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'Rohith Vemula was a PhD scholar at Hyderabad University, he was a beacon of light who decided to torch himself so that people could see (finally) !.His was not a suicide but an Institutional Murder. A soul who had (forced) to let go of his dreams, He writes,"I loved science, stars, nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs coloured. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of stardust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living...I wanted to become a scientist and a science writer. But, this is my last piece of writing..." These excerpts from his last letter indicates that it was not written in a fit of rage or in 'academic' anguish but it was a graceful catharsis.The BJP has been desperate to saffronise universities and academic institutions and prop up its students' wing in campus politics through subterfuge and political muscle.Every single event that lead to this cusp is smeared with silent (violent) saffron smirks.Rohit and the four other students faced allegations last year that they attacked a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) - the student wing of the BJP, over a tiff relating to the Ambedkar Students Association's protest on the hanging of Yakoob Memon. They all denied the charge. A Proctorial Board inquired into the incident and, on August 12, 2015, came out with a report that there was no medical evidence or to prove that Kumar was harmed by the ASA activists. The board recommended letting the ASA youth off with a strong warning.The university that cleared them in an initial inquiry changed is stand a few days later, the Proctorial Board came out with another decision saying that the ASA activists were guilty of manhandling and causing harm to ABVP member and decided to suspend four dalit research scholars belonging to the ASA for an entire semester.The students had then alleged that the board had changed its decision due to the intervention of BJP Legislative Council member N.  Ramachandra Rao.Yielding to the protests by ASA students the then in charge vice-chancellor, Prof R.P. Sharma, ordered another inquiry committee to be set up and revoked the suspension of four Dalit scholars.After Prof Sharma retired and Prof. Appa Rao Podile took over as vice-chancellor, the Executive Council meeting in its meeting in December decided to suspend the students from the hostel.The five Dalit students were subsequently barred from using the university's housing and other facilities, reports say, prompting their supporters to allege they had been subject to a "social boycott".Protesters allege that the students were expelled after the union minister Bandaru Dattatreya( BJP), wrote a letter to the federal Ministry of Human Resource and Development, to complain about the alleged incident.Dattatreya wrote to the HRD minister urging action and claiming that the "Hyderabad University... has in the recent past, become a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics".In all likelihood, the rivalry among students would have remained confined to the campus, and could even have been resolved, had Dattatreya - who had no business meddling in student politics - not intervened and written a letter to the Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani that resulted in Vemula's expulsion and subsequent death.Protests, scuffles, ideological debates are part of a healthy democracy. Every day we see hundreds of protests around us by ordinary citizens and political parties. In how many of these cases are protesters expelled, externed, victimised, suspended from work, barred from studying or treated like pariahs?But, Rohith, like German student Sophie Scholl, who was executed in 1943 by the Nazis for distributing anti-war leaflets, was thrown out of the campus for participating in political demonstrations and protests. He ended up paying for campus activism with his life.When a human being, in the purity of his sane self, laments,"...some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident." it's time the winds blew.References

References

• 2016 deaths
• Suicides in India