“I only want to know what happened to my son,” said Radhika, Rohit Vemula's mother, while speaking at a gathering at Central College here on Sunday.
Radhika, along with her other son Raja and a few close associates, were in the city to attend a meeting of the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar. She narrated how she struggled to raise her son, and prior to his death, had not ventured beyond her small village in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh.
Today, she travels across the country seeking justice for her son. “They tried several ways to silence me, but I rejected each of them,” she said.
Rohit's brother Raja connected the dots of the Dalit struggle across the nation to the situation in Karnataka. “In 2010 at Haveri, Dalits poured human excrement over themselves to protest against being evacuated from land they had lived on for centuries. For the elite, holding a candlelight protest is enough to get the media to cover them. For us, we either have to cover ourselves with excreta or hang ourselves to get attention."
Dontha Prashant, Rohith's close friend, spoke to The Hindu about how media attention on Rohith's suicide had died down. "While the media is ready to splash the news across the front page when something sensational happens, it doesn't pay attention to a sustained long-term movement," he said. He said the goal of speaking on various platforms was to bring together various marginalised sections of society to fight against inequality.
"The Hindutva forces want to appropriate the brand image of Ambedkar, but they do not want to inherit his philosophy… because if they do, the root they stand on will crumble. The RSS is trying to crush resistance in universities because we refuse to accept their distorted version of the truth," he added.
Rajgopal, DSS State president, said that Radhika’s visit had revitalised the Dalit movement in Karnataka.
Minister Satish Jarkiholi, who was present, spoke.
