Smriti Irani’s Press Conference on Rohith Vemula case. Few Unanswered Questions

 

Smriti Irani: The story lies in what she did not say

“If Dalit is such a big issue, then remove that word from the constitution. Let everyone be equal.” This is the sms I received in my Whats-app no. from my Friend Mrs. (**name omitted**) Choudhury, probably after she saw my write up (please note, it is saw and not read as she does not read. She informed me few days back that she does not like to read anything.) on the suicide the Dalit student in HCU.

I failed to understand what exactly she meant.

A 26 years old student had to commit suicide because he was a Dalit. Is that not a big issue?

Probably what she tried to say was that she is against caste based reservation. So she does not care about this incident.

Yes, we are against caste based reservation. But at the same time we are against discrimination . We are against caste system.

Many upper caste Hindus, just like my friend Mrs. Choudhury, are against caste based reservation. But they are not against caste system.

Mrs. Choudhury, hope you people learn to oppose caste system as well along with caste based reservation.

In less than a decade, 23 Dalit students in India have committed suicide in premier educational institutions like AIIMS and IIT.

(Reference: https://thedeathofmeritinindia.wordpress.com/ . Please watch the documentary The Death of Merit.)

Don’t you think something is seriously wrong some where? Is it not high time we stop discrimination ?

But why am I picking the comment of Mrs Choudhury? Becasue she is not alone. She voiced what many upper caste Hindus feel. They echo what Smriti Irani said in the press conference on Rohith Vemula case, without even understanding the political game of the Saffron Brigade.

Press Conference of Smriti Irani on Rohith Vemula case

Union HRD minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday said the suicide of a student in Hyderabad Central University was not a dalit versus non-dalit issue as was being projected by some with a malicious intent to ignite passion.
“There has been a malicious attempt to project the issue as a caste battle. The truth is that, it is not,” the HRD minister said addressing a news conference.

Alleging misrepresentation of facts, the Union HRD minister said the suicide note by the dalit student does not talk about any MP or political party.

Irani said the case was being “misrepresented” and that she was compelled to clear the air on it.

“I am here to clear certain misrepresentation of facts on the suicide of Rohith,” she said.

The entire effort of the press conference was to prove that this was not a Dalit versus non Dalit issue, and that it was the job of the media to highlight this one fact. The effort of all should be to de-fuse the flames of casteism at this stage.

Few Unanswered Questions

1.If this is not a Dalit versus non Dalit issue. what is it? A straight law and order problem? Is that how the government is looking at it?

2. If ‘Yes’, then why did the HRD Ministry intervene in a “small” issue? Send as many as four reminders to the University authorities for action on Minister Dattatreya’s letter?

3. And that too on a letter which had little to do with law and order but raised the highly political issues of nationalism, casteism and extremism. Why?

4. Clearly the HCU must have written back with the action taken after all the reminders. Did the HRD Minister feel that the punishment of the five Dalit students coming from economically weak homes was justified?

5. What was the crime? Irani did not mention it in her press conference and nor did her Ministry state it in all the letters it wrote to the HCU.

6. How is it not a Dalit versus non Dalit issue when all the five students rusticated and thrown out of their hostels were Dalits? And one of them committed suicide leaving a letter speaking of discrimination.

7. What about an enquiry into the ABVP’s conduct on campus? There is sufficient evidence from students who are speaking now of intimidation and harassment? Will Irani personally order this?

8. What similarity does Irani see in a not so old incident where the IIT-Madras derecognised the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle (APSC), a student association, following an anonymous complaint that it was instigating protests against the policies of the Centre and creating “hatred” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hindus. Was it not true that the HRD again wrote to the IIT management to intervene on an “anonymous complaint” and take action against the largely Dalit students organisation?.

Let’s Understand the Game

Saffron brigade is in a dilemma, whether to en cash the political significance of the Dalit as a vote bank or follow its Brahminical indoctrination to harass and victimise them as ‘lower castes’.

