They killed our sons

by Nilim Dutta

It goes beyond a story of student groups clashing with each other; Rohith’s story is one of systemic, systematic and organised Dalit persecution at the hands of the Hindutva right

“One of the five students among them committed suicide.

“Like 10 minutes back.

“Don’t know what will happen next. I am going there. I will get back to you.”

This is the message Rakhee Naiding, general secretary of the Bahujan Students’ Front in the University of Hyderabad, had sent me at 8.23pm on January 17, 2016.

Within minutes, there were a quick exchange of calls between us and she confirmed that Rohith Vemula had committed suicide, by hanging himself in a hostel room, as an ultimate mark of protest against discrimination, violence and brutality meted out to Dalits in this nation. Even though he had hanged himself earlier in the evening, it was discovered only around the time Rakhee had messaged me.

It was sometime after December 17, 2015, when we first learnt that five Dalit students of University of Hyderabad were expelled from their hostels, restrained from participating in students’ elections, restrained from entering hostels, administrative building and other common places of the university on the basis of a false complaint against them by a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which is the students’ wing of the Hindutva fundamentalist political dispensation that is in power in Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

While the Indian mainstream focuses on whether the Jawaharlal Nehru University is patriotic enough, the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula has blown the lid off on-campus violence inflicted on low-caste students in India

All Dalit scholars came from an acutely poor background and belonged to the Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA), which had a strong presence in the University of Hyderabad campus. Left with no alternative, they camped out in front of the University Shopping Complex and slept under open skies as a mark of protest.

As time dragged on, and mainstream media took little notice, I started getting worried about their isolation.

On January 14, 2016, I messaged Rakhee to let me know whether they would agree to a legal intervention as it was almost a month now and the longer it dragged on, more the scholars would feel pressured. She was not in the campus then, as she had come back home on vacation. But she promised to take it up as soon as she had returned to the campus.

When she did return two days later, on the afternoon of January 17, 2016, she messaged me that she would take the matter up with the five Dalit scholars facing unjust expulsion.

Even before she could do so, Rohith Vemula took the ultimate step and sacrificed his life in protest against the insidious discrimination they were being subjected to for being Dalits.

Rohith’s death, termed as an institutional murder, turned the spotlight on to the plight of the Dalit, Tribal or Backward Class scholars in University of Hyderabad.

Soon, more such tragic suicides by Dalit, Tribal or Backward Class scholars came to light in the university over the past decade, indicating that there were serious and insidious discrimination at work in an institution which was meant to be an enabling environment to nurture talent towards creating a just and egalitarian 21st century society.

Rohith’s death of course has context and history. The story begins on July 31, 2015, when the Ambedkar Students’ Association, University of Hyderabad, organised a protest in the shopping complex against capital punishment in the wake of the hanging of Yakub Memon the previous day.

As is usual in universities, there was naturally a lot of sloganeering too.

The President of ABVP at the University of Hyderabad, Nandanam Susheel Kumar, found this as an opportunity to try and instigate the Gachibowli police against the dominant Ambedkar Students Association in the campus indulging in allegedly ‘anti-national’ activity by sending a video of the protest. It did not lead to the action he desired.

Thereafter, there was another confrontation between ABVP and ASA over screening of the documentary by Nakul Singh Swahney, “Muzaffarnagar Baaqui Hai”, which exposes the role of the Hindutva fundamentalist in the violence against Muslims in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh in 2013.

On August 3, 2015, Nandanam Susheel Kumar made a derogatory Facebook post on the Ambedkar Students Association, calling them “ASA Goons” in an attempt to provoke them further. He was apparently not in the campus the whole day and returned only later in the night.

In his hostel room that night was his roommate, another Dalit scholar of the university, Anand Gadekar. Nandanam Susheel Kumar lived in the MH-E Annex Hostel of the University of Hyderabad in room no 113 on the first floor. Anand recalls that night that Susheel Kumar was a little tensed that night.

Sometime past midnight, there were knocks on the door of their hostel room. Susheel Kumar stopped Anand from opening the door and started making phone calls. From the conversation he overheard, and that can be verified by CDR of Susheel Kumar’s cellphone number, Susheel Kumar apparently spoke to the SHO of Gachibowli Police Station, members of ABVP and others he couldn’t exactly figure out.

Only after these conversations were over, Susheel Kumar gestured to Anand to open the door.

Outside were the five Dalits scholars of ASA led by Dontha Prashanth and Rohith Vemula. They confronted him over the derogatory Facebook post and asked him to not just remove it but also apologise. Even as they argued, Susheel Kumar and Anand came out with them to the cycle stand in front of the hostel.

It was sometime after December 17, 2015, when we first learned that five Dalit students of University of Hyderabad (UoH) were expelled from their hostels, restrained from participating in students’ elections, restrained from entering hostels, administrative building and other common places of the university on the basis of a false complaint against them by a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of the BJP.

