Mere Paas Mantri Hai: End Saffron Brigade’s Muscle Flexing in Campuses Blessed by State Power!

21.1.17

#JusticeForRohithVemula!

In the few days that have passed since Rohith Vemula’s tragic death, we have witnessed protests in campuses across the country. As we all now know, Rohith and four other Dalit research scholars and activists of Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA) were punished by the University of Hyderabad (UoH), based on fabricated charges. This punishment was clearly a result of the severe pressure exerted by ABVP, BJP MLC Ramachandra Rao, BJP MP and Union Minister for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya and HRD Minister Smriti Irani. Rohith along with other students had been agitating to demand revocation of the unjust punishment, when he committed suicide.

In order to try and contain the massive protests that have emerged in the wake of Rohith’s death, a series of lies, slander, and communal division is being floated by ABVP-RSS-BJP, as well as the MHRD.

• They are trying to claim that ASA and Rohith’s opposition to Yakub Memon’s hanging was the reason and trigger for the entire issue. This is patently false, and a part of the ABVP-RSS’ habitual tactics of spreading communal divisions in order to garner support. The trigger for the sequence of events leading to Rohith’s death was a protest in HCU when ABVP forcibly stopped the screening of a film Muzaffarnagar Baaki Hai in DU. The reason for this subterfuge is clear. The ABVP-RSS desperately need to do this, and to portray Rohith as a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ and ‘anti-national’, in order to hide and justify their role.

• They tried to question Rohith’s caste status as a Dalit. Contrary to the RSS slander machine, it has now been conclusively established that he was a Dalit. The MHRD minister claims that his death was not a ‘Dalit versus non-Dalit issue’, flying in the face of all evidence.

• Smriti Irani’s Press Conference yesterday is FULL of lies and misinformation. She stated for instance that the Head of the committee which punished Rohith was a Dalit. This, and her other claims, are LIES, and have been painstakingly pointed out by the SC/ST Teachers’ and Staff Association in HCU. In fact, in protest against Smriti Irani’s campaign of lies, 10 Dalit faculty members have resigned from their administrative positions in HCU.

• Smriti Irani claimed that 5 letter written by MHRD on this matter in 3 months is a ‘routine procedural matter’. Coming from a Minister who has NEVER once intervened in the several instances of ABVP’s violence in various campuses, or on any of students’ demands such as the non-NET fellowships, this is purely absurd!

ABVP’s Muscle-flexing and RSS-BJP Interference : In the midst of all these lies, let us once again examine the FACTS.

In August last year, the ASA had held a protest march in HCU against the ABVP’s disruption of the screening of the documentary Muzaffarnagar Baqi Hai in Delhi University. An ABVP leader had called the ASA activists ‘goons’ for the same. The ASA had demanded an apology – and the ABVP leader had apologized in presence of the campus security. But later, he claimed he had been beaten up by the ASA activists.

• The HCU Proctorial enquiry had found that the medical reports as well as statements of security staff did not show any evidence of the ABVP leader having been beaten. The HCU Chief Medical Officer, who is a Dalit, has also accused the HCU VC for being casteist, and deliberating ignoring him.

• Reports NOW show that the HCU administration has stated in an affidavit in the court, and the Hyderabad police has also supported this claim, that the ABVP leader’s claims of massive assaults on him were ‘exaggerated’. The police reports clearly state that there was NO evidence of massive assaults on Susheel Kumar, ABVP President in Hyderabad (Times of India, 21 January 2016 online reports, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/ABVP-mans-injury-claims-false-police-say/articleshow/50661841.cms).

• Yet, despite all these facts, the entire witch-hunt by HCU administration started unfolding under political pressure. To begin with, the BJP MLC Ramachandra Rao intervened, forcing the Proctorial Board to recommend suspension of five Dalit students including Rohith Vemula.

• Subsequently the earlier Vice Chancellor revoked the suspension following protests and dialogue with students, and ordered a fresh enquiry. Meanwhile Union Minister for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya wrote a letter to the HRD Minister claiming that the UoH had become a den of ‘casteist, extremist and anti-national politics’ and falsely peddling the deliberate lie that ASA students beat up ABVP leader Sushil Kumar when the latter protested against ASA protests against Yakub Memon’s execution.

• The MHRD under Smriti Irani then wrote no less than 5 letters in literally 3 months to the UoH over period of three months, demanding a response on “anti-national activities” on the campus! In this matter, the HRD Minister followed the same pattern she had earlier done, when she wrote to the IIT Madras to seek action against the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle following a letter by an RSS person branding the APSC as anti-national.  

• A new Vice Chancellor was appointed by the BJP HRD Ministry at the Centre soon after. He, in a payback mode, bypassed the issue of a fresh enquiry, and instead used the Executive Council (which the VC himself chairs) to suspend the five students – clearly under pressure from the HRD Ministry, Union Minister and BJP-RSS lobby. Not content with this, the EC also ordered what amounted to a social boycott of the five Dalit students – barring them from accessing the library, hostels, common places, administrative building, and from contesting students’ union elections.

• The brute might of state power was also to be seen in the fact that Rohith was denied dignity even after his tragic death. As per the custom of the particular community that Rohith belonged to, he was supposed to be buried, not cremated. The police snatched his body from the students and misled them about the place of cremation. The cremation took place, not at the designated place, but at some other place, without consulting his family. His family and friends were not even allowed to pay him their last respects.

• There have of course been several tragic suicides of Dalit students before, in HCU and elsewhere. The question in this particular case is: Unlike other cases, WHEN have two Union Ministers, and state machinery acted to precipitate matters in the manner we have outlined above, leading to and causing a suicide?

The entire saga will probably go down as the most vicious and grossest possible misuse of public office.

It is this state of affairs that has led to the suicide of Rohith Vemula. Rohith’s suicide note speaks of his desire to be a science writer and reach for the stars, but his sense that his birth itself was a ‘fatal accident.’ When a Dalit scholar is made to feel that even in a Central University, he can be ostracized, falsely accused, punished without evidence, and subjected to a social boycott and denial of rights thanks to the ‘fatal accident’ of his birth, it is indeed a shame.

Rohith Vemula’s death leaves us with several questions. On the one hand, it is yet another grim remainder of the terrible, institutional discrimination and alienation faced by Dalit students who enter our higher education institutions against all odds. But what this tragic episode reveals is the absolute dangerous use of state power by the ABVP-RSS-BJP, which they are known to use in every educational and university campus. Now, we are in a situation when the entire state machinery is being blatantly used to punish, victimise and ostracize ALL differing and dissenting opinion!

Cult of Criminalising All Differing Viewpoint: Take the ABVP-BJP’s use of Rohith’s opposition to Yakub’s killing to somehow brand him an ‘anti-national’ and punish him. As many of us have pointed out, there has been wide public condemnation of Yakub’s killing, in Delhi, Hyderabad and across the country. So, going by this logic, all those who raise democratic concerns differing from the government can now be termed ‘anti-national’ by the ABVP-RSS, and the entire state machinery can be used to victimise them even to death! It is indeed a ‘Mere Pass Mantri Hai’ muscle-flexing syndrome.

AISA demands that all those responsible for the victimization that led to the suicide of the Dalit scholar – including the ABVP leader who made a fabricated complaint, the University authorities, the VC, the Union Labour Minister and the Union HRD Minister be punished, and the Union Ministers who used their official position to pressurise the UoH administration to witch-hunt the Dalit students branding them as ‘anti-nationals’, leading to the death of Rohith Vemula, be sacked from their posts with immediate effect. Continuing punishment against all four Dalit scholars be immediately revoked and Rohith’s family be compensated.