Rohith Vemula’s Suicide: Beyond Identity in Campuses

Rohith Vemula incident should teach us to move beyond cliché of left and right in campuses, writes Vamsee Juluri.

The biggest failure of education in the late modern age is that it has amassed all the ills of an unfeeling, top-down industrial machinery without the promised modernist utopia of freedom, civil interaction, and reason at its core. (Photo: The Quint)

The tragic suicide of a student, Rohith Vemula, at the University of Hyderabad has stirred both hearts, as well as debates. In our media-driven age, when the suffering of grieving mothers and families reaches us instantly with seeming intimacy, but remains confined within the terms and logic of the dominant discourses of our time, it becomes easy to lose sight of the depth of the crisis we are living in. Pain is a lesson that must not be taken lightly.

The biggest failure of education in the late modern age is that it has amassed all the ills of an unfeeling, top-down industrial machinery without the promised modernist utopia of freedom, civil interaction, and reason at its core. Students and teachers strive a lot to outdo the prevalent bureaucracy across schools and colleges, but the fact remains that education lacks the intellectual and, dare I say it, spiritual dimensions to foster a sense of love among, between, and most of all, within members of a school or college community.

Our curriculum (let alone the campus culture) is so badly broken that there is very often no connection between the subjects one studies, and one’s sense of worth and self. (Photo: iStock)

Disconnect Between Curriculum and Reality

Our curriculum (let alone the campus culture) is so badly broken that there is very often no connection between the subjects one studies, and one’s sense of worth and self; even in this day when personal narratives become intellectual and political material in the academy.

This personal-as-political phenomenon may not be fully apparent to those who have studied only engineering, sciences, or medicine, the more popular fields of study still for many in India. In the sciences, the knowledge you seek is not a reflection of who you are beyond your capacity to grasp it. It will not necessarily make you think about yourself in ways you never thought before – as feminist or sexist, anti-caste or brahmanical, socialist or capitalist.

Bridging the Gap

• The biggest failure of education in our country is that it has amassed all the ills of an unfeeling, top-down approach without reason at its core.
  
• A disconnect exists in academics between the subjects one studies, and one’s sense of worth and self.
  
• As someone who has studied in such a culture, I believe in the promise of a politically aware and engaged curriculum.
  
• In campuses across India, we find ‘identity’ acting as a source of distress, hatred and despair.
  
• We must do our best to move beyond the present clichés of the Left and the Right that have dominated campuses so far.
  

Lagging Behind on Education Front

The impersonal world of the sciences today finds itself uncomfortably answering to the emerging world of the politically-engaged humanities and social sciences in campuses across India. These subjects are being seen as a crucial piece of the modern vision for education and citizenship. Universities have witnessed a rise in subjects that demand not simply classroom activity, but also a sense of political commitment from their students. Protest and resistance are no longer distractions from education, but are its very essence.

As someone who has studied in such a culture, I believe in the promise of a politically aware and engaged curriculum. After all, if the only thing that education did is to supply managers and workers to multinational corporations without nurturing the critics and conscience-keepers who question things, we would be living in a culturally impoverished world today. It is the students who did not opt for the rewarding majors and careers; who inevitably go into professions that help others, and their dedication must be appreciated.

AIDSO activists stage a demonstration against the suicide of Rohith Vemula at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, on January 19, 2016. (Photo: IANS)

Identity Playing a Villainous Role

And yet, we live in an age when this supposed curriculum-for-conscience seems to be sapping the very life and spirit from people in it, and people who encounter it. In campuses across India, we find identity playing out not as a source for understanding and change, but as a calculus for apportioning righteousness and blame, and inevitably, a source of distress, hatred and despair. In the past few months, we have witnessed a series of openly violent calls being issued against the culture and very existence of some groups of people by others in campuses across India.

A revered, beloved and mother-like deity like Durga is suddenly re-imagined as a historical figure who really killed a subaltern hero in one college campus. A complex and troubled social institution like caste is evoked to issue death-notices for a whole religion in another. And conversely, the response to such extreme positions has not been to engage in a reasonable dialogue, but to condemn those holding them altogether as anti-nationals and traitors, a trend that was at the root of the tragedy at the University of Hyderabad as well.

CPI-ML general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya leads a demonstration to protest against the suicide of Rohith Vemula in Patna, on January 19, 2016. (Photo: IANS)

Rise of Identity Politics in Academia

We need to ask where this discourse of identity-as-destiny is taking us, those who are historically burdened by it, as well as those of us who view it too easily as a choice that can be cast aside. The rise of identity politics in academia was a response to a time and place in history that denied the right of different groups of people to speak in their own names. In the West, it followed a logic of accommodation between privileged and formerly enslaved or colonised races. In India, it remains an unsettled issue, with campuses split across disciplinary or ideological as much as caste lines.

There will be several angry narratives in circulation in the coming days over the meaning of the life and death of Rohith Vemula, about his identity, politics, and symbolism for India’s future. Regardless of our own stakes in them, we must remember one thing. There are many other young minds and lives just like his still out there, forming impressions about what it means to live and to die for a cause or even for the absence of one. For their sake, we must do our best to move beyond the present clichés of the Left and the Right that have dominated university life so far and have robbed education of its capacity to teach us to live.

(Vamsee Juluri is a professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco and the author of “Rearming Hinduism”.)

Also read:
Why Rohith Vermula’s Suicide Note is an Anguished Letter to India
Could a 2013 Court Order Have Prevented Rohith Vemula’s Suicide?