The ghost of caste and the spectre of a suicide

In his celebrated Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco makes a fleeting reference to a man who attempts suicide by jumping from a high-rise. When he reached between the tenth and the ninth storey, the guy had second thoughts. But what could he do?

Rohit Vemula, the Dalit student who committed suicide by tying a noose around his neck would not have had such second thoughts. Unlike Eco’s character, he had had enough of the world. It was a world that simply failed to recognize him: considered him an outcaste the moment he was born; bullied him into submission and bulldozed him into smithereens, snuffing out his dreams of a starry future by fencing him in an oppressive present. As a fan of Carl Sagan, he must have certainly thought of leaving the weary world behind for Contact with a world beyond where he could wash off the stigma of caste. (Let us remind ourselves of Sagan’s dreams of a life beyond death in his novel Contact) 

Rohit’s is not an isolated instance. Gruesome though his case is, it is only one episode in a never-ending history that has been unfolding since time immemorial. Though Dalits have immensely contributed to India’s cultural richness and polyphonic heritage caste Hindus have often regarded them with supercilious contempt and savage disdain. The ritual enactment of this is being played out in all our religious and secular fora time and again. Probably nowhere is this more evident than in the annual temple ritual staged in Dakshin Karnataka every year in which Dalits are made to undergo the ignominy of rolling themselves in the victuals and the leftovers of the upper-caste people. Even our refined judicial machinery refused to put a total halt to this practice citing the pretext of religious freedom. If this is religion, by what name would we call barbarity is a question that we do not find ourselves convenient to answer.

For the untouchables in this country, however, that answer is not far to seek. As the victims of one of the most monstrous institutions of dehumanization that humanity ever invented, they know too well how firmly anchored is caste consciousness in Indian psyche. Over the years, it must have undergone several genetic mutations and cosmetic surgeries but it remains as firmly entrenched in the Brahminical mind-set as the memory of game-filled jungle in a circus animals’ savage imagination.

So a Dalit in the echelons of the academy is still an anathema to the Brahminical mind. How can a mind-set that believes the task of Shambukas to be sweeping and scavenging stand the sight of seeing the heirs of Shambuka in seats of power and prestige? If the penalty that Ekalvya had to pay for the crime of mastering archery was his index finger, the English speaking deans of modern times are going to be satisfied with nothing less than Shylock’s pound of flesh plus the blood and pus.

It takes unusual nerves and sinews for a Dalit to survive in such an ambience. Certainly not everyone can be an Ambedkar. He was an Ekalavya who spared his finger not to give it as an offering to the Brhamin but to give them some real lessons. Little Ambedkar took his lessons at school sitting on a sack while his privileged mates born on the right side of the caste divide comfortably ensconced themselves on wooden benches. Once when the mathematics teacher tested the students with a complicated problem, Ambedkar was the only one who knew the solution. Delighted at his pupil’s brilliance, the teacher wanted him to demonstrate it on the board. Hardly had Ambedkar approached the board than the boys on the bench let loose a collective scream. Their tiffin, kept beside the board, they dreaded would be contaminated by the approach of an untouchable. Little Ambedkar stood paralyzed in his tracks as even the teacher looked dumbfounded.

If it were me or you, instead of Ambedkar, we would have gone Rohit’s way that very day. But Ambedkar stared adversity in the face and went on to live a life worth a million lives. The present day Dalit student, however, faces an adversary of a different order. One who believes in enticing him by offering sugar-coated suicide pills with lavishly supplemented syrupy blandishments.

Not that the open foe has vanished all together. As Dalit writer Stalin Rangarjan points out, upper caste students in Tamil Nadu institutions have now started wearing armbands flaunting their caste status in a way that the lower caste students find intimidating. Caste based segregations and denial of admissions are reported even at government institutions in that state. The banning of the Ambedkar-Periyar study circle at Madras IIT has to be seen in this context. The suspension of the students belonging to Ambedkar Student Association, including Rohit at Hyderabad University, also traces a similar pattern. These ‘untouchables’ were accused of assaulting a ‘touchable’ student called Susheel Kumar, an ABVP functionary.

As Arundhati Roy so brilliantly demonstrated it in her fiction, ‘touchables’ are ‘untouchables’ for authorities in India whereas ‘untouchables’ are eminently ‘touchable’ and ‘torturable.’ Though Susheel Kumar’s body bore no marks of any assault, the wise vice- chancellor acted swiftly and had the Dalit students suspended from hostel. His unspoken words were loudly audible: those Dalit students should not have been either in the hostel or in the university in the first instance. So what was wrong in their expulsion? Union Human resources Minister Smriti Irani, whom detractors accuse of having fine-tuned the art of flaunting fake degrees, this time came up with a statement fully in keeping with her credentials, stating that the committee that expelled the students was headed by a Dalit. 

But, we should thank the minister. At least here is a minister with real or surreal Yale degrees who unlike her honourable colleague VK Sing considers the death of a Dalit to be an event of greater consequence than that of someone stoning a stray dog. At least she had a piece of uncooked lie to offer a grieving nation unlike her leader, whose stony silence sounded like a cruel joke.

Indeed, at a time when even Ambedkar’s legacy is being claimed by people who stand against everything he stood for, none would deny us the luxury of listening to sweet lies solemnly delivered.  

(Umer O Thasneem teaches English at the University of Calicut. The views expressed are personal)