#dalitlivesmatter

Dalit lives matter

"If larger country oppresses a smaller country, I'll stand with smaller country. If smaller country has majoritarian religion which oppresses minority religions, I'll stand with minority religion. If minority religion has caste and one caste oppresses another caste, I'll stand with caste oppressed. In oppressed caste if an employer oppresses employee, I'll stand with employee. If employee goes home and oppresses his wife, I'll stand with that woman.

"Overall OPPRESSION is my ENEMY"

Do Dalit Lives Matter?

“Your presence irritates me,” said the deputy Registrar sitting in an air conditioned room.

India has a population of 1.3 billion. 180 million Dalits are denied human rights because of the disgraceful practice known as caste discrimination. Dalit students constantly under the threat of rustication, expulsion, defamation and discontinuation and Vemula wasn’t an exception.

The past decade saw the planned institutional murder of eight students in the Hyderabad University. In the span of four years, from 2008-2011, eighteen Dalit students ended their lives under the constant pressure upon their identity.

AIIMS, famous for producing the best doctors of the country has vile abuses written on the walls and doors of the hostel rooms where Dalit students reside. The teachers there, are partial while helping students and the ones with oppressed origins are always left out. More than 90% of the students face routine harassment at practicals or viva exams. People coming through quota are shamed, mocked for having deficiencies in education, feeble command over English, because most of them are first generation learners. Most prominent institutions lack basic structures like SC/ST cell and student support programmes and even if they do, the structures are dysfunctional. The segregation however starts as early as the school days with coloured wrist bands in classroom, forcing students coming from the oppressed communities clean toilets and upper caste children routinely boycotting food cooked by Dalits.

Dalit students forced to shift to certain hostels following harassment, abuse, violence by upper caste students, social isolation in dining rooms, sports fields, cultural events are some of the examples of informal segregation in AIIMS. 84% of students recall incidents of examiners asking about their caste, says the Thorat Committee. Teachers make students invisible by not giving enough time, discouraging in some way or the other, not allowing the student to work in labs. Students from marginalized groups are often troubled by the lack of clarity, contradictions in examinations and administrative procedures, rules that do not take account of their miseries and ofcourse the dominant castes’ favourite way with them, like ‘I am busy now’ ‘Go away,’ ‘Come tomorrow,’ etc.

The institutional murder of Rohith Vemula, was a steady process recorded by the isolation of the authorities, turning a deaf ear to his pleas, stopping his monthly stipend of twenty five thousand rupees for raising voice against the unfair segregation and suspension in September along with four others. The young scholar had also appealed to the university to allow him to die in December but the authorities maintained the ‘protocols’ of staying silent to this.

Muthukrishnan, the twenty seven year old student took away his own life. His last Facebook update was, ‘There is no equality in M.Phil./PhD admissions, there is no equality in viva-voce, there is only denial of equality….’

Senthil Kumar, a Dalit PhD student from the school of Physics consumed poison in 2008.

Madari Venkatesh, a doctoral student at Advanced Centre of Research in High Energy Materials, killed himself in 2013 for nobody from the from the School of Chemistry cared enough to supervise his research even after 2.5 years in the University.

September 4th 2014, Ankit Ambhore from IIT Bombay jumped from his hostel building. A month before, he and his parents were reportedly told by his HOD and Head of the institute’s Academic Rehabilitation Programme that Ankit, who was struggling academically would do well to drop out.

May 22 2019, Payal Selim Tadvi committed suicide facing harassment by her three seniors in Topiwala National Medical College.

In June 2015, IIT Roorkee expelled seventy three first year students from its B.Tech, IMT and M.Sc. courses- a huge chunk of them from the SC/ST communities. One student was asked by a teacher, “Why do people like you even come to IITs?”

Admissions for M.Phil. and PhD by UGC in May 2016, reduced completely on oral terms, was the move that Muthukrishnan wrote against in his Facebook post. His parting words quoting Ambedkar were, ‘When equality is denied, everything is denied.’

Here’s the list of Dalit student’s though the actual number is much more high than this.

• M. Shrikant, final year, B.Tech, IIT Bombay, 1st Jan 07

• Ajay S. Chandra, integrated PhD, Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore – 26 Aug, 07

• Jaspreet Singh, final year MBBS, Government Medical College, Chandigarh, 27 Jan 08.

• Senthil Kumar, PHD, School of Physics, University of Hyderabad – 23 Feb 08

• Prashant Kureel, first year, B.Tech, IIT Kanpur, 19 April, 08

• G. Suman, final year, M.Tech, IIT Kanpur, 2nd Jan, 09

• Ankita Veghda, first year, BSc Nursing, Singhi Institute of Nursing, Ahmedabad, 20 April, 09

• D Syam Kumar, first year B.Tech, Sarojini Institute of Engineering and Technology, Vijayawada, 13 Aug, 09

• S. Amravathi, national level young woman boxer, Centre of Excellence, Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, 4th Nov, 09

• Bandi Anusha, B.Com final year, Villa Mary College, Hyderabad, 5th Nov, 09

• Pushpanjali Poorty, first year, MBA, Visvesvaraiah Technological University, Bangalore, 30th Jan, 10

• Sushil Kumar Chaudhary, final year MBBS, Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University (formerly KGMC), Lucknow, 31 Jan, 10.

• Balmukund Bharti, final year MBBS, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, 3rd March, 10

• JK Ramesh, second year, BSc, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, 1st July, 10

• Madhuri Sale, final year B.Tech, IIT Kanpur, 17th November, 10

• G. Varalakshmi, B.Tech first year, Vignan Engineering College, Hyderabad, 30 Jan, 2011

• Manish Kumar, IIIrd Year B.Tech, IIT Roorkee, 13 Feb, 11

• Linesh Mohan Gawle, PhD, National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, 16 April, 11

Do Dalit lives not matter? Where does the sympathy go when Dalits suicide? Where does the façade of All Lives Matter go? Why aren’t paragraphs demonising reservation not address inhumanity the social segregation?

BLACK LIVES MATTER

WOMEN LIVES MATTER

DALIT LIVES MATTER

TRIBAL LIVES MATTER

MINORITIES LIVES MATTER

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