By YKA Staff:
“An attempt is being made to separate the suicide note from the ‘life’ of Rohith.” – P. Sainath
As protests against what happened with scholar Rohith Vemula continue at the University of Hyderabad, the place itself is seeing a beeline of activists, scholars, and filmmakers among many others, doing their best to articulate and give context to what his suicide means for the rest of us.
Filmmaker Nakul Singh Sawhney in fact recently held a screening of his acclaimed film ‘Muzzafarnagar Baaqi Hai‘ at the protest site, the same film whose screening at DU was attacked by ABVP members and was condemned by Rohith and the ASA.
A look at the FB Page – Joint Action Committee for Social Justice – UoH, which has been putting out regular updates on the happenings at the protest site tells you that the cry for justice, in this case, is only going to get louder.
Lending his voice to the same recently was journalist P. Sainath who is known for the incredible work he has done in documenting lives of the rural and the marginalized. In a powerful speech, Sainath calls to task the minister of education whose own educational credibility is under question, the columnists who are trying to pass off Rohith’s death as a ‘depression story’, the unjust laws that exist and everything else that can elicit only one response – “Shame”.
The one place though where Sainath says he agrees with Smriti Irani is when she says it is not a “Dalit vs. a non-Dalit issue”. Because as Sainath put it, it is an “Upper-caste Hindu fundamentalist versus Dalit, non-Dalit and every decent human being”.
Watch the full speech here:
