VIJAYAWADA: A day after launching a broadside against the BJP for its stand on cow slaughter and beef consumption, actor and Jana Sena Party president Pawan Kalyan on Friday tweeted on the Rohith Vemula episode.
“He (Rohith) hated BJP like many millions of individuals, but it does not give a licence for harassment.”
Mr. Kalyan stated on the micro-blogging site: “There is no doubt that Rohith hated BJP, but that doesn’t give them a licence to harass individuals who don’t align, or against them that too when his form of protest was within the democratic means. This applies to any group or party, not the BJP alone.”
He accused the Central government of taking Rohith’s comments on saffronisation “personally for reasons unknown.”
“Even if Rohith had said something in haste about saffronisation with his university rival groups, the Centre could have just seen it as a part of the ongoing students’ ideological disagreement. And if their rivalry was causing law and order issues, then they could have let the authority concerned to enforce disciplinary measures. But, the Centre took it personally,” Mr. Pawan Kalyan observed.
“The punishment meted out to Rohith through suspension and alienation from the campus drove him to suicide and lack of the much-needed moral support from within his own group made him vulnerable.”
“The most tragic part of Rohith’s suicide was the anti-BJP parties looking to gain political mileage out of it, and the BJP and its allies trying to prove that Rohith was not a Dalit. But all of them forgot to answer how to prevent such youngsters from committing suicide in future out of despair, disappointment and resentment,” Mr. Kalyan observed, and hoped: “Our universities will be known more for academic excellence than as political battlegrounds.”
