Caste Discrimination in Educational Institution: In Context
with Rohith Vemula’s Institutional Murder.
The tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula, has once again brought
into focus prejudice and violence faced by the Scheduled Caste community, even
in revered spaces like a university. The intolerance against the minorities-be
it Scheduled Castes, Tribals or Muslims, plays at various levels, right from
the social to political spectrum. The circumstances under which Rohith was
forced to take the drastic step of hanging himself in a hostel room inside the
campus has brought attention to the systematic discrimination faced by Scheduled
Caste students in higher educational institutions.
For me, this suicide is not an individual act. It is the failure of higher
educational institutions in democratic India to meet their most basic
obligation to foster the intellectual and personal growth of India's most
vulnerable young people. Instead, Rohith now joins a long list of victims of
prejudice at premier institutions in the country, where pervasive
discrimination drives so many Scheduled Caste students to depression and
suicide.
In South India, right from George Reddy to Rohit Vemula, the
right wing castiest forces have always killed the voice of justice and equality
in universities. The discrimination in educational institutions is worse than
untouchability. Back then at least they told you, look you are a Scheduled
Caste so stay away. Now, it is white collar discrimination. No suicide can
perhaps be seen only as a result of personal frustrations, least of all, Scheduled
Caste suicides. These personal frustrations have visible connections with the
context around them. They are political, cultural and social and therefore need
special attention. Hence it becomes important for all concerned to analyze
whether these suicides were intrinsically connected to the power structure of
the higher educational institutions and the entry of Scheduled Castes into it
which gives pain to the bloody castiests vultures sitting out there.
Rohith’s suicide is not the first and last which we have come
across in recent times. Cases of caste discrimination have also been reported
from IITs, IIMs, IISc and AIIMS. In 2008, IIT Delhi was in the news for
terminating 12 Scheduled Caste students citing "poor academic
performance", which led to allegations of caste-based discrimination. At
least 20 Scheduled Caste students from these institutions have committed suicide
in the past seven years.
Rejani
S. Anand, Bal
Mukund Bharti, Anil Kumar Meena(AIIMS) Ajay Sree Chandra….the
list is endless who succumbed to the caste discrimination and committed
suicides at premier institutions.
On August 23 2012, Vadithya Nehru, a 20-year-old second year
B. Tech student of IIT Kanpur, killed himself in Hyderabad because he faced
termination. He just could not face the prospect of returning to his Tanda of
fifteen Lambada households, as an adivasi colony is called in Marlinga Thanda
in Telangana’s Nalgonda district, and telling his people that he had been
tagged with the label of failure. After all, having bagged the 17th rank
in the ST category in IIT-JEE.
In March 2012, two Scheduled Caste student at All India
Institute of Medical Sciences, Anil Kumar Meena and Bal Mukund Bharti committed
suicide in their hostel rooms.
Mohan Dharavath from the English and Foreign Languages University,
Hyderabad, a PhD student belonging to an Adivasi community, was rusticated in
May 2014 for two years along with two other students when they protested the university’s
decision to close down the 24-hour reading room in the campus library.
Last year the dean of IIT Madras derecognized the Ambedkar
Periyar study circle accusing them of spreading hatred against Prime Minister
Narendra Modi without giving the student body a chance to defend the charges
levied against them.
If this is not enough the very own Census data released by
the government says that only 2.24 % of the 200 million Scheduled Castes become
graduates. This speaks about the highly discriminative mindset of the upper
caste hegemony over the educational institutions.
The UoH is one of the biggest hub of caste discrimination is
a well known fact. In 2002 UoH rusticated ten Scheduled Caste students for no
reasons. We don’t know what are those students doing now? We did nothing that
time nor when Senthil Kumar, another PhD scholar, killed himself in 2008 in the
same university. He was pursuing his PhD in Physics at HCU and committed
suicide in his hostel room. At first, University authorities claimed that he
died of a heart attack, but when his post-mortem revealed that he died of
poisoning, the issue blew up. There was a political furor, following which a
fact finding committee was set up under Professor Vinod Pavarala.
