Probe into Dalit student’s suicide will bare truth
It is unfortunate that the issue of the death of a young Dalit scholar, Rohith Vemula, has become a battleground for politics. Vemula, a student of the University of Hyderabad, committed suicide, and the backdrop in which the tragedy happened has given ammunition to various opposition party leaders to score points over the Union Government by holding its Ministers responsible. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi visited the university and interacted with protesting students as well as family members of the victim; others too have made trips. Expectedly, Mr Gandhi trained his guns on the Modi Government, especially Union Ministers Bandaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani. Nobody disputes that the incident cannot be brushed under the carpet. Given the various allegations and counter-allegations that have been flying all over the place, it is essential that the matter be investigated thoroughly. Any political or social angle to the tragedy ought to be exposed before the people, and only then should accountability be demanded against the accused. As things stand, everybody has an opinion and everyone has determined the names of the accused. Such outrageous politics over a death must cease. let's look at the material at hand to appreciate how wrong it is to reach hasty conclusions. Vemula was part of a bunch of students in the university who had organised protests against the hanging of terrorist Yakub Memon; he, along with his co-minded colleagues, had clashed with students affiliated to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party) on the issue; the subsequent row had led to matters reaching the court; sometime in August 2015, Union Minister Dattatreya, responding to missives from some students, wrote to the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development seeking action (the student's expulsion from the hostel); the HRD Ministry then forwarded the letters to the university administration (reminding them on more than occasion about the case) for appropriate decision; university authorities expelled Vemula from the hostel but allowed him access to the university and other facilities; Vemula camped outside the hostel and began to live there in protest; last Sunday, he committed suicide and blamed neither “friend” nor “enemy” for his action in his suicide note. These are the bare details in the public domain, which are the basis of multiple theories, including that Vemula was acted against because of his caste and that until the very end he had been ostracized by various powerful elements in the university administration and among the student community. Incidentally, he was not the only student expelled from the hostel; there were four others.
Now, therefore, the possibility that he was discriminated against and humiliated to such an extent (because of his caste) that he ended his life, can be as real as the theory that the various actions taken against him had absolutely nothing to do with his caste but were determined by his conduct, including that of holding protests against a terrorist's hanging and seeking to vitiate the academic environment in the university campus. We don't know for sure as yet, which is why we must hold our horses and wait for full details to be out.