A Telangana NRI's open letter to Ponnala on Rohith Vemula Suicide

To Ponnala:

It is a shame that Hans India publishes your article which is purely and wholly a diatribe against your political opponents and adversarial political parties. I shall test the objectivity and neutrality of Hans India by sending this article to them for publication.

Please explain to me how we can glorify a suicide committed by a fully grown man of 27 years age and had the opportunity to be working for a doctorate in social studies through hard work and good fortune. It was not a social boycott at all. Yes, it was a disciplinary action but not so severe that one could contemplate suicide. Besides, Rohith and the other four suspended students filed a case in the High Court asking for a stay on the suspension orders of the university and the hearing was set for January 19, 2015.

Unfortunately, just two days before that hearing, Rohit committed suicide. After all, he was an activist and by that he was fully aware that he would face some hardship in that endeavor. In fact, financially, he was in an enviable position even compared to class I employees.

I am from the 1969 Telangana Agitation era. We were students then studying at all levels and in all professional colleges. We participated in that Movement NOT for selfish motives of gaining benefits for ourselves or for our castes. In fact, most of us were already on the path to greater development and greater accomplishments. Some of us, including me, have been lathi charged, beaten and even faced bullets while participating in protests and leading protests. Hundreds of us were shot down by the State's Law and Order Machinery (Police Firings). We lost a full year of our life and education and huge future earnings. We were imprisoned, your faithfully too, under Preventive Detention at such a young age - like 20 years of age, for months together. We had no visitors to give us any moral support.

But, NONE of us even thought of ending our lives. Nobody committed suicide but yes, many of us were shot down by the State. Apparently, the tendency to commit suicide has increased tremendously in the last four decades. Data shows that the suicide rate doubled from 1978 (6.3) to 2010 (11.4) per hundred thousand population.

You captioned your article thus: "Rohith’s suicide due to social boycott" without fully comprehending its meaning and extent. A "Social boycott is a voluntary act of the shunning of a person -- a society's collective refusal to engage in the normal social and commercial relations that make life palatable and, in some cases, possible for an individual. Its goal: to make that individual so uncomfortable that he decides to voluntarily leave the society."

Was it really that, a "social boycott"? NO! It wasn't a social boycott at all! Disciplinary Action taken against students violating the university's guidelines is neither a boycott nor social. It is an approved punishment imposed by a statutory body.

Isn't it entirely false to claim that Rohit committed suicide due to social boycott?

Rohit himself vouched so. Please read Rohit's suicide note. Let me post some very poignant statements Rohit made in his note:

"... I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.

The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind... I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past. ..."

What is he trying to tell us all? He is trying hard to tell us all that he felt deceived and is horribly disappointed by the deception of those he loved and trusted. It wasn't about his adversaries but those he loved and believed in and above all trusted.

So, please hear him again with a clear mind and without built-in bias. If you truly want to do good to the departed soul then please follow and heed to his very sage and wise advice:

"Let my funeral be silent and smooth.
I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself.
No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act.
This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this.
Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone.” -

- Rohith Vemula"

But, if you still insist on sticking with your political opportunism then ...

You are entirely correct to point out that "...the issue of primary concern is the political interference in universities which are otherwise autonomous bodies ..." but, who is responsible for that? Isn't it your own political party which has ruled India since the day of independence that is for a total of 60 out of 68 years. After all, it was your party and you who were ruling (not governing) both the country and the joint State of Andhra Pradesh (Andhra and Telangana).

Did the political interference in universities start just a year and a half back? No, it was your party, which ruled India for an unbroken period of 30 years from 1947 to 1977, which started this whole mess of politicization of EVERY Public Institute in India. It is your party that started the Youth Wing which basically consisted of Students and Student Leaders. Appointments of VCs and other administrators was based not on Ability and Qualification but on political alliances.

Whoever prepared the article for you is ill-informed about who is considered a Genius. Let me quote a widely accepted description of a Genius: "A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of new advances in a domain of knowledge."

Even you admitted in your article that it was "the brawl between two student groups at the university" that led to the disciplinary action against those students who started and spearheaded that brawl.