Prof.Vinod Pavarala’s findings were shocking, and showed a
thriving culture of caste-discrimination in the School of Science in HCU. In
Senthil’s batch, four including him were not assigned supervisors. All of them
were from reserved categories. Under pressure to perform and with no guidance,
Senthil failed in one of the courses, due to which he stopped receiving his
fellowship stipend. Hailing from a poor family of pig-breeders in rural Tamil
Nadu, Senthil succumbed to the pressure and killed himself. Two others who were
not given supervisors left the program.
Prof.Pavarala’s report stated that "it is a fact that
most of the students affected by the inconsistencies and ambiguities in
procedures were SC/ST students and more importantly, that all the physics
students that this committee could meet have reported their sense that the
School was acting against the interests of the SC/ST students". Out of
these four students, two eventually left the course as dropouts and one got
allotted a supervisor. Obviously, all the four students were from the reserved
categories.
What makes Rohith’s murder special? When Rohit composed the
suicide note, did he say to himself: “if my death begins another debate, a real
debate, it can only be a good thing?” It is indeed tragic that he ended his
life at a time when their fight against the castiest university was gaining
momentum. I myself was in touch with them from the day one when they expelled
from their rooms and forced to stay outside in Velivada. I visited several
times and continuously wrote against the university attitude towards these
scholars on social networks. Samata Sainik Dal – South India conducted Flag
March in the university. The Flag March was one of its first kind in the
history of Indian Educational institutions. And since then, the common man came
to know about this issue on larger scale. I called several big names to take
notice of this issue and raise voice, stand with the boys and show our
solidarity, but unfortunately as usual our sensitivity rose only after Rohith’s
death!
To go into the brief chain of events started with ASA students
assaulting a student in the hostel, the trigger was, in fact, a derogatory Facebook post that “ASA students
are goons are spreading hoolignism” by Mr.Susheel Kumar an ABVP leader in
response to the protests against the hanging of Yakub Memon and banning the
screening of a documentary film called “Muzaffar Nagar Abhi Baki Hai” in Delhi
on the Muzaffarnagar riots.
The Union Minister of Labour & Employment Mr.Bandaru
Dattatreya has merely forwarded a representation submitted to him by ABVP
students to the Union HRD ministry without going into the merits of the issue. And
later on raised both hands sidelining himself from the issue.
Mr.Dattatreya, in fact, drew HRD Minister’s
attention to the university having become “a den of castiest, extremist and
anti-national activities”, and referred to the alleged assault on the ABVP
leader Susheel Kumar.
The Proctorial Board
found no evidence of assault on Susheel Kumar. The committee had, in fact, consulted all parties
and submitted its report after meeting the doctors and the ABVP activist in hospital,
who claimed that the punches he suffered in the course of the scuffle triggered
an acute case of appendicitis. The medical report released by the medical
officer also proved that he did not suffered any physical bruises neither there
are any signs of wounds on his body parts.
The HRD Ministry
merely forwarded the Union minister’s letter as it had forwarded the letter
sent by Congress MP Hanumantha Rao on suicides on the Hyderabad University
campus. It had sent six reminders after forwarding Mahunamnth Rao’s letter in
November 2014 and four after Bandaru Dattatreya’s letter in August 2015.
The
facts that reminders on Hanumanth Rao’s letters did not apparently elicit any
reply from the university or any privilege move by the Congress MP but
reminders sent on Mr.Bandaru’s letter resulted in action speak for themselves.
Nothing more needs to be said !
There
are many conspiracies which are been hatched against the five scholars has
become a known fact by now. The first is targeting ASA activists as
Anti-National, Pro Terrorists. Seconds is, suspending these scholars based on
fake medical reports and without proper investigations, without giving chance
to be heard, third is, ABVP approaching BJP politicians and asking them to
build pressure through MHRD. Ms.Smriti Irani, blindly ordering the VC to take
stringent actions against the five scholars which ultimately resulted in Rohith
Vemula’s institutional murder…!
