Rohith Vemula Wanted To Be Carl Sagan, But Karl Marx Ruined Him

The story of Rohith Vemula’s involvement in leftist-Dalitist student politics, his most unfortunate suicide and the politics that has come to be played around his death is an indicator of the state of affairs of today’s polity, the direction of student politics in India and the health of our academia and not to forget, the corruption of Dalit activism in India.

Most of the central universities today are dens for Communist/Marxist brands of Dalitist-Islamist politics. Kiss of love campaigns, the memorial for convicted terrorist Yakub Memon, the celebration of Mahishasur Divas, the holding of beef parties, all in the garb of individual liberty, minority rights and subaltern rights simply point to the level of ideological brainwashing that the leftist-Jihadist nexus is indulging on our university campuses.

Young minds are corrupted with outdated ideas of Communism in addition to making them hostile to anything Hindu. Naturally, this Communist-Islamist ideological brainwashing has led to hundreds of brutal attacks on the other side of the ideological divide, especially in places like Kerala, West Bengal and today’s Telangana. In short, the Communist-Jihadist nexus is making rowdies and hooligans out of our young students.

If an ambitious student like Rohith can be made to indulge in a brutal attack on a fellow student, just because the latter was from the ABVP, one can imagine the kind of influence they wield on less mature young minds. This Communist-Jihadist attack on our university campuses must be met head on.

The first and the most important step in this direction is to shatter the fraudulent appropriation of Ambedkar by the Communist-Jihadist combine. It is most unfortunate that today, the two ideas —Communism and Islamism — that Dr. Ambedkar steadfastly fought against all through his life, have fraudulently appropriated him as their poster boy. Both Communist and Islamist organisations feed off Dalit students in universities to further their agenda. The Right needs to get back Dr. Ambedkar from the stranglehold of the Communist-Jihadists. Dalit students in our universities must be made to realize that Ambedkar and Savarkar are not inimical; that Ambedkar and Swami Vivekananda are not antithetical. This exercise requires the Right to intellectually and ideologically to counter the Communist-Jihadist nexus.

Secondly, the Right needs to groom strong Dalit leadership in university campuses. A reactionary pork festival to counter a beef festival is not what will break the Communist-Jihadist nexus. We need more Dalit student leaders on the Right. This will eventually lead to the emancipation of Dalit politics from its current Marxist-Islamist leadership at the national level.

Unless this exercise is done with all earnestness, an Asaduddin Owaisi will continue hoodwinking Dalits to believe that Islamists are their friends. Dr. Ambedkar had warned Dalits repeatedly of this sort of deceiving by Islamists. Today, the ABVP must take the lead in remembering this advice of Dr. Ambedkar along with Dalit students.

Third, Rohith’s tragic death and his final, emotional letter point to a larger malaise that has afflicted our body politic (thanks to identity politics, championed by the leftists.) To put it in Rohith’s own words:

“The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number.”

The very ideas of identity and vote bank politics, to which he himself had contributed as a student activist and which he finally detested in his death note, have unfortunately consumed him.

Finally, it is no surprise that the Marxist academician lobby wants to exploit Rohith’s death to retain their positions of privilege by stalling new appointments in the garb of fighting an imagined “assault on academic freedom”. Be that as it may, it is imperative for universities to be liberated from the throttlehold of the Marxists, as it is preventing the growth of independent academic research in all areas in general and the social sciences in particular.

Tejasvi Surya is a lawyer practicing at the High Court of Karnataka, Bangalore. He is currently the Secretary of the BJP Youth Wing, Karnataka. Views expressed are personal.