This was evident in the press conference held by HRD Minister Smriti Irani. Irani had to  give out the caste identities of the others in the case. For instance the ABVP student Sushil Kumar who sparked off the controversy and claimed he had to have a surgery because of violence by the members of the Ambedkar Students Association, it has been made known is an OBC. And the Minister Bandaru Dattatreya who had written to Irani alleging that HCU had become “a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national policies” is a Yadav.

Clearly Irani was directed by the concern in the Hindutva brigade of the fall out of this incident on state elections, with Uttar Pradesh of particular concern.

Here, the effort has been since Muzaffarabad just before the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 to break the voter affinity between Dalits, Muslims and other backwards through violence, rumours, house to house propaganda, so that regional parties like the Bahujan Samaj become irrelevant and ineffective. It is a fact that of the many small, not reported incidents of violence in UP, there are several cases where the clash reported has involved the minorities versus the Dalits, creating tensions and fissures where none existed before.

In the broader political game plan the BJP has place for the Dalit, as a fractured, isolated vote bank with little power to influence the final outcome; or as part of the upper caste grouping as being “Hindu” and hence more beneficial than alliances with Muslims that Mayawati and the BSP, for instance, had forged in the past.

But in the field the indoctrinated disdain remains. And this comes out over and over again, particularly in the campuses as the Dalit students here—unlike the villages of UP—have the platform to speak out, at times to ensure that the discrimination does not remain silent, at least not beyond a point. Although the message from Vemula’s suicide is that even in central Universities the harassment can reach a point where the student feels he has no recourse to justice, and commits suicide.

The ABVP has been terrorising the University campuses across the country. In HCU the Ambedkar Association students ran into straight confrontation with the ABVP, the students wing of the BJP/RSS, over the execution of Yakub Memon. This is part of the intolerance whereby the right of a person to dissent with the controlling right wing view is dubbed anti-national, extremist.

We strongly condemn these.

We shall Overcome.

My birth is my fatal accident: Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide letter.

Rohith Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar committed suicide on Sunday, 17 Jan 2016, leading to protests across Hyderabad Central University.  He was among the five research scholars who were suspended by Hyderabad Central University (HCU) in August last year. Rohith was known for his active participation in student politics which the Saffron Brigade did not like.

This incident stems from an incident that occurred in August last year, the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA), along with Ambedkar Reading Group, University of Delhi, Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle, IIT Madras, ASA (TISS) in Mumbai and concerned students from IIT Bombay issued a joint statement condemning an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) attack on screening of Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hain. Later, ASA’s University of Hyderabad chapter organised a protest demonstration.

Five dalit students were asked to vacate their accommodation in January 2016 and were asked to find different quarters for themselves. Their living spaces were locked by the hostel administration. One of the reasons cited for this was that the students opposed the death sentences awarded to Yakub Memon.

JAC said the student was hurt due to the social boycott. The research scholars were expelled from their hostel in December. They were denied access to hostels and other buildings on the campus except their classroom, library and conferences and workshops related to their subject of study. They were evicted from their rooms on January and since then they were forced to sleep in a makeshift tent on the campus.

The screening of Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hain was stalled by the ABVP and according to the report on Counter Currents, derogatory remarks against ASA students were made on the Facebook page. When an apology was demanded, local BJP and RSS supporters pressurised the vice-chancellor of the university to expel the ASA leaders based on “false allegations”.

This did not stick because of student protests.The students (Dontha Prashanth, Rohith Vemula, Vijay Kumar, Seshu Chemudugunta and Sunkanna) were also denied permission to participate in the student union elections.

After the then VC’s retirement, new chancellor — Apparao — was appointed. Apparao promptly dismissed the students after receiving a letter from the HRD ministry. The move was recommended by Bandaru Dattatreya, Secunderabad MP and Minister of Labour and Employment, who called the ASA group “casteist, extremist and anti-national”.

 

Here is the letter he wrote before committing suicide.

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 always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan.

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 colored. 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 star dust. In every 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.