Soon University Security Staff and a Police Officer from the Gachibowli Police Station arrived. By then, other boarders of the hostel too came out and were watching what was happening there.

The confrontation ended with Susheel Kumar deleting the Facebook post and agreeing to sign an apology in writing that he would upload in his Facebook page. They all went to the security office at the main gate of the university and signed this. The handwritten apology letter is countersigned by a security officer as witness with the time recorded. Thereafter, Susheel Kumar went out of the university with his elder brother.

There are two important facts to note here.

First, there was no mob that went to Nandanam Susheel Kumar’s room but the five Dalit scholars of the Ambedkar Students’ Association. This is also borne out by the fact that the subsequent inquiry committees of the university also found only these five students to have gone to Susheel Kumar’s room.

Second, there was no assault as both university security staff and a police officer was present.

Third, since there was no assault, Nandanam Susheel Kumar walked out of the University of Hyderabad with his brother without any possible injury.

While the five Dalit scholars, including Rohith, must have thought that this was the end of the matter, their trouble was only beginning.

Nandanam Susheel Kumar, in the meanwhile, admitted himself in Archana Hospital, a private hospital feigning severe abdominal pain due to assault. He underwent surgery for appendicitis and was discharged after recovery. The report, signed by one Dr. Chenna Reddy, General Physician, reads:

“This 26 year-old male admitted with alleged history of assault by 40 members at around 2:30 am on 4.8.2015. Complains of pain in abdomen and SOB. Patient managed conservatively for two days in hospital – suddenly patient complained severe abdomen pain in right iliac fossa with history of loose stool. USG abdomen taken on 7.8.2015 show diffuse tenderness with tenderness at Mcburney’s point?? Acute appendicitis.”

Nowhere in the hospital report is there any mention of any external injury that would have been certain if a sever assault had taken place on Nandanam Susheel Kumar. A perusal of clinical literature would reveal that appendicitis from severe external injury to the abdominal region, referred to as ‘blunt trauma appendicitis’, is extremely rare and there would be tell tale trauma externally. No such injuries were found on Susheel Kumar and none is on record.

That however did not stop Nandanam Susheel Kumar to have a complain filed in the Gachibowli Police Station and have the case, Cr. No. 296/2015 u/s 448/341/506/323 r/w 147 IPC.

It must be noted that if the police had found that Nandanam Susheel Kumar had been severely assaulted that resulted in blunt trauma appendicitis; it would have been considered causing ‘grievous hurt’ and Section 325 of IPC would have been added. In an affidavit filed by C.V. Anand, IPS, Commissioner of Police, Cyberabad Commissionerate, before the Honourable High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad, on 3rd October 2015, this is once again iterated:

“I humbly state and submit that the Medical Officer Dr. Chenna Reddy of Archana Hospital Madeenagauda, Hyderabad who treated the injured issued a Medical Certificate on 12.8.2015 stating that the injuries sustained by Susheel Kumar during the incident were “SIMPLE” in nature but during course of treatment it was revealed that Susheel Kumar was suffering from appendicitis and was operated for that. He also stated that during the examination it came to know appendicitis is not due to the result of any assault and it is coincidental that existing ailment was diagnosed and treated when Susheel Kumar got admitted.”

It is on the claim of this fictional assault that Nandanam Susheel Kumar, ABVP president of the University of Hyderabad, began a series of mala fide prosecution that culminated in the expulsion from the hostels of the five Dalit scholars who had confronted him that night, and eventually drove Rohith Vemula to take his own life.

In this entire series of sordid events leading up to Rohith’s death, leaders at the very top of the BJP, and not one but two Union cabinet ministers were complicit.

Much has already been written and revealed in the Indian press about how the Dalit scholars were hounded thereafter and at least one of them driven to his death for me to need to repeat it here.

What is to be noted is that over a period of more than five months, leaders of the BJP, from a member of legislative council right up to the Union ministers in Narendra Modi’s cabinet, Bandaru Dattatrey and Smriti Irani exerted enormous pressure to continuously harass the Dalit scholars with one administrative measure after other, abusing all their official authority, to portray them as anti-national and deserving to be punished in a manner that ends their academic careers which they had nurtured with enormous toil and brilliance. Their only sin was that they have stood up to the ideology of the Hindutva Right and continuously asserted their Dalit identity in resistance.

Rohith’s death and the heartbreakingly eloquent letter he left behind has stirred India’s conscience and engulfed the government of Narendra Modi in one of the most serious crisis of credibility in its less than two-years tenure.

Nilim Dutta is the Director of Strategic Research & Analysis Organisation. He also serves as the chairman of the Unified People’s Movement.

