Suicides the world over are deceptive deaths and when they occur in succession, they give the appearance of being contagious. When lyricist Na Muthukumar decided to immolate himself on January 29, 2009, it sparked a wave of self-immolations among Tamils, each death an earnest plea to stop the war in Sri Lanka. The suicides for Telangana are legendary, with some reports claiming that over 600 people have killed themselves for the cause. Last month, when an unemployed man committed suicide in the impoverished Kasserine district of Tunisia, what followed were more suicides and more attempts by young people to kill themselves in full public glare. In the immediate aftermath of Rohith Vemula’s death, there have been at least six more student suicides in south India, one after another, not allowing us even the time and space to mourn them individually.
In Tamil Nadu, the suicide of three girl students — Monisha, Saranya and Priyanka — of the SVS College of Naturopathy and Yoga Science at Bangaram in Villupuram has become a very emotive issue. It has also thrown light on the side effects of rampant commercialisation of education. Instead of pathologising everyone’s suicide and reducing it to a psychological problem, we’d do well to look at what’s actually causing these institutional murders.
It’s undeniable that some of the rot is because of the caste system and its long shadow over the educational system. Students at the University of Hyderabad have been demanding the “Rohith Act” to deal with caste discrimination in campuses. I believe that campuses where sentiments and outrage against reservation policy and Mandal Commission have been the most virulent also happen to be the campuses where caste discrimination is most tenacious: whether it is All-India Institute of Medical Sciences or the Indian Institute of Technology. Since education is meant to be inclusive, egalitarian and for the upliftment of society, any voice that speaks against the reservation policy is directly perpetuating the caste system, indirectly upholding the concept of untouchability that denies entry to the oppressed people into certain spaces and publicly declaring that some people are not as meritorious as others.
Although I do not believe in the efficacy of legislation, I think that it would be a very essential step to make sure that any anti-reservation protest in a campus attracts stringent punishment under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. These protests are often sponsored by right-wing groups and lobbies, and are secretly encouraged by the brahminical administration. There cannot be a more visible degrading and disrespect of dalit-Bahujan students than hearing the dominant caste students and professors talk about their own inborn “merit”.
The other problem is political interference in educational campuses. IIT Madras was in the eye of the storm last year because of the ban on the student group, Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle. While a radical anti-caste study circle was denied recognition, the Vivekananda Study Circle that suited the present government’s Hindu agenda was given all privileges. A major backdrop to what has happened in the University of Hyderabad is the struggle between the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed students union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the Ambedkar Students’ Association, which challenged the patriarchal, brahminical power structures. In this unequal face-off, it became revenge-seeking by the top brass of the RSS/BJP against ordinary students. It was no coincidence that those selected for the punishment — Dontha Prashanth, Rohith Vemula, Pedapudi Vijay Kumar, Seshaiah Chemudugunta, Sunkanna Velpula — were all dalit, PhD scholars and children from poor families.
These students were targeted at the behest of Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who has single-handedly achieved the feat of simultaneously being a dalit student killer and India’s most anti-worker labour minister. Smriti Irani, the compliant human resource development minister, made sure that her office spent a great degree of its resources chasing up this file and persecuting these students. From my time on campus at the University of Hyderabad, I know that this is not a fight that the students will give up. The sense of betrayal by the ruling class is extremely palpable. The university and the government fail to acknowledge that it has committed a serious crime. Vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile has not resigned nor has he been dismissed. There is not a hint of apology forthcoming and there is no punitive action on the culprits.
Every day the government seems to be doing its best to sidetrack the issue, to malign Rohith and to buy time. Perhaps this is based on the naive miscalculation that these tactics will wear out the student protests. On the contrary, such politicking only provokes students further and pushes them to take to the streets. In the long haul, struggles against issues of caste, political control and commercialisation of education will begin to erupt on every single campus in the country. Mishandling the situation and upholding the status quo in favour of the oppressor class will prove to be very dangerous for India.