What
do all these events point at..? Was it targeting ASA..? Was it targeting the
scholars who conducted debate on capital punishment and staged protest against
ABVP time and again..? For me it is a direct attack on Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar’s
philosophy. RSS and BJP through this issue are trying to create an atmosphere
wherein they want to prove that the philosophy these boys are following is Anti
National. RSS agenda and conspiracy is to prove Babasaheb Ambedkar as anti
national and castiest. We as ardent followers of Ambedkar’s ideology have a
major role to play now. Our efforts should be to deface them, our work should
be to prove who is national and who is anti national, anti humanity anti
constitutional…then only we could justify ourselves as an ambedkarites.
Constitutional
Provisions:
Now allow me to let you know the constitutional provisions
which speak about educational rights to all the citizens of this great nation. Article
13, 14, 15, 21 and 21A, 28, 29, 30, 38, 41, 45, 46 speaks about educational
rights of the citizen. Out of these the said rights 8 are fundamental rights
and other four are from Directive Principles of State Policies – Part IV. Unfortunately
the state and centre government has failed miserably in implementing the
egalitarian principles of constitution. The 86th Constitutional
amendment making education a fundamental right was passed by Parliament in
2002. 93rd amendment provided
amendment to article 15, which provide reservation for SC, ST and OBC in
private institutions. Including self-financed but excluding minority
educational institutions and it also nullified Supreme Court’s judgment in
Inamdar case that State cannot impose reservation on private unaided
institutions. In 1966 Kothari commission
on education viewed education as a means of national development. And in 1976
Education was put in concurrent list from state list.
To ensure inclusion and equity, India’s Constitution states
that 7.5% of seats at government-funded higher education institutions are to be
reserved for Scheduled Tribes’ (STs), also known as Adivasis in India,
and 15% for ‘Scheduled Castes’ (SCs) often referred to as Scheduled Castes
and 25% for the OBCs. The seats have neither been filled in totality and those
students who joins the educational institutitions,colleges and universities are humiliated, discriminated and
forced to either abandon the education or to kill themselves. The cases of
discrimination continue to make headlines in almost all the educational
institutions. Every day we come across the suicides and harassment news in TV
and social media.
Rohith Vemula’s death has started a revolution I feel. From
the day the ruling government has come in power, there was a high sense of
inequality, threat, fear and insecurity among the SC, ST and Minorities. We have
seen rampant atrocities, physical attacks and regular abuses on people who
dared to raise voice against the government and fascist ideologies. Innocent people
are been killed for eating their choice of food, women are been striped and
paraded naked on roads, children are been doused in broad day light. The common
man was losing hope that nothing can be done. They were doubtful about their
life and existence, they were living under immense threat that someone will run
into their houses and kill their families. But Rohith’s death ignited the fire among
everyone in the country. Because of his death, such a big agitation could rose
to international level by which the government is on backfoot now. His death
gave birth to hope among millions of people who were under threat of their life
and voice.
Dear friends, this is the high time to carry forward this
momentum and build a strong unity. This is a high time to join hands and fight
against the atrocious system with much of our strength and intellect. As we see
that ambedkarite organizations are scattered here and there. We don’t see unity
among them, we fight within the community for petty reasons. If we don’t
resolve these petty issues now, stand together and face the enemy who is
standing on our doorstep, I see there is no future...! I see the conditions can
be beyond our reach and one day may come when the future generations may curse
us for not giving them a bright and secured future. Therefore, my friends, let
us pledge that we will not let any Rohith die from hereon, let us pledge that
we will show them if we stand together
nothing can defeat us...
Demands:-
1.
Invoke
IPC section 120A and 120B against VC.Apparao, Mr.Susheel Kumar, Bandaru
Dattatreya, Mr.Ramchander on criminal conspiracy with the intention killing Rohit
and harassment of other scholars.
2.
Financial
support to Rohit’s family.
3.
Register
cases under the SC/ST (Preventions of atrocities) Act, 1989 against all the
people who are involved in this issue.
4.
Register
cases of abatement of suicide of Rohith and criminal intimidation against other
four scholars against all the people who are involved in this issue
5.
The
Institutions should appoint anti-discrimination officers to deal with
complaints in future.
6.
The United Nations Should recognize caste discrimination as a priority
human rights and development issue and lend its united support to the
endorsement of the draft UN Principles and guidelines for the Effective
Elimination of Discrimination.
Lecture given at Shanti Chakra Internationals on
26.11.2015