Only here the fact is that the brawl was not between two groups but between one group (ASA) and one student (Susheel Kumar) that took place on the night of August 3, 2015. Even if we do not take into account all those preceding campus disruptive activities (protests condemning the hanging of the anti-national terrorist Yakub Memon etc.), can a responsible university administration turn a blind eye to gross violations of student conduct, a physical attack by a large group of students on a student in his own room and in the dark of the night? Should the university administration condone this kind of violence and vandalism just because the attacking students belong to a Dalit Association and the victim is a non-dalit?

Isn't it true that the original disciplinary action, approved by the university's statutory Proctorial Board, stipulated the expulsion of those five students? Isn't it true that the Ambedkar Student Association, of which the expelled students were members, did not allow the university administration to function for two days until the in-charge VC withdrew the expulsion order and appointed a committee to reconsider the disciplinary action? Isn't this kind of disruption anti-democratic and uncivil? Is this how a civil society functions?

The unvarnished truth is that these students were not expelled or suspended or even prohibited from any normal student activities. They were only expelled from living in the hostels on campus. They were not permitted as part of groups in the hostels, administrative offices or other public places on the campus to avoid potential disruptions. But, even that did not prevail as evidenced by the agitations on the campus since then.

Anyway, the five students filed a case in the High Court for a stay on the hostel expulsion and the High Court ruled to hear the case on January 19, 2015, along with the case filed by the mother of the student who was attacked by those five students. On the eve of January 17th, Rohit committed suicide, just two days before the High Court hearing.

I am puzzled as to why the High Court did not bar the students from disrupting the campus for the period remaining.

Rohit's suicide is a sad event but we cannot glorify it. We cannot blame the Society At large for that. Somebody brought up Nirbhaya Rape which was in poor taste and most unwarranted. That lady who suffered a terrifying torture in every manner valiantly fought for her life but after 15 days. Are you saying that these students who have been suspended from staying in a campus hostel suffered worse?

Why are you all making it a case of Caste Abuse or Oppression? Why are we creating a Permanent Nation of Victimhood? Your own Party leaders, Rahul Gandhi, et al, are deep in this abominable act. Even the Blacks in the US who have been enslaved with the help of the governments at all levels and the Courts for more than 200 years have not accused their Nation and their Religion the way we are doing in India. American Blacks were counted as 3/5ths of a human being and treated as property worse than cattle. Their family structure was decimated. Teaching alphabets to them was a crime.

Ninety percent of Indians were not literate and 99% or more were not employed in either public or private jobs even a year after India's independence. They were treated as second-class citizens in their own country and had no rights for hundreds of years. The British literally put them in the same category of dogs. Remember? The British posted signs saying "Dogs and Indians Not Allowed" at their private clubs. So, who stole jobs or denied education when they themselves had none?

But the Nation of India provided equal rights to all and special privileges and benefits and concessions to all those who claimed themselves as oppressed and marginalized. These special privileges have been on books for the past 68 years. Nowhere in the world are such special privileges provided. Not even in South Africa or Zimbabwe or to the Jews or to the Japanese or the Germans who were literally destroyed in the second world war.

So, how come you are all repeating the same lie that India and Hindu Religion is still oppressing people of various castes. Instead of calming the agitators and others, you are adding fuel to the fire by making horrendous statements about Caste Abuse as if the whole nation is complicit in it.

Will India ever embark on an all around developmental path?

India cannot progress as long as it claims to be a permanent victim of one or other atrocity.

Now that the university rescinded its suspension order of the remaining four students, you have a responsibility to be fulfilled. As a leader, you have the august responsibility and a patriotic duty to bring all Indians together, not divide them and rouse them to resent each other and the nation and their religion but to unite them and exhort them to become one as a nation and start a journey towards progress and growth.

"Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” -Nelson Mandela

Gems of Buddhist Wisdom (1996) from the Buddhist Missionary Society, contains the following: “Hatred is like a poison which you inject into your veins, before injecting it into your enemy."

By Subhash C Reddy