Shockingly, the  37 page report says that Appa Rao’s testimony states clearly that the suicide note of Rohith Vemula in no way “blames anyone” for his death. Significantly it is not the January 17, 2016 letter but the December 18 letter of Rohith Vemula where he spoke bitterly of the treatment of Dalit students at Hyderabad university, that clearly pointed to his state of mind and the non-responsiveness of the administration and the Vice Chancellor.

“The report further points out that nobody drove Rohith to commit suicide. It was an unfortunate incident, and the ministry will now study the recommendations to ensure that it’s not repeated,” said a source.The one-man panel of Allahabad high court former judge Ashok Kumar Roopanwal also recommended ways to improve the existing grievances redressal system at the university. Topping the list of recommendations were the setting up of an “appeal mechanism” that can be used by troubled students, and a counseling centre capable of providing immediate help.Citing Vemula’s lack of options to register an appeal after being removed from the campus, the report said: “The system of appeal will ensure that students’ rights are maintained.”
 
The panel also suggested the appointment of approachable academic counsellors, and the establishment of a grievance redressal cell for socially unprivileged students.Vemula’s death in January led to nationwide –and international- wave of protests against the NDA government and then HRD minister Smriti Irani. Agitating students said Vemula had been pushed to suicide by a suspension ordered by the V-C upon a prodding from Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya.
 
Vemula had committed suicide in January after the university management punished him for allegedly assaulting an ABVP leader.Roopanwal’s report was expected on August 1, 2017 but it was ostensibly delayed over fears that it may have derail the Parliament session.
 
Last October onwards, leaks from the report had begun to appear, leading former NCSCST Chairperson PL Punia in an interview to Sabrangindiato points out, pertinently, that the issue of which caste Rohith Vemula belonged to was never an issue that was part of the Roopanwal Commission’s mandate. Punia had also said that that the head of the one man commission appointed by the ministry of human resources development (MHRD) was ‘hired to hired to give a stamp of approval on what the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime has been saying all over the country’
 
Rohith Vemula had committed suicide in January after the university management punished him for allegedly assaulting an ABVP leader.A panel appointed to investigate the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a research scholar at the University of Hyderabad, has not implicated anybody in its report to the human resources ministry.
 
Letter of Rohith Vemula, January 17, 2016
 
“Good morning, 
 I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write. 

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 colored. 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 star dust. In very field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living. 
I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense. 

May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past. 

I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this. 

People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds. 
If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that. 
 Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive. 
 “From shadows to the stars.” 
 Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing. 
To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future. 
For one last time, Jai Bheem 
I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself. 
No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act. 
This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this. 
Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone. “
A Hindi translation of the note left by Rohith Vemula can be seen here
 
 
Who is to blame for Rohith’s death? Is there no need to pin both immediate, institutional blame as also accept, with humility, a wider social and political responsibility.
 
On December 18, 2015, Rohith allegedly wrote to the vice chancellor, a month before he took his life, to supply “10 mg of sodium azide to all the Dalit students at the time of admission… [and] a nice rope to the rooms of all Dalit students.” This handwritten letter should have been read as a precursor to what was coming. In the letter, Rohith allegedly goes on to say, “I request your highness to make preparations for the facility [of] ‘euthanasia’ for students like me. And I wish you and the campus rest in peace forever.” This communication squarely puts the blame on the university authorities and, first and foremost, on the vice chancellor. The letter traces the officially sanctioned “social boycott” of Dalit students after they took on a member of the ABVP for making derogatory remarks about Dalits. “Donald Trump will be a lilliput in front of you,” Rohith tells Appa Rao before offering the chilling advice to supply sodium azide and a rope to all Dalit students.
 
Is this a communication that points no fingers, raises no issues for the panel set up the MHRD?
 
 
Related Articles:
1.Rohith Vemula declared ‘not Dalit’ based on 2 out of 7 testimonies, councillor’s statement ignored
2.A letter that should shake our world: Dalit scholar suicide triggers outrage

The post NOT GUILTY says Justice Roopanwal exonerating VC, UoH Appa Rao Podile, also concludes Radhika & Rohith Not Dalit appeared first on SabrangIndia.