He tweets @NilimDutta

Meeting Rohith’s mum

It was on February 4, 2016 that I could finally meet Rohith Vemula’s mother and brother in an undisclosed location where the family has found retreat in from the constant glare of the media and harassment by local authorities as an attempt was made to rake up an entirely false allegation that Rohith Vemula was not a Dalit and that he obtained the caste certificate he was not entitled to. That this was a lie has been laid to rest by facts.

Rohith’s mother, Radhika, is a remarkably courageous and strong woman. Even though she was in enormous pain, she kept her composure and over a conversation that lasted for more than two hours, she narrated to me the enormous struggle the family endured to reach a stage where Rohith could enrol for a Ph.D. in a premier university.

Adopted by a middle class family belonging to the Backward Class Vadera caste, Radhika was married off to a man of that caste when she was not even 18. Unlike many reports in the media, Radhika clarified, her husband knew that she was a Dalit. This was a constant source of friction in her husband’s household. When her children were born, her in-laws wouldn’t even touch them.

Finally, after her third child, Raja, was born, unable and unwilling to face domestic abuse and caste discrimination within the household any longer, she came away with her children to a small one-room dwelling in a Dalit neighbourhood to make a living and raise her children as a single mother. Among the three, Rohith was the most gifted and he became the family’s pride and aspiration. She narrated the ordeal they went through when he was expelled and his future was put in jeopardy.

When we were finally leaving, standing at the door, she finally broke down. Amidst uncontrollable sobs, she kept telling us, “I goaded him to continue his studies and earn a Ph.D. because I wanted him to become a person of eminence which was naturally due to him. I goaded him to enrol in the university and they killed him.”

I could find no words of solace to say to her and came away with moist eyes and a lump in my throat.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I would have to soon meet many more Radhika Vemula’s who too had lost their sons to the University of Hyderabad or other such premier instructions of this nation who exacts a terribly price on brilliant young men and women if they are Dalit, Adivasi or from marginalised Backward Classes.

Their deaths are a blot on the principles of equality and justice this republic was founded on. This battle cannot end with just protests and writing about their stories. This battle shall be waged till the walls of inequality and caste discrimination are destroyed with every lawful means we have in our hands.—ND

Rohith Vemula’s suicide note

Good morning,

I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write.

I loved science, stars, nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs coloured. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.

The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of stardust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.

I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.

May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.

I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this.

People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds.

If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get seven months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that.

Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive.

“From shadows to the stars.”

Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.

To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You love d me very much. I wish all the very best for the future.

For one last time,

Jai Bheem

I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself.

No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act.

This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this.

By the numbers: Dalits in India

Total Dalit population in India: 166,635,700

In 37.8pc of the villages, Dalits made to sit separately in government schools

In 25.7pc of the villages, Dalits prevented from entering ration shops

In 33pc of the villages, public health workers refuse to visit Dalit homes

In 23.5pc of Dalit villages, mail is not delivered to homes

In 14.4pc of the Dalit villages, Dalits are not per mitted to enter the ‘panchayat’ local government building

In 12pc of Dalit villages, people are denied access to or forced to form separate lines at polling booths

In 48.4pc of the Dalit villages, citizens are denied access to water sources

In 35pc of villages surveyed, Dalits are barred from selling produce in local markets

In 47pc of villages with milk cooperatives, Dalits are prevented from selling milk, and 25pc prevent Dalits from buying milk

In 25pc of villages, Dalits are paid lower wages than non-Dalits, work longer hours, have more delayed waged and suffer more verbal and physical abuse

In 37pc of villages, Dalit workers are paid wages from a distance to avoid physical contact 64pc of Dalits are restricted from entering Hindu temples

In almost 50pc of villages, Dalits are prevented from accessing cremation grounds

In 73pc of villages, Dalits not permitted to enter non-Dalit homes

In 70pc of villages, Dalits and non-Dalits cannot eat together

Source: International Dalit Solidarity Network

Caste critique: voices in the Indian media

“Textbooks ridden with caste hegemony, the atmosphere that reinforces alienation within college campuses, classmates who take pride in their dominant caste status, teachers who condemn them to miserable fates and thus enact a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure — these are the impossible challenges for Dalit students to surmount. Caste which ingrains the notion of intellectual superiority, when replicated within the boundaries of academia, becomes a poison potent enough to kill and consume lives.

~ Meena Kandasamy, The Hindu

“There has been lot of noise about a new aspirational class which is impatient with the politics of the day. Was Vemula not an aspiring young mind? Why then did he have to feel lonely and empty?

~ Apoorvanand, Scroll.in

“Since the time BJP came to power at the Centre, nefarious means are being used to impose RSS ideology.

~ Kumari Mayawati, chief of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), during a debate on Rohith’s suicide in the Lok Sabha on February 24, 2016

“What Rohith understood as valuable in a man meant nothing to the world around him, beyond the constraints of his identity and its thin possibilities. ~Manash Bhattacharjee, The Hindu

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, February 28th, 2016