One of the saddest things that can happen to humanity is when a young person takes his or her own life. It becomes particularly heartbreaking when the young person is educated, intelligent, sensitive, shows potential – yet feels he or she has no other option left.
This is what happened this week when Rohith Vemula – a 25-year-old PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad – took his own life after leaving a touching suicide note. Suicides can partly be linked to one’s specific persona and mental makeup. However some of it can – and in this case is – linked to the world around the person.
While Rohith’s note blames no one for his death, he does mention his agony over being ostracised (he was suspended and asked to leave the hostel along with a few others), denied his due (his fellowship was delayed, causing financial hardship) and discriminated against. Investigations are still on, and we do not know the complete story yet.
A particular chain of events seems to have culminated in his suicide. Rohith was involved in student politics. Apparently he joined protests against Yakub Memon’s hanging. During those protests he had run-ins with ABVP students, who are backed by BJP. An ABVP activist claimed being manhandled and a complaint was lodged. While such events are unsavoury they are not unusual in Indian colleges, many of which are politically charged.
However, what happened next was unusual. The local area MP and our current Union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya wrote a letter to our current HRD minister Smriti Irani, alleging that the university had become a “den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics”. The HRD ministry wrote to the university vice-chancellor, seeking to know what action was being taken.
Eventually, five students including Rohith were suspended and denied a hostel. They camped outside the campus gates in a tent in protest. Rohith, unfortunately, committed suicide after a few days.
There is a clear conflict of interest where an ABVP complaint gets so much attention from two BJP run Union ministries, which in turn can easily put pressure on the university to clamp down. Frankly, it will take a long time to investigate this and we may still never know.
Meanwhile, politicians of all shades have descended on the University of Hyderabad campus, particularly those that seek dalit votes. I don’t know what is sadder, a young man killing himself, or politicians flocking to the venue to increase their vote banks? The drama of blame game, politics and even more politics on the issue will continue.
But what we should focus on instead is deriving lessons from the incident. There are serious issues in the way we manage our universities, and Rohith’s suicide is just one horrible outcome of it.
The single biggest issue facing government universities is the level of autonomy government gives to university management. They are run on taxpayer money, so clearly the government cannot be completely hands-off. At the same time, should there be letters from Union ministries enquiring about specific cases?
Should student discipline be a university issue, a local MP issue, a police issue or a Union ministry issue? Should government colleges even be allowed student politics on campus? Wouldn’t it immediately create conflicts of interest and place students at risk, especially if they don’t belong on the same side as the government?
We don’t know yet if the suspended students deserved punishment or not. However, who should be deciding it? If it is the university, should politicians be writing letters to take action, or equally bad, opposing politicians descend on the university campus to decry the action? Why are we turning our universities into a joke? Isn’t there enough silly politics around anyway?
Autonomy is the heart of the issue here, even if not the only one. There are other aspects too. Why are government payments delayed so often? The university claims the fellowship was delayed due to administrative issues and not out of vindictiveness. Even if one believes this, why are payments stuck for months? Rohith’s suicide note states that financial difficulties were a big factor in his taking his life.
Another issue is Rohith’s presumed identity as a dalit, and the discrimination dalit students face on campus. It is deplorable, but an unfortunate reality in a system where merit is given a backseat to identity. If we didn’t have caste-based reservations, caste wouldn’t be so relevant on campus and would become a non-issue. If we can shift to an economically backward reservation criteria rather than a caste based one – today we have the technology for this – we can curtail the stigma associated with caste.
Unfortunately caste reservations – the very scheme assigned to make people equal – become the biggest cause of discrimination on every campus. It happened during my days at IIT, and it happens in every university with reservation today. Can’t we switch to better criteria?
Politicians posturing and blaming each other on TV will achieve nothing. A genuine tribute to Rohith would be to learn the right lessons from his suicide. We need to make changes in the way we manage and run our universities. We also need to make universities caste and politics free. Let’s do it sooner rather than later, to prevent more cases like Rohith’s in the future.
January 23, 2016 ()