisions. But can we at least stop denying that his suspension, expulsion and subsequent academic and financial hardships contributed in large measure to his frustration and sense of betrayal? Is it not an atrocity that a bright, promising young scholar, who hoped not only to touch the stars and be a science writer, but also to change an unjust society, was made conscious of the “fatal accident of his birth”? That even in a university, he could not be “treated as a mind”, but was “reduced to his immediate identity”.

The question is: what led to his suspension and expulsion?

There is really no escaping the fact that Vemula was punished – in the absence of evidence of any guilt – because a local BJP MLC, and then the Union Labour Minister and Union HRD Ministry chose to escalate an ordinary campus-level political disagreement to the level of “anti-national activity”. They vindictively decided to “teach a lesson” to students who had gotten into an argument with an ABVP leader. Opposing the ABVP was branded by them as anti-national.

Medical records – filed as affidavits in court – show that the ABVP leader had lied about having been severely injured by members of the Ambedkar Students Association. His medical examination showed that at best he suffered mild scratches. He was later admitted in hospital for appendicitis – which, the doctor said, could not be the consequence of any beating.

The whole matter could have ended there. The Proctorial Enquiry had all the above findings at their disposal. Even if they were inclined to suspect a minor clash between ASA and ABVP members, they could have dispensed the matter with a warning to all parties.

But the shadow of BJP VIPs hung over the matter right from the start, forcing the Proctorial enquiry to disregard the lack of evidence and recommend suspension of the five ASA activists. Confronted by the lack of evidence and challenged on the basis for the Proctorial recommendations, the earlier vice-chancellor revoked the suspension and promised a fresh enquiry. But the new appointee, Appa Rao, failed to order a fresh enquiry, and allowed the Executive Council to expel the students.

The vice chancellor claims there was no choice – the High Court where the ABVP leader’s mother had filed a case had sought an ‘Action Taken Report’. But surely the action taken could have been a fresh enquiry? Surely, the vice chancellor could have informed the court that based on the contrary evidence of the medical records and the police, he could not end the career of five students?

The decision to expel the students and impose what amounted to a social boycott (barring them from access to hostels, messes and common spaces) appeared a step to appease the HRD Ministry, which was sending letters seeking action on a letter by Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya that had branded the ASA as “casteist, extremist and anti-national”.

The ABVP leader felt slighted at having to issue a written apology to Dalit students (in violation of well-established but unwritten feudal norms that prevail on many campuses). Dattatreya and the HRD Ministry were behaving as muscle for the RSS – they were avenging a slight to “one of their own”. They were telling the Ambedkar Students Association that if they dared to “educate, agitate, organize” against the RSS, they should be prepared to face consequences.

Hyderabad Central University wasn’t an exception. As Modi sheds fake tears for Vemula, those who honour Vemula’s memory continue to be harassed by BJP and RSS supporters. At the Haryana Central University in Mahendragarh, some faculty members and around 30 students held a candlelight march seeking justice for Vemula. The ABVP unit there circulated photos of the march, claiming it was for the Pathankot militants and filed a police complaint seeking action against the “anti-nationals”. Their complaint claimed, among other things, that it was anti-national to raise slogans against Brahminism and saffron terrorism. So, if Vemula was branded anti-national for opposing death penalty for Yakub Memon, students and teachers are being branded anti-national by ABVP now for seeking justice for Vemula.

ABVP and serial violence

The contrast is all the more glaring when one sees the silence of the HRD Ministry on ABVP’s unspoken veto on public meetings on many campuses. I too have been a victim of ABVP’s violence and vandalism at Lucknow University, where the saffron outfit held me hostage in the Rector’s room and prevented me from giving a talk after branding me “anti-national” for opposing honour crimes. Recently, Siddharth Varadarajan, a noted journalist, was held hostage and prevented from giving a talk at Allahabad University. When I spoke at Allahabad University, the ABVP could not disrupt the talk in view of the huge gathering of students, so it burnt effigies and demanded dismissal of the faculty members who had organised the talk (on women’s rights). These acts of violence by the ABVP received no rebuke, let alone a spate of letters from the HRD Ministry.

In 2006, Professor HS Sabharwal was beaten to death, allegedly by the ABVP, in Ujjain in full public view – yet all accused were acquitted in 2009 because fearful witnesses turned hostile. Did any BJP MP, MLA or leader brand the ABVP anti-national and extremist for that violence?

In 2009, the ABVP reportedly barged into the office of a woman principal of Gayatri Devi College in Indore and roughed her up, causing her to collapse. In September 2012, the ABVP roughed up a Muslim woman student in Mangalore, tearing her sleeves and headscarf. In 2013, students of Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, were beaten allegedly by ABVP for refusing to say “Jai Narendra Modi”, and branded them anti-national for screening Anand Patwardhan’s film Jai Bhim Comrade and hosting a performance of the Kabir Kala Manch. It is the BJP’s blessings that embolden the ABVP to indulge in such habitual violence.