My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.

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 7 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 loved 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.

Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone.

Hindutwabada-Brahmanyabada killed Rohith Vemula

Rohith, in his last letter wrote “No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself.”

Rohith is wrong.

Rohith was given a death sentence by the Brahmanyabada, the crux of Hindu religion.

Sombak of Ramayana, Eklavya of Mahabharatha or Chuni Kotal, Ruma Das, Rohith Vemula of todays electronic age are still victims of Brahmanyabada.

(Chuni Kotal, a tribal woman, first woman graduate among her tribe of the Lodha Shavars, was pursuing her MA in Anthropology. She committed suicide on 16th August, 1992, after she faced repeated verbal abuse from her teacher at the Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University. Her classmates testified to the fact that she was taunted because of her identity as a Lodha woman. The professor (Falguni Chakarvarti) (rumored to have got his appointment due to backing of the then ruling party, the CPI-M) would repeatedly mock her desire to get an M.A degree. He would stress that being an Adivashi woman, Chuni had grown too big for her boots and threatened that he would not let her pass the examination when she filed a complaint against him. Frightened by the repeated taunts, Chuni committed suicide on the night of independence day in the year 1992.)

(Ruma Das came from a Namashudra (Dalit) family in Ranaghat, Nadia. Her father, a carpenter would remain bedridden for most of the year. She had two younger siblings, a brother and a sister. Significantly, since their financial condition was poor, the father decided to educate only his elder daughter, hoping someday she would get a government job and alleviate their condition. The other two siblings could not continue their education and now do odd jobs. Clearly, under such circumstances Ruma must have put a lot of hope on this job especially when her name had appeared on the merit list. But, when she found out that appointment had been given to the candidate who had ranked lower, she broke down completely. That very night (24th May, 2014) she consumed poison and committed suicide.

The recruitment of candidates under the West Bengal School Service Commission has always been tampered with political interference. Irrespective of political colour, the ruling party has always been perceived as giving undue favours to its members/supporters, often in blatant disregard of constitutional rules or morals or the socio-economic predicament of the successful candidates who have no doubt been working very hard and waiting with relentless patience for their appointments.

Dependence on what is roughly called “party connections” for jobs or services offered by the state is a pervasive phenomenon in the state’s political culture.)

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in ‘Annihilation of caste’, wrote that basis of caste system lies in the Hindu scriptures, Vedas , Shastras,  Srutis and Smritis. To  annihilate caste system, one needs to apply dynamite and destroy these.

“You have got to apply the dynamite to the Vedas and the Shastras, which deny any part to reason; to the Vedas and Shastras, which deny any part to morality. You must destroy the religion of the Shrutis and the Smritis. Nothing else will avail. This is my considered view of the matter.”  – (Annihilation of Caste section 22 paragraph 26 page 36)

It is high time that we open our eyes and oppose the violence of caste system. Fight against religious violence.

It time that we ban all the institutional religion.

Let humanism be the only religion.

Our Solidarity and Demand

• We demand immediate arrest of Union Ministers Smriti Irani, Bandaru Dattatreya and University vice chancellor of HCU.
• We demand resignation of Union ministers Smriti Irani (Minister of Human Resource Development) and Bandaru Dattatreya (Minister of Labour and Employment).
• Denounce institutional Hindutva casteist terrorism lead by Brahmanical BJP.
• Immediate revocation of the VC’s orders expelling the 4 other scholars-Dontha Prashantha, Seshu Chemudugunta, Vijay Kumar, P.Sundar ,Sunkanna Velpula.

Smriti Irani should also be arrested and convicted in the institutional murder of the Dalit brother and the ostracization of the 4 scholars.
This is not the first death by a Dalit on the University of Hyderabad campus.

Ms. Educated Irani states that the central government has nothing to do with the suicides.
Letters written by her Ministry from New Delhi to the University of Hyderabad VC suggest otherwise.

Her ministry’s secretaries egg the VC on to take action against the 5 scholars.

