Meet the three students from Lucknow's Ambedkar University who forced PM Modi to react to Rohith Vemula's suicide
Casteism has taken on a new manifestation, the students told Teesta Setalvad in this interview.
On January 22, four days after Rohith Vemula's suicide, while addressing the convocation at Lucknow's Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was assailed by three graduate students shouting slogans against him.
Just as Modi was beginning to deliver his speech, a student named Ram Karan Nirmal stood up and shouted, "Narendra Modi go back". He was soon joined by two more students – Manoj Kumar and Amrendra Singh Arya – raising slogans against Modi in protest against Vemula's death.
"Rohith hum sharminda hain, Dronachanrya abhi zinda hai (Rohith, we are ashamed that Dronacharya is still alive)" was another slogan the group raised before they were overpowered by security personnel.
Following this Prime Minister Modi wept and said he could feel Vemula's parents' pain. "Maa Bharati has lost her son," he declared.
The three students were interviewed by Human Rights activist Teesta Setalvad (video above) about the incident, its repercussion and the prevalence of casteism in universities and educational institutes. The discussion covers the BJP's attempts to appropriate Ambedkar's legacy, casteism, reservations, and the possibilities that India's youth will work towards eliminating caste and gender discrimination in the country.
Nirmal, who led the protest at the convocation is a Dalit student. He has got a LLM (Masters in Law) degree in Human Rights. The Vice Chancellor of the university was quoted by Indian Express as saying, "The university cannot take action against a student who has graduated. It is democracy." But Nirmal says the police beat him up, and that the university has threatened to withhold his degree and gold medal.
Giving examples of caste discrimination they have seen or faced in their own lives, the protesting students tell Setalvad that they are the first generation of learners from their families and that casteism may not exist in the same form it used to, but has taken on new manifestations and continues to plague India. Referring to Ambedkar, Nirmal says the way to eliminate the problem has already been given by Ambedkar many years ago.