Bye, Vemula

Bye, Rohith Chakravarthi Vemula. Read twice over, My Suicide Note: 'My birth is my fatal accident twice over.' 2016 India is not for you, not for Dalits, not for Adivasis, not for the poor. You dont fit the 2016 India narrative. Hyderabad Central University did not like you; they finished you; newspaper reports do not offer a tangible reason for your being kept aside; sorry, 2016 India always kept you aside from birth to death; '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. As a glorious thing made up of stardust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living,' Vemula writes. 2016 India does not have the grace nor the heart for you; you are sufficent for her hatreds of the low, a measure created by her Brahminic civilisation. Rohith, your suicide note is poetry, Dalit writing; 2016 India allowed you to write a single poem; you hung by an Ambedkar banner; 2016 India couldnt take more. Me did not know of you till today; that does not apply to Hyderabad Central University. For everything with a touch of Andhra Pradesh and Telengana, have a chat with friend Ashok Reddy and he put it lucidly: 'It is ABVP vesus Ambedkar Students Association; Vemula lost; he had to; India is going nowhere; at least, there is some protest.' A committee has been set up to report in a day, assuming it does not plead for an extension; a second committee will go into it; and by the time, anything comes out of a third committee, Rohith Chakravarthi Vemula will be a misprint in history for scholars to quarrel. For 69 years, 2016 India has honed her committee skills to quash any and all; nothing goes into it, nothing comes out of it as everything is a secret. Vemula and Ambedkar Students Association, should not have protested the hanging of Yakub Memon; should not have dissented ABVP attack on the screening of the documentary - a Muzzafarnagar Baaqi Hai - in Delhi University. Vemula, you stood on your legs. Daya Pawar in Baluta writes: ' If I had only stood up to them, their opposition might have crumbled. But its easy enough to write revolutionary poems, poems that challenge the status quo. Its different when you must live the challenge. That I lived without self-respect is still a matter of regret for me. At the time I felt: Is it true? Am I really spineless? Damn it, why am I such a cowardly custard. Who put this fear into me?' Daya and Vemula stood up. Odd, an RBI governor, an establishment icon, Dr. Raghuram Rajan should stand up without having you, Vemula, in his mind. He was not even referring to you. Yet, what he said applies to you and and 2016 India: Dr. Rajan said: ' Not only are we accused of not having the administrative capacity of ferreting out wrongdoing, we do not punish the wrong-doer -- unless he is small and weak. This belief feeds on itself. No one wants to go after the rich and well-connected wrong-doer, which means they get away with even more.'  Vemula, you were poor (fellowship of Rs.175,000 remains unpaid) and you were a Dalit. Today, Vemula you can sleep without dreams and fears. Death has no Dalits. Bye.