The suicide of Rohith Vemula, a dalit scholar from Hyderabad University, has shaken the collective conscience of the country with condemnation pouring in for the university administration and senior ministers in Narendra Modi’s cabinet.
Questions are being asked on the roles of Bandaru Dattatreya and his cabinet colleague Smriti Irani, who holds portfolio of the HRD ministry.
We published Vemula’s suicide note on Monday. Now it has emerged that the dalit scholar had written a desperate letter to the Vice Chancellor few days before he was forced to commit suicide.
Here’s what he wrote,
“To
The Vice Chancellor,
University of Hyderabad,
Subject: Solution for Dalit problem
Sir,
First, let me praise your dedicated take on the self-respect movement of Dalits in HCU campus. When an ABVP president got questioned about his derogatory remarks on Dalits, your kind personal interest into the issue is historic and exemplary. 5 Dalit students are ‘socially boycotted’ from campus spaces.
Donald Trump will be a lilliput in front of you. By seeing your commitments. I am tempted to give two suggestions as a token of banality:
1) Please serve 10 mg of Sodium Azide to all the Dalit students at the time of admission. With dire to use when they feel like reading Ambedkar.
2) Supply a nice rope to the rooms of all Dalit students from your companion, the great Chief warden.
As we, the scholars, PhD students have already passed that stage and already members of Dalit self-respect movement unfortunately, we are here left with no easy exit, it seems.
Hence, I request your highness to make preparations for the facility “EUTHANASIA” for students like me. And I wish you and the campus, rest in peace forever.
Thanking you,
Yours sincerely,
V.R.
(Vemula R Chakravait
14SKP01)