Today, letters by RSS men are becoming powerful weapons. A letter by an RSS man led the HRD Ministry to send letters to the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, seeking a ban on the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle. The same pattern was repeated in Hyderabad Central University. At Banaras Hindu University recently, someone wrote a letter complaining that lectures given by Dr Sandeep Pandey (a faculty members and renowned activist) were “against national interest”. BHU didn’t even wait for letters from the HRD Ministry – it summarily terminated Dr Pandey’s contract.

The universities’ failure in the instances above to respect their autonomy, and their voluntary surrender at the altar of power, should concern us greatly. In HCU, the vice-chancellor chose to set aside his own predecessor’s decision and the findings of a Proctorial enquiry – and instead acted to appease the HRD Ministry. The same was the case in IIT-Madras, which derecognised Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle in response to a similar missive. Lucknow University, after ABVP disrupted my talk, did take action against one ABVP leader – but it also simultaneously expelled an activist of All India Students Association for inviting me. It argued perversely that by inviting me, AISA had created the circumstances for the insult to an “esteemed guest”. Surely, it was the ABVP that had attacked me and it was the university that insulted me by cancelling permission for my talk?

Anti-Dalit hatred

On social media, anyone posting in support of justice for Vemula is being flooded with abusive comments and rants, calling them “shit”; saying Rohith deserved to die; saying Dalit parents should take a lesson and warn their kids not to support Muslims, else they will meet Vemula’s fate; calling to “kill all Dalits”.

At Jawaharlal Nehru University, ABVP supporters can be seen raising slogans of “Brahminvad Zindabad” in a video, in reaction to slogans against casteism.

Others – who are not necessarily BJP supporters – have chosen this occasion to reflect how Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe quotas are an evil measure. Yet others tell us that Vemula was a good, meritorious Dalit, who got admission in the general quota, not SC quota (the implication of this seeming praise, of course, is that those admitted in the SC/ST/OBC quotas lack merit.)

These reactions should be taken seriously – as a small taste of the daily subtle and open hostility that Dalit students face every day on our campuses of higher education.

Vemula’s fate ought to serve as a reminder of the reality of caste-based discrimination in higher education. Over and over, committees headed by eminent people have confirmed such discrimination and recommended measures to end it. A spate of suicides by students (mostly Dalit or socially vulnerable) led the Andhra Pradesh High Court to issue recommendations to universities and higher education institutions in 2013 – none of which seem to have been implemented at HCU or other campuses.

At HCU, I met students from various campuses who told me of the arbitrary punishments and discrimination faced by students everywhere – especially students who are Dalit or Adivasi, Kashmiri, women, or Muslim. Social prejudices that bedevil our society, bedevil our campuses too.

Speaking to the seven students who are on indefinite hunger strike at HCU, I was struck by their clarity. One of them told me that their key demands included measures to protect “every student”. “No student should have to feel vulnerable and helpless in the face of injustice,” they said. “We want specific measures to support and protect Dalit students, yes, but we also want protection for each and every student.” Another added, “Rohith must be the last student in India to feel they are left with no choice but to end their life.”

Finally, I was struck by the HCU students’ wish for unity, for introspection, for conversations. Vemula, as is well known, had left the SFI to join the ASA. Many BJP supporters on social media ask maliciously about whether or not his suicide note mentioned his disappointment with both, which he scratched out. Such questions can and will be addressed – I am sure his HCU comrades, in their grief, ask themselves whether there is anything they could have done to prevent his suicide. These are questions all loved ones ask themselves, when one of their own ends his life.

But these questions must not be used to divert from the fact that he was falsely accused, victimised, expelled and socially boycotted by those who enjoy great power. Vemula might – or might not – have felt conflicted about or hurt by his comrades. But those hurts cannot be equated with the political witch-hunt by the university and Central ministers. After all, those who selectively cite the scratched-out part of his suicide note conveniently forget his far more explicit letter of a couple of weeks back to the vice chancellor, suggesting that if the vice chancellor could not give Dalit students justice, he should at least give them “a good rope” to commit suicide.

I would hope that Vemula’s legacy for activists – like the legacy of balladeer Vilas Ghoghre, that Jai Bhim Comrade reflects on – should be one of more conversations and meaningful introspection, dialogue and solidarity between the Ambedkarite movement, the Marxist movements, the feminist and queer movements, the movements in Kashmir and the North East – in fact, among all those who dream of an egalitarian world, in which we can all see and reach for the stars and breathe free.

One of Vemula’s Facebook posts lists the long saga of Dalit massacres in which the perpetrators went scot-free. Karamchedu. Kilvenmani. Tsundur. Laxmanpur Bathe…

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Bathani Tola appeal against the acquittal of all the accused will be heard by the Supreme Court. Naeemuddin Ansari, who lost six members of his family in that massacre by the Ranvir Sena, wants to be present in court. Bathani Tola, like Rohith Vemula, was punished for daring to agitate and organise against feudal and communal power. They both await justice, as do so many others.

The flame that Vemula lit must not be extinguished. The students’ movement of this country, the people’s movements of this country, will keep it flying high.

Kavita Krishnan is a politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, secretary of the All India Progressive Women Association, and a former joint secretary of the JNU Students’ Union.