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Tuesday, January 26, 2016

CENTRE SLEPT ON NHRC’S 2013 DALIT DISCRIMINATION REPORT - Bangalore Mirror


Bangalore Mirror Bureau | Jan 20, 2016, 04.00 AM IST



Students staged a protest in New Delhi on Tuesday

By: Mihika Basu


Union HRD ministry under UPA-II failed to act and did not send a follow-up notice to academic institutions across the country. The new government too did not bother to take up the matter

The Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has been sitting on a National Human Rights Commission's (NHRC's) alert in 2013 on caste-based discrimination and violence against Dalit students in premier educational institutions across India.

Academic institutions across India denied having ever received any specific instructions or directions from the ministry — either under UPA-II rule when the notice was sent to it or later, during the Narendra Modi regime — on taking measures to protect Dalit students from discrimination on their respective campuses.

In the context of the discrimnatory practice in the Hyderabad Central University which led a Dalit research scholar, Rohith Vemula, to commit suicide, the NHRC notice pointing to widespread bias against scheduled caste students gains significance.

The NHRC notice was based on a complaint filed by Kantilal Parmar from the Navsarjan Trust, Ahmedabad, on May 24, 2013. (Interview with Parmar on Page 2) The complaint drew NHRC's drew attention to news reports claiming a series of suicides -- 18 in all -- by Dalit students in educational institutions across India over the years before Parmar's complaint.

The institutions of higher education included a few of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi where Dalit students were discriminated against forcing some of them to commit suicide.

Moreover, Parmar had said in his complaint that this list of 18 was not an exhaustive one as it only covered cases which could be documented and where parents and relatives had raised their voices against the institutions.

An NHRC notice on June 5, 2013, had said: "The National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the secretary concerned in the Union ministry of human resource development on the basis of a media report alleging fierce caste-based discrimination and violence in the hostel of Dalit students in Patna University early this year. The Commission has also received a complaint from an NGO, Navsarjan Trust of Ahmedabad, quoting media reports that 18 Dalit students committed suicides during the last four years in premier educational institutions of the country including, among others, IIT, Mumbai; IISc, Bengaluru; IIT, Kanpur; AIIMS, New Delhi."

The NHRC had further stated that the news reports, if true, "reflect widespread prevalence of discrimination towards Dalits in the educational institutions, driving them to take extreme steps".

It had observed that the state has the responsibility and duty to ensure that an atmosphere is created in educational institutions wherein everyone, irrespective of caste, creed or religion, can pursue studies. "The Constitution of India has also elaborate provisions to stop discrimination against the Dalits," the NHRC notice had said.

And yet the MHRD had failed to send out directives to the academic institutions to implement protective measures on a war-footing.

Some directors from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), on condition of anonymity, informed Bangalore Mirror that they either had not received any specific instructions from the MHRD on the issue of discrimination against Dalit students and subsequent steps that could be taken, or they could not recall receiving any such instruction from the Ministry back then following the NHRC notice.

"Usually, the IITs have strong student bodies and mentors in place who can be approached in case a student faces any problem, personally or academically. The office of the dean of student affairs across IIT campuses are also equipped to deal with any kind of discrimination against students. Also, every IIT has a strict mechanism in place to tackle complaints of bias on campus, albeit in a sensitive manner," said an IIT director. 

Widespread feeling

Meanwhile, an article by IIT Bombay's student media body Insight, in its May 2014 edition, had stated that 56 per cent of students belonging to various categories like scheduled castes (SCs), scheduled tribes (STs) and other backward classes (OBCs), felt that discrimination did exist in the institute, albeit in a discreet manner. The survey on first-year students who had joined IIT Bombay in July 2013, had said while 69 per cent freshers denied any caste discrimination, 28 per cent said it was there in an indirect manner while three per cent said they had witnessed it first-hand.

Dalit suicides that led to NHRC alert


* M Shrikant, IIT Bombay (Jan 1, 2007)

* Ajay S Chandra, IISc, Bangalore (Aug 26, 2007)

* Jaspreet Singh, Government Medical College, Chandigarh (Jan 27, 2008)

* Senthil Kumar, University of Hyderabad (Feb 23, 2008)

* Prashant Kureel, IIT Kanpur (April 19, 2008)

* G Suman, IIT Kanpur (Jan 2, 2009)

* Ankita Veghda, Singhi Institute of Nursing, hmedabad (April 20, 2009)

* D Syam Kumar, Sarojini Institute of Engineering and Technology, Vijayawada (Aug 13, 2009)

* S Amravathi, Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad (Nov 4, 2009)

* Bandi Anusha, Villa Mary College, Hyderabad (Nov 5, 2009)

* Pushpanjali Poorty, Visvesvaraiah Technological University, Bangalore (Jan 30, 2010)

* Sushil Kumar Chaudhary, Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University, Lucknow (Jan 31, 2010)

* Balmukund Bharti, AIIMS, New Delhi (March 3, 2010)

* JK Ramesh, University of Agricultural Sciences, B'lore (July 1, 2010)

* Madhuri Sale, IIT Kanpur (November 17, 2010)

* G Varalakshmi, Vignan Engineering College, Hyderabad (Jan 30, 2011)

* Manish Kumar, IIIrd Year BTech, IIT Roorkee (Feb 13, 2011)

* Linesh Mohan Gawle, PhD, National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi (April 16, 2011) 



Five Of The Most Shocking Indian Student Suicides In Recent Times, And What They Teach Us About India - India Times




January 19, 2016

Students ending their lives, unable to cope up with pressure of competitive exams and expectations from families is an increasingly disturbing phenomenon. It is more saddening that for every high profile death, there's countless other students-turned statistics out there, buried inside your newspaper in tiny columns. 

