Indian student’s suicide reopens debate about caste system and treatment of Dalits, who are condemned to occupy lowest rung
Although caste lines are slowly fading in modern India, Dalits – who were once so looked down upon they were known as “untouchables” – say they continue to face discrimination and abuse at Indian universities.
One day last week, Rohith Vemula was protesting his suspension from Hyderabad Centre University in southern India.
The next day, the 26-year-old PhD student hanged himself, leaving behind a suicide note that read: “My birth is my fatal accident.”
Vemula’s death on Sunday has sparked an outcry and renewed a nationwide debate over the treatment of Dalits, the lowliest members of India’s ancient, stratified caste system, at the country’s institutions of higher education.
Vemula and other Dalit student activists at the publicly funded university had clashed for months with a rival group, the student wing of India’s conservative Hindu governing party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP.
The Dalit students had held events promoting social liberalism and opposing the death penalty for a convicted terrorist. Word reached some BJP government officials, one of whom complained to the federal education ministry that the campus had turned into “a den of caste-ist, extremist and anti-national politics”.
Rohith and four other scholars were sleeping and bathing in the open, like outcasts
In September, following the letter, administrators suspended Vemula and four other Dalit students. Last month, after the suspension was upheld, the students were kicked out of their dormitory and launched a hunger strike. Vemula wrote to the university vice-chancellor, asking to be reinstated, but in vain.