No Commitment to Anyone

The suicide of Rohith Vemula came as a rude shock to the nation. A 27-year old handsome Ph.D scholar committed suicide in the University of Hyderabad campus in response to his suspension and consequent ouster from the university hostel. It was also alleged that the authorities had stopped paying him his stipend of Rs. 25,000 per month in last July. This much is enough to evoke cries of victimization from the hypersensitive media, but compounded on these sordid facts was the realization that Vemula belonged to a Dalit community. The lid of the kettle of allegations was immediately blown and everybody blamed the authorities for causing the death of an earnest scholar who wanted to pursue astrophysics, or that was what he mentioned in his suicide note. Charges for abetting the suicide of a Dalit boy was charged against the Vice Chancellor of the University and also against Mr. B. Dattatreya, who is the local MP.

But, what exactly was the sequence of events that ended up in Vemula’s death? Is he such an innocent victim as the others make him out to be? If we look back just seven months to July 2015, we see a 53-year old chartered accountant named Yakub Memon hanged in Nagpur jail after he was condemned to death eight years ago. His crime was to take part in India’s largest terrorist bloodbath in 1993 in Mumbai. The Memon brothers and their accomplices planted lethal explosives in Mumbai’s suburban trains and set them to explode at just after office hours when the rush will be at the maximum. The targeted victims were the lower and middle classes who use the railway system and in order to maximize the death toll. The operation was staged perfectly and 277 people perished. In an instance of the most shameful form of minority appeasement, the government was reluctant to hang Memon in fear of antagonizing the Muslim votes. When the Modi government assumed power in 2014, Memon’s day were numbered and he was hanged on July 30, 2015.

Unfortunately, fringe groups organized against the killing of Memon, even though all judicial processes were complied with and his clemency pleas turned down by the President of India. Rohith Vemula and his friends were the sponsors of the protests in UoH campus, under the guise of Ambedkar Students Association. This organization is now present in many campuses in India and is the student voice of the anti-establishment movement you’d expect in any university. This organization of Dalits is a militant outfit that wants to avenge the wrongs and ill treatment heaped on Dalits over the ages. Dalits were once at the lowest rung of societal hierarchy in India that existed prior to the establishment of the Constitution of India, which forbade all discrimination on the basis of caste, birth or language. Dalits were treated as sub-human almost everywhere In India hardly a century ago, and going by press reports, the cruel discrimination has still not run its course in some parts of the country as seen in the brutal atrocities committed against them in some isolated pockets of the backward states.

But Dalit organizations including the ASA, takes this as a license to vent their ire against others in India’s civil society and against the state as well. They want to take the other castes and the Indian state itself, up in a bid to obtain compensation for historical wrongs. And this tirade is with totally forgetting the scores of legislation and slew of economic measures targeted at the uplift of Dalits. India’s constituent assembly, which framed its constitution, granted them reservation in all legislative forums and government jobs in proportion to their share in population. This magnanimous act was carried through the assembly in which Dalits constituted only a tenth of the membership. Severe penalties were introduced to prevent atrocities against them, which are in fact misused widely. The Dalits’ continued bickering in the face of all these benevolent measures is an indicator of the pampering they have obtained at the hands of political parties who are conscious of vote banks. Our society is surprised at the anti-national remarks of ASA which is all the more outrageous because of the ingratitude, if nothing else. Most of them will not even be crossing the threshold of the prestigious institutions if not for the reservation kindly bestowed on them by India’s constitution.

So, what makes a few of the otherwise gentle individuals turn arrogant when they form groups and assume the Dalit identity? In the case of Hyderabad, ABVP activists interrupted the meeting commemorating Yakub Memon and naturally, an altercation arose between the organizers and protestors. As a sequel to this ruckus, a group of students belonging to ASA barged into the room of ABVP’s leader in the hostel. It is said that Vemula was also part of the gang. The ABVP guy was manhandled and forced to recant his opposition. This led to widespread protests and the Vice Chancellor suspended a few leaders of the team including Rohith Vemula that made the assault, pending an enquiry. Naturally, the local MP and Union Minister of State, Bandaru Dattatreya also urged the authorities to ensure justice to the thrashed ABVP leader.

Now, events made an ugly turn. Rohith Vemula committed suicide rather than facing the enquiry and prove his innocence. It is evident that he was a coward who feigned courage when being a part of the group. Coming from a very humble background, it should have been his paramount duty to complete his studies and find a job. After all, he was 27 and most of India’s working men would have found a job by then – however small – and thinking about settling down. Vemula had no compunction about letting his family down and go organizing spurious protests and thus forfeiting his stipend.       He was totally uncommitted to anybody and his sympathies lay not with his aging parents, but with terrorists who killed hundreds of people and tried to wreck the Indian state. Even leaving aside all these, what kind of a leader was he, who was afraid to face an enquiry which is an ‘occupational hazard’ of campus politics? If you didn’t have balls to stand up to allegations and accusations, what right do you have, to lead others? Unfortunately Vemula realized it rather too late, and to his ruin.

What is incomprehensible is the magnitude of outcry his death generated. Leftist organizations are like crickets – they make noise disproportionate to their size. Even making allowance for this factor, a section of the students wanted the Vice Chancellor and Union Minister to be charged for abetting the suicide of Vemula. A case was registered against them making a mockery of the process to ensure discipline not only in higher educational institutions, but anywhere. If an executive who initiates disciplinary action against a subordinate stands to face prosecution if the disciplined official commits suicide, the entire fabric of society will be unwoven in no time.

Such is the background of the renewed unrest in Hyderabad University campus when the Vice Chancellor who was on leave, rejoined duty a few days back. The students demand his removal, as if they have the power to hire and fire their teachers! Such irresponsible movements must be dealt with an iron hand to make a model for other delinquents, like what we saw in the Film and TV Institute in Pune.