Scholar suicide: City witnesses protests on Rohith’s b’day

January 30, which could have been RohithVemula’s 28th birthday, saw marking of protests by various student bodies who demanded justice for Rohith from the Central government. 

The National Student Union of India (NSUI) on Saturday initiated a silent march inside the Delhi University demanding the resignation of Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao and also the Member of Parliament Bandaru Dattatreya. They also demanded for a more tolerant atmosphere to be created in universities where equality, dissent and debate will be appreciated.

“We feel that the present system wants to stifle the educational environment in the universities and take over it,” said one of the protesting students. The student groups of Jawahar Lal Nehru University who have also been in the forefront in putting pressure on the Centre also marched towards the RSS office in Central Delhi. The student groups chanted against RSS saying that they were trying to saffronise the education system and thereby creating a divide.

Kanhaiya Kumar, President, JNUSU who is also on hunger strike for three days said: “To save the educational structure we would have stand up against those who wish to destroy it.”

Reacting to the protests, a student official from ABVP said, that these protests were only done to score brownie points and it is more important to have a look at the bigger picture.  “In the past 10 years there have been around 10 suicides by Dalit students  which have taken place in the Hyderabad University, where were the protests then?” said the official.

The official said that more relevant issues like commercialisation of education needs to be addressed than scoring political brownie points.