“A Tyrant dies and his rule is over, a martyr dies and his rule begins.”

Rohith Vemula was not just an ordinary student, but a dalit political activist too. He was one of the prominent organisers of Ambedkar Students’ Association in HCU, raising his voice on the issues that not just affect student community, but even the marginalised and oppressed sections of the society. He himself coming from the most marginalised sections of the society was not just asserting his own individual rights, but through his organised politics was asserting the rights of the majority of Indian population. It is this assertion and fighting for the cause of the oppressed masses that became the reason for the Hindutva fascist forces within University and outside University to feel terrorised. It is a historically known fact that whenever dalit communities, adivasis, minorities, women, workers, farmers, students have asserted their rights and resisted the systemic violence perpetrated on them every day, their resistance is silenced by coercive machinery of the Indian state along with the Hindutva forces and private armies of the landlords, and the MNCs. In a country where farmers are committing suicides every day, tribals are harassed and killed every day, atrocities on Dalits are rampantly increasing, growing genocide of the minorities, workers beaten and jailed for strikes, students brutally beaten for demanding scholarships, systematically silencing of women voices in every sphere of life; it becomes essential responsibility for students like Rohith to organise themselves and fight against this ongoing oppression. This organised politics led of ASA led to the expulsion and harassment of the five dalit students including Rohith. These five students were deliberately harassed and punished by the university’s administration, MHRD, ABVP, and local BJP MP to gag the voices of other common students. And this continuous harassment led Rohith to commit suicide. Before him many dalit students have been forced to commit suicide all across this country, but most of the incidents were invisibilized by the same University’s administrations and MHRD. Just like for farmers fields have become the killing spaces, for students’ coming from marginalised sections Universities have become killing fields.

Since, the BJP government with the support of RSS and other Brahmanical-Hindutva outfits has come in power its student wing ABVP has become one of the instruments to further their brahmanical casteist ideology in university campuses all over India and also to silence the voices of dissent that comes from other students and teachers organization against the saffronization of university space and privatization of education. With the help of the university administration the right wing forces have already started taking programmes like the recent programme on building ram mandir was hosted in Delhi University’s Conference Center addressed by Subhramaniam Swamy and RSS pracharaks in DU. This collusion of Hindutva forces with the Universities administrations all over India and the selective promotion of RSS ideologues to administrative positions, among faculties and support of right wing students’ groups by the University’s administrators and MHRD must be exposed and broken. Outside the Universities space we have seen how Hindutva forces are trying to gag and silence any form of dissent that is rising against their casteist, communal and patriarchal ideologies. The killing of MM Kalburgi, Pansare, Dabholkar,  Dadri killing, stripping of dalit couple, banning of Murugan’s book, pulping of Wendy Doniger’s book, growing attacks on artists, professors, filmmakers, singers, is the direct manifestation of the rising Brahmanical-Hindutva fascism.

Therefore, to oppose these reactionary forces who are spreading their roots by constantly spreading false understanding of the history, art and culture among the masses, to divide and crush the peoples struggle on the basis of caste, race, and religion, it is necessary for the cultural activists, artists, writers, teachers, lawyers, students, rationalists, and intellectual sections of the society to perform the role of unifying the peoples struggles by integrating themselves completely with the masses.

We appeal all, to paralyzingly attack Brahmanical Hindutva Fascist forces that are trying to enslave us in its snares. We immediately demand the resignation of MHRD minister and punishment to all the culprits involved in forcing Rohith to commit suicide. Further, we must strive to build a cultural resistance to strengthen the ongoing peoples struggle against the privatization and saffronization of our society, and fight to uproot all forms of inequalities from our society.