1. January 2016, Hyderabad

The Hindu
Rohith Vemula, one of the five dalit scholars expelled by the University of Hyderabad last year, committed suicide by hanging himself at a hostel.
"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," Vemula wrote in his note before killing himself, taking no names.
The 25-year-old, a resident of Guntur, was doing his PhD in science technology and society studies for the past two years, before the scholar allegedly got involved in a tiff with the BJP-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in August last year.

2. December 2015, Kota


bccl
14-year-old Bhanu Kumar, found hanging from a fan in his hostel room was the 30th suicide in IIT coaching hub Kota, and also the third suicide in that very week.
Kumar, a resident of Saharsa district in Bihar, came to Kota when he was just 13 to improve his performance in physics and mathematics. He was enrolled in class IX at a city school and at a coaching centre for an edge course in science subjects. However records from his institute showed that he was a regular absentee and the centre had informed his parents about their son's behaviour.
Incidentally, the death happened a day after the district administration undertook a major exercise to de-stress coaching students to curb the spate of suicides. 

3. October 2015, IIT Madras 


An Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) student was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his hostel room in October. The pre-final-year student dual-degree Electrical Engineering student's on-campus suicide was the second one in the preceding 30 days. 
If you've read our story on IIT Madras's Suicide Problem, you'd not be surprised 


4. November 13, 2015, J&K


iamin
Broken after learning that he had failed in his favourite subject, Mohammad Adnan Hilal, a 17-year-old electronics engineering student killed himself in Jammu and Kashmir in November last year.  Four months after his demise, a re-evaluation of the exam paper has found that he had not only passed but had also topped his class in the following subject. 
Understandably shattered to hear the news, Hilal's parents feel that this isn't a case of suicide, but a 'murder' as their son had actually secured 48 marks in Physics instead of 28 as declared earlier.  Adnan's friends and family claimed that Physics was a subject he used to be a master of, so when he saw that he had failed, he jumped into river Jhelum.

5. May 2015, Muzaffarnagar


Image: dailymail
Those who saw Muzaffarnagar's communal warfare in 2015 knew that "love jihad"( even if it was love and no jihad) was lethal. Imrana Bano and Rajneesh Kumar made this mistake, and then another for thinking that Muzzafarnagar wouldn't want to kill them for it.

This was too much to expect from a town which was perpetually a matchbox waiting to catch fire - just getting back on track a year after the riots that left 59 dead and left over 50,000 homeless - all over a alleged molestation. The parents of Rajneesh, a B.A. first year student knew about their love, and had sent him off to Rohtak, away from Imrana, whereas Imrana’s parents had shipped her off away to relative’s house. Imrana Bano was beaten for talking to Rajneesh, and forced into agreeing to marry someone from Shamli district, with an engagement scheduled for May 1.




HYD DALIT’S SUICIDE FINDS AN ECHO IN KALINA CAMPUS - Mumbai Mirror


By Ankita Bhatkhande, Mumbai Mirror | Jan 20, 2016, 04.02 AM IST


The protesters, including students from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and IIT-Bombay, joined hands under the banner of Mumbai Student Solidarity Forum.

Simmering tension on University of Hyderabad campus sparked by the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohit Vemula threatened to spread across the country on Tuesday. Mumbai saw a demonstration by nearly 200 students outside the Kalina campus of University of Mumbai. 

The protesters, including students from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and IIT-Bombay, joined hands under the banner of Mumbai Student Solidarity Forum. They demanded strict action against those responsible for pushing the PhD student to take the extreme step. 

Vemula, who had been living in a tent after being expelled from hostel, killed himself on Sunday evening in Hyderabad. Though the student, who was affiliated to the Ambedkar Students Association, blamed no one for his death, his friends accused Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya of pressing university officials to take action against him. 

The minister had alleged that Vemula and four other ASA members had assaulted a leader of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad during an agitation on the campus. 

Carrying banners and placards that showed their resentment against politicisation of education, the group also urged Kalina authorities to convey their demands to the Union HRD ministry, apparently in their bid to put pressure on the Union government for prompt action. 

"What has happened to Rohit can happen with anyone. Communal and right-wing forces are entering campuses with a political motive. Instead of resolving the issues of students, the college administration is trying to silence voices of protest," said Ajmal Khan, a research scholar from TISS. 

To reinforce their stand, the students pointed out to a Satyanarayan pooja organised on the campus. "This is an academic space where rituals like these should not be entertained. Instead of celebrating these rituals, we should improve the academic environment," said an IIT-B student requesting not to be named. 

The university security didn't initially allow the demonstrators to enter the campus, but the students stayed put till the administration relented. "The university has given the ABVP permission to hold a candlelight march on the campus. But when students like us from different universities have gathered here, why are they denying our rights to a peaceful protest," said All India Forum for Right to Education member Ghanshyam Sonar at the scene. 

The students insisted that the vice chancellor speak to them and address their issues. "We want the VC to write to the ministry on our behalf as a mark of dissent for this institutional murder of Vemula," said one of them. 

Nearly four hours after the protest began, Vice Chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh met the students and assured them to do his bit. He said, "Mumbai university is a secular space. No discrimination would be entertained and tolerated on the basis of caste, class or gender".

Friday, January 22, 2016

Ancient prejudice, modern inequality - The Hindu

January 20, 2016

Ancient prejudice, modern inequality
The Hindu

Students from various universities stage a protest in Hyderabad, demanding justice in the aftermath of suicide of University of Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula. Photo: K.V.S. Giri

If Ekalavya’s dismembered digit has haunted the Hindu schoolyard from time immemorial, Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide lays bare the deep inequality undergirding the modern state and its institutions of higher learning

On Sunday, January 17, Rohith Vemula (25), a doctoral student at the University of Hyderabad, reportedly committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan in a friend’s hostel room. His death has brought to a head a long-simmering conflict between progressive student groups, and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), present on campuses across the country and increasingly belligerent in the prevailing climate of Hindu right-wing dominance.

