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.
RATIONALIST DEBASHIS 