Not dedicated to Rohith Vemula – ’cause in his death, he has shown us that he is alive. He was alive in the sense that he felt the growing gap between his soul, and his body. He tried to understand love, pain, life, and death. He felt an emptiness that drove him to take his own life.
For those of you who don’t know the saga unfolding over the last few days, here is a link to the news page covering his suicide … Dalit Scholar Commits Suicide.
So I dedicate this post, and my return to the blog, to the remaining billion of us Indians, who though alive physically, are dead on the inside to the stagnating monster of casteism that has rendered us all emotionless, remorseless, and impotent.
It is a very simple question … Do caste atrocities happen in India? Is it fact or fiction.
As usual since my audience is primarily from Americas, I will use this analogy. Is Racism alive in America? Now I’m sure it has changed its shape and form, and not the same as it used to be before Civil Rights Movement. But the question is, does it still exist.
We can answer this by picking up incidents of racial discrimination from small, rural, ultra conservative, villages in the states, however, if we can find instances of said racism in something like the Ivy League colleges, which are supposed to be model campuses for the younger generation that are much more open, accepting, tolerant of a racially diverse student population, and be fair to one another, then we know that there is that much more truth to its (racism’s) existence. So the point is that while an incident, or two in a remote, rural village can be struck off as an anomaly, a similar occurrence in a prestigious campus, which stands as an epitome of knowledge and enlightenment, will undoubtedly rest the case that Racism does exist in America and is a far deep rooted problem, and one that can’t be ignored.
Since my blog is not about racism in America, I will leave it to the readers to research the same according to their enthusiasm on the subject. I will however stick with what I intimately know of, India and its caste system.
So overall, what I want to do is, narrow down the fact that, while atrocities based on caste system that happen in villages, and backward areas of rural India can be dismissed as doings of the ignorant, and the ultra conservative, similar occurrences in colleges, and educational institutions of National and International repute, can’t be ignored, but need to be taken as vivid examples of the heinous caste system that still percolates in, and rules the hearts and minds of Indians.
To prove this, I will list below the different cases of caste atrocities that have occurred at institutes of higher education in India, including prestigious, and well known ones like IITs and IIMs. This should hopefully prove to outsiders (non-Indians), and also Indians who chose to walk around with blinders, that caste system is a all pervading monster, and that just being educated and living in a city, or an urban metro, doesn’t make you immune to the same.
Hopefully it educates the readers to the fact that: Caste is a social and religious construct, education, wealth, employment, or lack thereof, do not affect the predetermined, birth based social hierarchy. Every Indian is bound by it.
- This one is a follow up on Rohith Vemula. In fact this BBC report blatantly mentions that “Mr Vemula’s is not an exceptional story of caste discrimination on India’s campuses.
- This is a report on the death of Senthil Kumar from 2008, from the same University of Hyderabad, where Rohith Vemula was a student.
- This one is from 2012, from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)
- June 2015 – caste culture at IIT-Madras – by Ajantha Subramanian, Prof of Social Anthropology at Harvard
- Video from CNN IBN of the abuse of a Dalit student at AIIMS
And just in case you were wondering if I had a plethora of data on this matter and that I sort and organize all such data for use at the exact moment, then I absolutely am not worthy of receiving such praise. It is in fact a misfortune that many such incidents occur on a daily basis and it took me, all of twenty minutes to search for Caste Atrocities in Indian Universities to come up with all of these links. And yes, of course there are many more such incidents, cause they occur so rampantly, and in such quick successions. I just didn’t want to list a hundred of them, but I would encourage you the readers, to paste any such links in the comments, which you think are worthy of sharing with other readers.
In conclusion, Rohith Vemula’s death was not in vain, but unfortunately it was also not unique. I have never met him, nor do I know him. But he is my brother, a valiant son of my country, and a victim of the system that affects every India. I can only hope that in his death, he can be the catalyst that is needed, to annihilate the caste system, and get rid of the evil hold that it has on its constituents. Let his death be a war cry to piece together the great nation of Bharat, by following Babasaheb Ambedkar’s path, and restore it to the glory of Buddha’s times.
In much shame, and Solidarity …