Rohith, a Dalit, had been involved in campus activism on diverse issues: Ambedkarite politics, protests against beef bans, the persistence of the death penalty in the Indian criminal justice system, and communal violence in Muzaffarnagar in August-September 2013, which left many dead and thousands displaced, mostly Muslims.

 Ananya Vajpeyi

Along with four other Dalit students, Rohith had been evicted from his hostel accommodation about a month ago, his monthly research stipend suspended, allegedly for subversive activities. The university administration as well as the State and Central governments all appear to have been strong-armed by the reactionary ABVP into expelling these five individuals on dubious charges, characterising the victimised students as “casteist”, “extremist” and “anti-national”. All of them belonged to the Ambedkar Students Association, a body similar to the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), a group that had also faced harassment and intimidation from campus authorities in the summer of 2015.

Caste and the Hindu Right

The conflicts in both the University of Hyderabad and the IIT-M illustrate a deep fracture between the Hindu Right and Dalit-Bahujan ideologies, particularly those of the Ambedkarite strain, a fault line that cannot be papered over by electoral alliances of convenience and occasional instances of power-sharing between the two sides. The Sangh Parivar at every level, from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party down to the ABVP, stands against equality, whether between castes, religious communities, or the sexes.

Instead of egalitarianism, the Hindu Right believes in an archaic arithmetic of adhikaar and bahishkaar, entitlement and exclusion, based on caste, religion and gender. If the Indian Republic is built on a plinth of equal citizenship, the Hindu Rashtra would be founded on ritual hierarchy and patriarchy as laid out for centuries in the caste system. Onto this unequal social order of considerable vintage would be layered a deadly neo-Fascist majoritarian politics that arises out of the Hindutva imagination of the modern nation.

This is why, when the Ambedkar Students Association supported the screening of Nakul Singh Sawhney’s film Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai on the University of Hyderabad campus, the ABVP attacked the Dalit activist-students, driving them out of their classrooms and hostels, eventually to the limit where Rohith took the irreversible decision to end his life. Photographs he posted on his Facebook page in 2014 of his parents’ home in the small town of Guntur — a prized red refrigerator in which all the neighbours kept their water bottles, a gas burner, a fan he wryly described as “solar powered” — suggest the great distance from poverty and hardship travelled by this young man to become a doctoral student at one of the most prestigious universities in India. His journey ended violently and abruptly.
But the ostracising of the Sudra and Dalit student from the institutions of education and employment, knowledge and power, is a very old theme in Indian thought on social structure and moral order. The figure of the outcaste student appears in some of our oldest texts that reflect on the relationship between self, society and sovereignty.

In the Mahabharata, Ekalavya, a talented archer prince of the forest tribe of the Nishadas, goes to Dronacharya, the master who teaches young men of the Pandava and Kaurava clans how to wield their weapons. Drona will not admit Ekalavya on account of the tribal status that makes him an outsider to the caste system. Ekalavya goes away, makes an image of Drona, secretly watches him give lessons to Arjuna and the other royals, and teaches himself archery, treating the mud-and-clay Drona as a stand-in for the recalcitrant guru.

When Ekalavya turns out to be a better bowman than the Kshatriya prince Arjuna, Drona asks for his right thumb as tuition fee. Ekalavya agrees, but not without understanding that he is being discriminated against yet again. Ekalavya’s initial disobedience (which makes him a secret apprentice) as well as his later compliance (which costs him his thumb) shame both Drona and his favourite pupil, the supposed beneficiary of this blatant act of prejudice, Arjuna. The story of the Nishada prince shows Drona up as a caste bigot whose classroom reeks of nepotism, even if he knows how to teach his students well, at least the high-born ones he favours.

Ekalavya’s dismembered digit, a bloody and visceral embodiment of caste consciousness, has haunted the Hindu schoolyard from time immemorial. It can be read as quite literally a thumb in Drona’s eye, a jab at our conscience that is as painful for us to experience as it must have been for Ekalavya to lose the very source of his hard-earned skill. He is denied access at every stage: he cannot become Drona’s pupil, but neither is he allowed to become a great archer through his own efforts.

The story of Satyakama Jabali from the Chandogya Upanishad is more complex. Satyakama has no father, and takes his mother Jabala’s name. He goes to the hermitage of the sage Gautama, and wants to be admitted. When asked about his parentage, he acknowledges honestly that he does not know his father’s name or caste. Gautama admits him nevertheless, and performs the initiation ritual to pronounce him a twice-born Brahmin, after which his education begins in earnest.

In the ancient text of the Upanishad, Gautama is willing to entertain Satyakama as a potential pupil because of his honesty: he takes the boy’s love of truth (which is the literal meaning of his name, satya-kama) as proof of his essentially Brahmin nature. Once the teacher has assessed the applicant’s innate worth, he then translates his positive assessment into an upanayana (bestowal of the sacred thread on the boy’s body), naming Satyakama a proper Brahmin and proceeding to educate him accordingly.

Satyakama’s Brahmin identity is clearly attributed to him; it cannot be proven to be intrinsic, since his mother Jabala cannot identify his father. Gautama seems to suggest that ‘Brahmin is as Brahmin does’, i.e., Satyakama has the lakshana (characterising feature) of a Brahmin (because he speaks the truth), even though he does not have the gotra (lineage) of a Brahmin (because his mother was unmarried).

