Looking through the car window in front of Feroke college main gate, Rohith Vemula’s mother Radhika Vemula reads out a banner: “Where is Najeeb?”. Najeeb is missing from October 15th. And Rohith Vemula committed suicide on 17th January 2016, barely a month and half left to next January 17th. Radhika vemula is curious about the student community, how the campus respond things happening around, about the composition of students from Dalit-Muslim communities, and about the presence of right wing student organizations.
Radhika says she is under severe threat from the ruling party BJP. A Mala woman who earned her bread on her own, hailing from Guntur, is now travelling all through the country, fighting the fundamental autocratic state which murdered her son for being a Dalit. “we must take revenge on the BJP through votes because it is this government that has turned a blind eye towards Dalits of the country and my son is an example.” Says Mrs. Vemula. “the universities in the country are made as if they are not meant for Dalits. We personally took initiatives to select a representative from our community for the MLA, MP posts, but indirectly we see them working only for their parties and our voice is oppressed by them.” Underlining the idea of self respect, Radhika asks people whom she met, not to vote for BJP. For her, as she clearly puts it what is left to do is to talk to students, in whom she see her son Rohit.” Her fight is on till the killer VC Appa Rao resigns and the Rohit Act gets enacted.
The Velivada, the makeshift tent the thrown out students built, stays in the university’s shopping complex. It survived attempt s of demolition. ‘Rohith smaraka stupa’ stays broken after surviving demolition. It reminds for Rohith, it was difficult to spend 2:AM in the morning and 2:PM afternoon inside the velivada because of the weather extremes.
Each journey for her is an attempt to strengthen the movement her son started off killing himself, which spread over the entire country in various scales. The UoH administration comfortably forgot the fact that they murdered a Dalit student, that they repeated the history of suicides of Dalit students in the campus, that they concealed an important police affidavit that proves the five students who were thrown out had done nothing wrong. And they still entertain themselves the positions they are appointed in. The infamous campus gate of University of Hyderabad where a non-student have to submit an identity card before entering is still hostile to Radhika Vemula. By March 2016 itself the gate became almost exclusive. Solidarity talks were made at the closed gates where the students listened to them with the gate separating both. And the painted off graffities on campus walls talks much about the Brahmin arrogance.
As a reply to my comment that current Indian feminism is colored by upper caste women and is senseless, Radhika Vemula corrects me saying : “do not call them ‘upper castes’, call them ‘other castes’. We are the upper castes” aptly translated by Rohith’s childhood friend Sheik Riyas, who accompanies Mrs. Vemula these days. Recollecting the meeting with Fatima Nafees, Najeeb’s mother who is out in the streets for her missing son, Mrs. Vemula thinks its important to stay together and fight the state. She also visited the murdered Islam convert Faisal’s mother Jameela at Malappuram. These meetings sends a strong statement to the right wing elements of the country. These women are organizing themselves against the patriarchal fascist government.
Apart from the meetings and programs to attend next month, Radhika Vemula is firm at the fact that she will enter University of Hyderabad on coming January 17th. She sounded hopeful.
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