Here are the letters:

 

 

By: Debashis Rationalist.

General Secretary, Rationalists’ and Humanists’ Forum of India.

 

 

Red Flag Day: Soldiers raped a 14 year old. Where’s the outrage?

The Crime

• A 14-year-old girl was allegedly raped by 3 soldiers on the Howrah-Amritsar Express on 27 December
• The jawans reportedly forced the girl to consume liquor. One person has been arrested

The denial

• Incidents of harassment by soldiers on trains are not uncommon. But they don’t get reported
• We have placed armed forces on a pedestal

More in the story

• What exactly happened?
• Have their been earlier instances?
• Why do soldiers often get away?

They are our saviours, the last hope in the face of external threats, natural calamities, riots or terror attacks. Our soldiers are our shield against all dangers.

We entrust them with the responsibility of protecting the nation, so that rest of us can work in peace. They are an essential prerequisite for the progress of the country.

But imagine a situation in which the fence starts eating the crop. What happens when the protectors who evoke a sense of pride, discipline and conscientiousness in every citizen, turn into predators?

This happened on 27 December, when three army jawans raped a 14-year-old girl aboard the Howrah-Amritsar Express. The jawans reportedly forced the girl to consume liquor. The lust that flowed out from behind the olive coloured uniform trampled upon the dignity of the victim for hours.

She was on her way to meet a friend in Punjab. Her only fault was that she boarded the compartment reserved for army personnel.

The girl was thrown off the train in the middle of the night at Madhupur in Jharkhand. She was unconscious at that time. The atrocity came to light when the victim narrated her sufferings to the railway police. One of the culprits has been nabbed. Search operations are on to nab the others.

On 27 December, 3 army jawans raped a 14-year-old girl aboard the Howrah-Amritsar Express

The sordid saga is reminiscent of the rape and murder of Manorama in Manipur. The sheer brutality perpetrated by the army men in this case still gives one goosebumps. However, the army as well as the civil administration remained indifferent to Manorama’s plight.

Women had to come out naked on the streets in protest to stir their conscience. The banners raised by them read ‘Indian army rape us’.

Yet we hear of incidents of rape by army men in different parts of country. The rape on the Howrah-Amritsar Express is only the latest such incident.

 

Incidents of soldiers misbehaving with civilians in trains are not uncommon. Most cases go unreported

 Is it not shameful that those who should have guarded the honour of that girl turned out to be vulturous to her? That night, not one but three beasts tarnished the respect associated with the uniform they were wearing.

Are we lenient on soldiers?

Incidents of soldiers misbehaving with civilians in trains are not uncommon. And most of the time cases don’t get registered as civilian commuters are too afraid take on armymen.

For instance in 2012, a few drunk soldiers allegedly tried to outrage the modesty of a group of female research scholars on the Kerala Express. The girls, who were from Kerala, eventually refused to file a complaint. The reason they was that the RPF told them that they would have to come to Andhra Pradesh repeatedly to pursue the complaint as the incident had taken place in that state.

We have overlooked the rot in the army for long. Most cases of misconduct within the defense forces remain behind the iron curtain of discipline and a separate code of law. Even then, news of discrimination against women and exploitation of junior personnel keep surfacing every now and then. Defense forces are not immune from financial misconduct either. We have seen scams in the purchase of equipment, shoes and even coffins, often with the complicity of senior army officers.

We should ignore the misdeeds of soldiers?

Just wearing a uniform and holding a gun cannot be a reason of pride. A chest adorned with medals is not the sole criteria of glory. A teacher, peon, labourer or farmer contributes no less to the motherland. Their sacrifices deserve equal accolades.

Yet, it is increasingly hard to raise fingers at men-in-uniform in this era of jingoism. We love to tear apart politicians, public servants, even film stars and sportspersons at the drop of the hat. But we are not willing to utter a word against the misdeeds of our defense forces.

But the trauma of the 14-year-old girl begs that we break our silence.

Courtesy: The Catch News