For a modern reader, this is a confusing account. Does Gautama make an exception and admit a non-Brahmin pupil into his hermitage, or does Gautama accept Satyakama because he thinks he recognises him, despite appearances, to be a genuine Brahmin? The exchange between Satyakama and Gautama at the threshold of the ashram, as it were, raising fundamental questions about identity (Who are you? Who am I?), about rights to entry into the portals of the academy, about rule and exception in the caste system, and about the entailments of caste in the strongholds of knowledge and seats of power, is again a moment that has not left our collective conscience for two millennia. Dr. Ambedkar himself reminds us of both these characters, Ekalavya and Satyakama, who for him are damning evidence of the stubborn longevity of caste in Indian history.

The more things change…

Ekalavya did not die and neither did Satyakama, but Rohith did. This sad fact could lead to various conclusions. It is a reflection on the unexpected cruelty and the adamantine ideologies undergirding the modern state and its institutions of higher learning. Drona and Ekalavya, Gautama and Satyakama could to some extent negotiate the terms of their relationship. Rohith ostensibly had the might of the Indian Constitution behind him — his fundamental rights as a citizen, reservations policy for students of his socioeconomic background, and the empowering discourses of the Ambedkarite student group which gave him a certain political awareness and the radical energy to fight for the equality he fully expected and deserved, but never got. And yet, when he was rusticated and ousted from his hostel, when he and his companions felt pushed to stage a “sleep-in” outside the university gates; when his stipend was withheld and he had to borrow money, and when he finally felt like he had hit a wall and had no options, Rohith was far worse off than his metaphorical brothers in the ancient literature.

His heartbreaking suicide note states the piercing truth, the skewer that caste ideology drives into every heart filled with hope: “My birth is my fatal accident.” Yes, this is the human condition: our birth, all birth, is an accident. We do not choose our father or mother, our group or community. But only in India, only in caste society, and only for Dalits does this accident of coming into an unequal life become the fatality of either living with relentless inequality and enduring its cruelties, or dying a terrible, unfair, premature and unredeemed death.
Anil Kumar Meena, a first-year Dalit student at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), India’s premier medical college, had hung himself from the fan of his hostel room in March 2012. In Rohith’s poignant Facebook photos, his family’s meagre possessions now stand witness to a life whose promise was extinguished. He had posted that before he got a Junior Research Fellowship, his mother’s humble sewing machine had supported the family.

Like December 16, 2012, the day marked by the horrendous rape and murder of a young woman Nirbhaya, let January 17, 2016 too go down in this country’s history as the dark day of the death of a student, Rohith Vemula, who was promised a chance at dignity and prosperity by our founders, and whom we abandoned, to our eternal shame.


(Ananya Vajpeyi, author of Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India (2012), is with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.)

Why are India's Dalit students taking their lives? - BBC News


Soutik Biswas  Delhi correspondent


  • Image copyrightRohith Vemula's Facebook page
Image captionRohith Vemula, a PhD student at the Hyderabad Central University, killed himself on Sunday


"My birth is my fatal accident... I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life... I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That's pathetic. And that's why I am doing this."

These are excerpts from the last letter - "this kind of letter for the first time" - that Rohith Vemula, a PhD student at Hyderabad Central University wrote before he killed himself on Sunday. 

It is, at once, an eloquent and chilling suicide note: a young man who loved "science, stars, nature and people", and aspired to become a science writer like Carl Sagan, ended up defeated and crushed by discrimination and apathy. 
'Steadily isolated'

Mr Vemula, 26, was one of five Dalit - formerly known as untouchable - students who were protesting against their expulsion from the university's housing facility. India's 180 million Dalits are among its most wretched citizens, because of an unforgiving and cruel caste hierarchy that condemns them to the bottom of the heap.

Mr Vemula and the four other students faced allegations last August that they attacked a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) - the student wing of the governing Hindu nationalist BJP - on the campus. Some reports say an investigation had found no "conclusive evidence" of the assault. 
Last year the students had also protested against the execution of Yakub Memon, the man convicted of financing the deadly 1993 Mumbai bombings and the right-wing ABVP's stalling of a documentary film on the Muzaffarnagar riots in Delhi University. 
One newspaper said the sequence of events leading to Mr Vemula's death shows how he was "steadily isolated by campus authorities and his appeals went largely unheard". 
The university stopped paying his monthly stipend of 25,000 rupees ($369; £258) allegedly because he raised issues under the campus's Dalit-led students union. 
It also began an investigation into his - and his friends - conduct. In August federal minister Bandaru Dattatreya, a BJP junior minister, wrote a letter to the federal education ministry complaining that the university had become a "den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics". 
In September, Mr Vemula and four other students were suspended - although the minister denies this was linked to his missive, which he says was not about the Dalit students, but a general comment on the restive campus. 




Image copyrightPress Trust of India
Image captionThere have been countrywide protests against Mr Vemuli's death
Image copyrightFacebook image
Image captionMr Vemula was accused of allegedly assaulting a student
Mr Vemula's death has sparked off a firestorm of protest across India. 
Poet and writer Meena Kandasamy says the student's suicide was "not just an individual exit strategy, it is a shaming of society that has failed him or her". She wrote "education has now become a disciplining enterprise working against Dalit students: they are constantly under threat of rustication, expulsion, defamation, discontinuation".
Mr Vemula's is not an exceptional story of caste discrimination on India's campuses. One report said eight Dalit students had taken their lives "unable to cope" with caste politics at Hyderabad University in the past decade. Between 2007 and 2011 alone, 18 Dalit students ended their lives in some of India's premier educational institutes, according to another estimate
Shocking abuse
Some eight years ago, Apoorvanand, who teaches at Delhi University, had gone to Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India's leading medical school, to investigate a case of discrimination against a Dalit student. 
He says he found vile abuses written on the doors and walls of hostel rooms where Dalit students lived. (There was no name calling, because direct abuse would lead to prosecution under tough anti-discrimination laws.) When he went to the director of the institute to lodge a complaint, the latter flatly denied that there was caste discrimination on the campus.
This is a school which produces India's best doctors. This is also the school where a federal investigation into complaints of caste-based harassment and discrimination against Dalit and tribal students uncovered a shocking picture of abuse. 


