Rohith Vemula’s Suicide Reaches the Political Blame Game Stage

Questions about political intervention in Rohith Vemula’s suicide case continued to dominated primetime debates.

Students protesting against Rohith Vemula’s suicide. (Photo: PTI)

A series of letters sent by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to the Vice Chancellor of Hyderabad University, in response to a letter written by Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya to the MHRD has raised hell for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the case of suicide of dalit scholar Rohith Vemula.

Also read: Rohith Vemula’s Suicide Reveals Letters From Bandaru, HRD Office

On Times Now, Arnab Goswami had BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli, NCP’s Rahul Narvekar, RSS Thinker Rakesh Sinha, AIDWA Smita Gupta, Shehla Rashid Shora, and D Prashant, one of the students suspended along with Vemula, a member of Ambedkar Student’s Association (ASA).

Sinha sparked severe angst after saying that some people are rewriting Vemula’s suicide letter.

Upsetting Prashant, Sinha went on to defend his stance by pushing the comment under the carpet of “politicising the issue”.

What further aggravated the students representatives was Nalin Kohli’s claim that the BJP does not particularly favour any student body.

Ill-prepared for the debate, Kohli, however, could not counter when faced with the question of five letters by Dattatreya written to the HRD Minister with the same subject-line.

The Ministry, reportedly got involved when members of the ASA allegedly manhandled ABVP head Susheel Kumar and dragged him to the gates of a college over a Facebook post against Dr Ambedkar.

When Goswami asked Kohli if a series of letters from a Union ministry in a student politics case was justified, Kohli reacted to it by saying:

<p> Any young Indian if he is committing suicide is condemnable... Susheel Kumar’s mother filed a petition in the Hight Court, so even the HC was involved...The courts are in the right in asking for a letter of action taken.</p>

The debate, besides being one-sided, also failed to resolve the issue of culpability or who the onus of the suicide is/will be on.

The Prime Time debate in NDTV dealt with the motion whether Rohith Vemula’s suicide was of a political nature or not.

Anchor Barkha Dutt, started the debate by raising questions on the use of the specific tag of “anti-national” about dissenting students in the campus, to which Asaduddin Owaisi, President of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen said:

<p>Anyone who opposes BJP is ‘anti-national’ and anyone who opposes Congress is ‘communal’.</p>

Sambit Patra, Spokesperson of the BJP, retorted by saying that the ASA students did in fact involve themselves in anti-national activities when they held a protest against Yakub Memon’s capital punishment.

Owaisi snubbed back saying that such a protest was not mentioned in the first proctorial report. Dickels Leanard, a fellow student of HCU also agreed that the issue of the protest was added only in the second proctorial report, only after Union Minister of Labour Bandaru Dattatreya’s letter to the MHRD.

Sambit Patra and Krishna Sagar Rao both maintained that even the HC refused to stay the punishment order of the suspended students, and had on three occasions asked whether or not action has been taken by the university.

Chandrabhan Prasad, Advisor to the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry corrected them saying that the protest was not in support of Memon, but was in opposition to the death sentence, the position the media took in general.

<p>Dalits have not socially boycotted anybody because they themselves are boycotted.</p>

<b>Chandrabhan Prasad, Advisor to the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry</b>

Tempers rose when Sambit Patra questioned Owaisi why both Rahul Gandhi and him were silent when in the last ten years, eleven students had committed suicide. He cited their suicide notes saying that each of the suicides were closely connected to caste issues. He criticised Jamia Milia Islamia’s policy to not have reserved seats for Dalits.

As the panel got divided in two factions, one suggesting that the political pressure put by BJP had directly led to Rohith’s decision, and the other claiming that the HC refused to stay the punishment order in favour of the students, a hassled Barkha Dutt had to quiet down the panel by saying “Rohith ke naam mein let’s be civil.”

Professor Rakesh Sinha, member of RSS, intervened saying that Ambedkar didn’t extend his support to terrorists. Madhu Goud Yaskhi, Spokesperson, Congress retorted saying, “There is a systematic approach to this issue by the MHRD.”

The debate was concluded in full agreement with Leanard’s statement:

<p>Rohith’s suicide has the history of caste written on it. Let’s address this and make it into a national issue.</p>