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.