Image copyrightGetty Images
Image captionIndia's 180 million Dalits are among its most disprivileged citizens
The probe found most of the Dalit and tribal students complaining that they "did not receive the kind of support other students received from their teachers". Examiners asked about their caste backgrounds. The students said teachers did not give them the marks they deserved in exams, and their papers were not evaluated properly. More than 90% of the students said they were routinely humiliated by examiners in practical and oral examinations.
"There is systemic persecution of Dalit students in Indian universities. They are often failed by their teachers deliberately," Apoorvanand told me.
Many Dalit students who get into colleges and universities through affirmative action quotas - restorative justice for centuries of historical wrongs against the community - come to campuses with deficiencies in education, including a feeble command over the English language. Most of them are first generation graduates, come from poor families - like Mr Vemula, born of a father who works as a security guard and a mother who's a tailor - and often struggle to fit in. 
Fierce competition
India's colleges and universities are theatres of fierce competition and confrontation: only a privileged few manage to get a limited number of seats through fiercely contested exams. 
Upper caste students, say many, have a "natural hatred and antagonism" for the Dalits and tribespeople who take up seats reserved for their communities. "There is a lot of anger against affirmative action and their beneficiaries, but then there is little the upper castes can do about it because the quotas are constitutionally mandated," says Apoorvanand. 
So the students are shamed and mocked at as "quota students", and their abilities mocked. In absence of effective student support groups or university structures, warning meltdown signals among suffering students are ignored. 
Fed up with the way things were going, Mr Vemula wrote to the university authorities in December to allow him to die and even spoke about how they could help him and his Dalit friends end his life. The authorities apparently did nothing.
Politicians are accused of not confronting this appalling discrimination with the zeal it deserves. 
Instead, Dalit and tribals have also become pawns in India's hideous vote bank politics. In modern-day India, the segregation of Dalits begins early: they are separated by markers and coloured wrist bands in classrooms; and forced to clean school toilets. Upper caste school children routinely boycott school lunchescooked by Dalit cooks. 
Mr Vemula is just the latest victim of India's scourge of untouchability. 



Thursday, January 21, 2016

Rohith Vemula suicide: Protests spread to campuses across the country - First Post

by Debobrat Ghose  Jan 19, 2016 22:44 IST

The protest of students’ unions against the alleged role of a union minister in the suicide of Hyderabad-based research scholar Rohith Vemula threatens to get bigger with a few student bodies planning to escalate their agitation.
On Tuesday, they erupted in protest on streets and campuses. While the Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) staged a demonstration outside the HRD Ministry in the national capital, the students’ wing of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) protested with banners and slogans at Jantar Mantar.
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“We’ve demanded the immediate resignation of HRD Minister Smriti Irani and Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya. They should be prosecuted for abetment to the suicide of Rohith Vemula. The five letters issued by the HRD Ministry to the vice chancellor and registrar of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) asking whether action had been taken against the Dalit students speaks clearly of the involvement of the ministry and Irani. How can HRD ministry write to the VC without the knowledge of the minister? After today’s demonstration, the NSUI will stage a protest across the country. The government is clearly trying to gag the voice of students in every institution and promote a single ideology,” NSUI president Roji M John told Firstpost.


Rohith Vemula. Image courtesy: Facebook
Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), which had been a centre of students’ protest in 2015, has gone on a one-day hunger strike with a group of students sitting outside the FTII campus.
Devas Dixit, a final year FTII student and member of the strike committee of FTII Association, said “We strongly condemn the incident and five FTTI students are on a hunger strike. This suicide incident and the long strike at FTII last year without any outcome show that the government is utterly insensitive towards students. Any student’s voice of demand or protest has been dubbed as anti-national by the government. In each and every case it has been seen that the government has paid no heed to their demands. It’s only the students, who are at the receiving end and the problems continue to remain as it is.”
The picture was no different at IIT Madras. Outside the IIT campus, Progressive Students’ Group staged a demonstration demanding the arrest of Dattatreya. “We’ve gathered outside the IIT campus to protest against the suicide of Rohith Vemula and the role of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who acted on a representation by ABVP leader Sushil. Five Dalit students were suspended. We’re demanding an enquiry into the incident, remove Dattatreya and revoke the students’ suspension. Government should also probe into the role of the Union HRD minister,” said Sadashivan, one of the students from the group.
The CPI (M-L)-backed All India Students’ Association (AISA) staged demonstrations in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, Gandhinagar, Patna and Chandigarh, and burnt an effigy of Dattatreya at Jantar Mantar on Tuesday.
“The five letters from HRD ministry have exposed the ugly face of the government. The government’s involvement in it has become clear. Instead of initiating an independent probe into the incident that occurred in the past at HCU, the government played into the hands of ABVP leader Sushil and forced the university to take action. We’ve demanded immediate resignation of Smriti Irani, Dattatreya and HCU VC, and all should be prosecuted under the SC-ST Atrocities Act,” said Shehla Rashid, member, AISA and vice president JNU Students’ Union, who was a part of the demonstration in Delhi. The organisation would make the fight bigger, its members said.
While the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has called the suicide of Vemula a “national loss”, the right-wing student’s body said “no anti-national activities should be tolerated in university campuses in the country”.

“Bandaru Dattatreya never wrote the HRD Ministry to take action against the students’ group, Ambedkar Students Union, but he pointed out about anti-national activities in the campus. Earlier, we opposed the screening of film ‘Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai’ and later this group staged a protest after the hanging of Yakub Memon. They put posters saying ‘Ek Yakub ko marenge, to har ek ghar se Yakub niklega’ (kill one Yakub, there will be one Yakub born out of every house). Under the name of Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution, these students have been indulging in anti-national activities. All these students’ groups and parties need one issue or the other to target the government. This won’t be tolerated,” ABVP national media in-charge, Shreerang Kulkarni told Firstpost.

Dalit student’s suicide: Is Modi losing touch with the youth? - Hindustan Times


  • DK Singh, Hindustan Times, New DelhiUpdated: Jan 20, 2016 14:51 IST

Students protest against over the death of dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula of Hyderabad University, at Kalina University in Mumbai on Tuesday. (PTI)

Is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led ruling dispensation at the Centre losing the plot? Barely twenty months after they catapulted Narendra Modi to power in New Delhi, students and the youth are agitating against the NDA government in different campuses across the country. Some of these protests may be politically or ideologically driven, as the ruling party leaders would have us believe, but their increasing frequency raises several questions.

Does it sound anachronous to talk about start-up India when campuses across the country are on the boil over suicide by a Hyderabad university Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, allegedly driven by some controversial actions of some Central ministers/ministries? It should not, but for the silence on the latter.

To dismiss it with the argument that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi -- who visited the varsity and also met Rohith’s mother on Tuesday -- and other opposition parties are playing politics over the death of the 26-year-old research scholar could be a plain platitude or a sublime expression of naivety.

If labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya’s portrayal of Hyderabad university as “a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics” -- in a letter to human resource development minister Smriti Irani -- was alleged to be the agent provocateur for Rohith’s suicide, BJP general secretary Muralidhar Rao did his bit to re-ignite the embers on Tuesday as he branded the deceased student as a supporter of terrorism.


Amid all this, it’s Brand Modi that seems to be taking the real blow. Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, for instance, students in then Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar’s Sasaram constituency in Bihar would come to the railway station to study under lights and have question-and-answer sessions in groups to prepare for competitive examinations. During small breaks, they would discuss Modi and the changes he could bring in their life once he came to power.

Over one-and-a-half years hence, the Modi government’s initiatives in the education sector may not be very reassuring to them. They were soon made to believe that they would have better career prospects in a global market if they studied Sanskrit, instead of German, as their third language in school.

They were to believe that eminent nuclear scientist and then chairman of the board of governors of IIT, Mumbai, Anil Kakodkar, who was a member of the Irani-headed search-cum-election panel to choose IIT directors, had to resign because he batted for the wrong candidate. Before that, IIT, Delhi, director RK Shevgaonkar had to resign mid way through his tenure -- and then wait for several months to get his relieving orders -- as he refused to accept the ministry’s diktat.


These aspiring students in Sasaram-- some probably still studying under some lamp posts -- along with their brethren in other parts of the country may now be watching the unfolding controversy over the selection of vice-chancellors of the Delhi and the Jawaharlal Nehru universities, discussion on ‘Lord Shiva as an environmentalist’ at the Indian Science Congress in Mysore, re-writing of history textbooks, et al.

As it is, there have been loud protests or simmering tension against actions of the NDA regime, or of those supposedly supported by it, in different campuses across the country, stretching from IIT Madras (over the banning of a students’ forum) to Hyderabad university, Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, Aligarh Muslim University (over minority status of the institution), and Delhi University (over a seminar on Ayodhya temple), among others.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has many senior, experienced colleagues in his party and the Cabinet who had started their career in students’ politics and who could apprise him about how even small issues in colleges and universities have the potential to snowball into major political crises for a government.

Ramvilas Paswan, a close ally of the BJP today, may also have a lesson or two to share about students’ movements of the turbulent 1970s, which started on rather paltry issues of hostel food and fees but ended up shaking up the political order.

2016 is not the 1970s and the current students’ protests are not as potent or as organised either. But given that it’s Modi’s core constituency, even small rumblings of discontent are bound to hurt the party and the government.

(The views expressed are personal)

Rohith is the 23rd Dalit student suicide in institutes like AIIMS and IITs - Catch News


Rohith is the 23rd Dalit student suicide in institutes like AIIMS and IITs

SALMA REHMAN@rehmansalma
  • Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student and Member of Ambedkar Students' Association of University of Hyderabad (UoH) committed suicide after his expulsion from the university.

  • In less than a decade, 23 Dalit students in India have committed suicide in premier educational institutions like AIIMS and IIT.
  • Despite detailed investigations made by the Prof Thorat Committee, the government has not woken up to the acute discrimination faced by SC and ST students in India.
  • According to Dalit activists, ASA in UoH is being targeted by right-wing groups.

In a letter addressed to the Vice Chancellor of University Hyderabad, Rohith Vemula wrote: "Please serve 10 mg of sodium azide to all Dalit students during admission. Supply a nice rope to the rooms of all Dalit students...I request your highness to make preparations for the facility "EUTHANASIA" for students like me."
Why was Vemula, known for his cheerful disposition, asking for all Dalit students to be euthanised?
Vemula's suicide, which has sparked nationwide protests, clearly brings out the darkest side of our educational system which is still in the clutches of caste and religion politics.
'Death of Merit'
Just like Vemula, eight other students belonging to 'lower' caste have ended their lives in the University of Hyderabad (UoH) in the past decade. But the UoH campus hasn't been the only discriminatory academic space resulting in the death of 'condemned'. In fact the total mounts to a disturbing 22 since 2007, with some students killing themselves in premier institutions like AIIMS, IITs and National Institute of Immunology (NII).


Rohith Vemula

"Our educational institutions are sadly where this discrimination exists in one of its ugliest forms," says Gurinder Azad, a Dalit rights activist, who has been working on the data since 2009.
"You might say that I am dragging the case into history but we can hardly deny the fact that a significant number of administrative structures in our country are not able to detach themselves from their Brahminical approach where a lower caste person can never be treated at equity with an upper caste individual," explains Azad.
Balmukund Bharati, a final year MBBS Dalit student at AIIMS, hanged himself to death in his hostel room on 3 March, 2010. The AIIMS administration came out with the standard response -- 'A student who went into depression [killed himself] as he was not able to cope with the rigorous academic environment of AIIMS.'
But according to Azad, rigorous investigations revealed that Bharati was subjected to prolonged abuse and humiliation from his professors, was beaten severely by his seniors and completely alienated from the 'mainstream' campus life -- all because he belonged to the Dalit community. It was actually after 6 years of painful and slow death that he decided to take his life.
Road to submission
It was on 5 May, 2007 that the Prof Thorat Committee released a report highlighting hell-raising facts about the discrimination faced by lower caste students and faculty in the coveted medical institute AIIMS.
  • About 88 per cent of Dalit and Adivasi students, in their responses to the Thorat Committee, said that the teachers did not give them the marks they deserved in written exams and that their papers were not examined properly.
  • 84 per cent of the SC and ST student respondents reported that the examiners had asked about their caste background, either directly or indirectly, and their grades were affected by the response.
"This is just one aspect of the discrimination which expands into a larger frame. Students are not given the assigned amounts of the scholarship money and entitlement on time which is their right since they have cleared the exam and proven their contendership. Further this 'hate' extends to hostels and messes where students are forced to change their rooms to live in 'ghettos' after suffering from lots of threats, abuses, physical violence and humiliations," says Rajesh Singh of National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR).
Turning a blind eye
The irony, of course, lies in the fact that the Prof Thorat Committee report didn't compell the government to spring into action and address reasons that were forcing the students to embrace death instead of living through humiliation.
In a video interview, Bharati's mourning father said that his son wanted to study abroad and leave India for good.
Why so silent, government?
"It was only after we produced these horrific accounts of these suicides in our documentaries that the Ministry of Human Resource and Development realised the truth of these institutions in 2012. Till then, even the government relied on the excuses provided by the institutions where they tried to cover the cases arguing that 'the students were not able to cope up with the studies' or 'it was due to a failed love affair'," says Azad.
Politics in and after death
Slamming the political parties who are expressing their concern over Vemula's suicide, especially the likes of Rahul Gandhi, Azad says, "This is all about political mileage. I would like to ask Mr Rahul Gandhi that why did not the UPA government take any action when we produced this report earlier?"


He further says that along with its dormancy towards the suicides, the consecutive governments must be blamed for slashing the budget for the Dalit and Adivasi education.
"The educational development of Dalit and Adivasi students is dependent and linked directly to the planning and allocation of the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan and Tribal Sub Plan. But the funds have shown a decline in this year budget allocation. Unfortunately the government has bee diverting a large share of this money to non-beneficial items like creating capital assets of general nature, paying salaries or diverting it to other general schemes, which hardly benefit the Dalits and the Adivasis," says Singh of NCDHR.
'To kill a movement'
Twelve days before his death, Vemula along with four other Dalit scholars, was expelled from the university. The students were members of Ambedkar Students Association (ASA), a student political party.
The reason behind the expulsion was allegedly a tiff between the expelled students and some members of ABVP over the screening of the controversial riot documentary Muzaffarnagar Abhi Baaqi Hai. The docu was boycotted by the right-wing student body on the grounds of being anti-Hindu, which led to its widespread screening in different parts of India as a mark of protest.
An ABVP member also alleged assault by Vemula. A probe was conducted against the ASA members and they were expelled on disciplinarian grounds.
However, it is being alleged that the whole issue was politicised and that BJP leader and Union Cabinet Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya influenced the university probe.


"Dattatreya wrote a letter to Union Minister Smriti Irani branding students of University of Hyderabad as casteist and anti-national and demanding an action against them after which they were expelled. This in itself clarifies the intention of the government to handle the issue," says Azad.
According to him, ASA's reputation in the UoH is targeted by right-wing parties as their ideology clashed with the Dalit student association.


"Vemula's death is a part of a conspiracy to uproot a social movement and kill an ideology. This is a murder not a suicide," says Azad.





University of Hyderabad boils over dalit scholar's suicide - India Times


TNN | Jan 19, 2016, 03.15 AM IST

HYDERABAD: University of Hyderabad turned into a battlefield on Monday as students protesting against the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula clashed with police as the death sparked huge outrage on campuses across the city.

Midnight vigil, lathi-charge by cops and sloganeering by students, marked the day as 200 Rapid Action Force personnel surrounded the varsity on Monday to douse simmering tension. As students under the aegis of Joint Action Committee for Social Justice went on an indefinite strike on Sunday, the 26-year-old research scholar's death at the NRS hostel left the varsity in shock.

In a six page suicide note, the scholar said: "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."

Madhapur ACP M Ramana Kumar told TOI that the suicide note purportedly written by the victim will be sent to the forensic lab for handwriting match examination. "A portion of the suicide note was struck off by the victim and he signed next to the struck off part, saying that it was he who has done it. Experts will also retrieve the struck off part of the note for investigation," the ACP said

As news of his death spread on Monday morning, a scuffle broke out between the police and the students, resulting in a lathicharge by the cops, who wanted to break the student barricades. Police in riot gear entered the hostel and shifted the body for autopsy.

However, students resorted to vandalism as they broke the glass of the ambulance which arrived to take the body. Tension prevailed throughout Monday as the police detained eight students.

The hospital completed the post-mortem by Monday afternoon and the Vemula family performed the last rites at Amberpet crematorium in the evening.

At Osmania General Hospital (OGH) mortuary seven civil liberties activists including Jaya Vindhyala and OU faculty G Vinod Kumar were taken into preventive custody by the Afzulgunj police when they came to console the family members of the victim.

Balladeer Gaddar was also picked up at the OGH and dropped back to his home. The students continued with their protests as they called Rohith's death an 'institutional murder'. "Rohith was a brilliant student as he had two national fellowships. The university's social boycott towards the expelled students forced Rohith to take such a drastic step," said Zuhail KP, president of the UoH students union.

As students raised slogan such as 'tera bhai mera bhai, Rohith bhai' (your brother, my brother, Rohith brother), 'if you call dalits anti-national, we are anti-national' at UoH, the deceased's mother Radhika Vemula, aunt Vasudha Vemula and younger sibling Raja Vemula grieved at the tent where Rohith was living for last two weeks. "I will live in this tent where my son was forced to live for two weeks until we get a clarification from the administration," Rohith's mother told TOI.

The family demanded vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile to give a clarification on why they were not informed about his expulsion. However, until Monday evening, the VC didn't make any appearance at the university to speak to the family.

Dalit student's suicide: National Commission for SC alleges politics surrounding death - DNA



Tue, 19 Jan 2016-12:00am , Hyderabad , PTI

Noting that the names of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and the university VC have been mentioned in the FIR in connection with the incident, P L Punia said there should be a fair investigation into it.

Alleging that "politics" had taken place in the alleged suicide of a Dalit student in the central university in Hyderabad, National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) chairman P L Punia on Monday said the Commission would take up the issue strongly.

Rohit Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar, was found hanging at the Central University's hostel room in the campus yesterday triggering protests from fellow students this morning. The deceased was among the five research scholars, who were suspended by the university in August last year and also one of the accused in the case of assault on a student leader.


Recalling the sequence of events in HCU with regard to the alleged suicide, Punia said, "When action was against them (students), Vice Chancellor took back the action also. A statement comes later. Politics happened in between."

"Dattatreyaji, Labour Minister, he is a senior leader. He writes a letter. That letter comes here. It starts moving in a circle. A total U-turn is taken. All this incident happened...," he said.

Speaking after visiting the university, he said he would seek a report from the police, administration and the university.
"The NCSC would take up the issue strongly," Punia said.

Noting that the names of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and the university VC have been mentioned in the FIR in connection with the incident, he said there should be a fair investigation into it.

Rohit's fellow students have demanded immediate removal of Dattatreya from the Union Cabinet alleging that he was instrumental in suspension of the students from the university.
Recalling an incident at IIT Madras earlier, Punia alleged that there is a pattern in the type of incidents that are happening, after the NDA government came to power, in which Dalit students are at the receiving end.

"There is a pattern. It happened in Madras IIT also. An anonymous complaint comes. It comes from Ministry of Human Resource Development and the IIT there de-recognises Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle, there be will no activity. They take all action. Same type of pattern. This (HCU incident) is also a pattern. Why this pattern happens for Scheduled Caste students after this government came to power. They start with make-believe stories and find the Scheduled Caste people culprit," Punia said.
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There is a cut in the budget for education, health, housing and sanitation which provide benefit to the SCs and Adivasis, he said. He said he would not like to comment on the investigation into the incident. Punia, however, said the Prevention of Atrocities Act provides for completion of investigation within 30 days.

Student Protests Build, Politicians Refuse To Stay Away: 10 Developments - NDTV



Cheat Sheet | Reported by Uma Sudhir, Edited by Anindita Sanyal | Updated: January 20, 2016 00:45 IST


HYDERABAD:  As student protests over 26-year-old research scholar Rohith Vemula's death spread across the country and politicians made a beeline for Hyderabad university, vice chancellor Appa Rao Podile said Union minister Smriti Irani or Bandaru Dattartreya did not pressurise him in any way to take action against Vemula.

Here are the 10 latest developments in this story:
  1. "The letters from the Human Resources Development ministry were not attended to as VIP request. There was no pressure from ministry or Delhi,' Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile told NDTV. "We were forced to take decision as the court was asking for response."
  2. Rohith Vemula committed suicide on Sunday following the university's action against him, which protesters say was spurred by Central minister Bandaru Dattartreya's letter to Education Minister Smriti Irani.
  3. In the letter, Dr Dattatreya alleged that the university had become a "den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics". After his letter, four letters went to the university from the Human Resource Development ministry, asking what action has been taken.
  4. Opposition parties have attacked the ruling BJP, demanding action and answers. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who met Rohith's mother, said "the Vice Chancellor, the minister in Delhi and the institution" had "created conditions" for Rohith's suicide.
  5. In Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party protested at Jantar Mantar and its leader Ashutosh said, "The PM continues to shield ministers who ostracize Dalits. The PM should sack Bandaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani's role should be probed."
  6. BJP ally and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan has demanded a CBI inquiry. He said he will meet the Prime Minister after a team of leaders from his Lok Janshakti Party return from Hyderabad. A delegation from Trinamool Congress is currently visiting the university.
  7. Rohith Vemula was found hanging in the university hostel on Sunday, days after the university suspended him and four other Dalit students allegedly for beating an activist of the BJP student wing Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
  8. Four months after clearing them of the charge, the university had reversed its decision in December. Mr Dattatreya, the BJP parliamentarian from Secunderabad, has been named in a police complaint.
  9. On Tuesday, there were massive student protests in cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Delhi. In Hyderabad, student protesters have demanded that the suspension be cancelled. They have also requested parties not to politicise Rohith's death.
  10. In the evening, angry students chanted "go back" to the two officers of the human resources development ministry who had come to investigate Rohith's death. They also forced BJP spokesperson Prakash Reddy to leave the campus.