Nothing brings alive an opposition Indian politico as a corpse does. Though any dead person can be resurrected for political points, those from minorities or depressed classes top the charts as ripe for picking. Our secular and social milieu ordains thus.
If this sounds crude and uncharitable to the lost lives blame it on the scavenging pack of vultures (include media and self-styled liberals) that is inflicting such ignominy on the mortal remains and memory of miserable victims.
Of course, debate and speculation about unnatural deaths as that of Rohith Vemula are unavoidable. But campuses can’t be converted into courts nor Primetime become public gallows, indicting and hanging presumed provocateurs at will.
If that be so, the entire nation will have blood on its collective hands. I wish not, but what if the ABVP student who is now all but convicted in public discourse, despite screaming his innocence, gets so depressed as to take the suicidal path?
Can Rahul, who didn’t visit the homes of Pathankot martyrs, but went to Dadri and now Hyderabad, deemed a cause by his visibly one-sided sympathies? Ditto with Kejri and the other agitating ‘intellectuals’? Guilty all, by current trends. Open and shut! More open and shut than what the post-haste FIR on Rohith’s death against an Union Minister suggests.
Legal proof of corruption has become a matter of maths and percentages. Terrorists caught in action real time like Kasab or conspirators in mass murder, like er, Yakub Memon, get a, well, long rope in both liberal and legal fora. Even an isolated murder is difficult to sort. More so mob killings. In homicide, abetment to suicide is the toughest nut to crack.
A suicide note is the closest one can get to a hard evidence, though even that can camouflage real motives of the victim or worse, be concocted. Of course, none, from police to politicos to his so-called opponents, are questioning the genuinity of Rohith’s dying declaration as of now. And that is the point. The note, in letter and spirit, is an expression of angst, not an evidence of abetment. Guilt is easy to impart, but difficult to prove.
The text is online. It takes real wild imagination or extreme ideological bias to kick up the kind of hyped charade that is on parade. Sadly, both are in abundance. Really, the perpetrators of this orchestrated campaign against a Government that is easy target to such insinuations, are damaging the course and cause of justice and worse, the victim himself.
The vitiated atmosphere makes proper inquiry difficult. Outbursts of emotion by all and sundry are being passed off as ostensible evidence. Facts are put beyond reach and buried in a maze of fiction. Word of mouth and weird claims fly like winter wind, chilling and infectious. The cliched ‘law will take its own course’ is passe; the candlelight vigilantes want to set law’s course to an end they have already decided.
In normal times, all this tantamounts to obstruction of law and destruction of evidence. But in liberal India, such excesses are deemed perfectly legit. The lawless shouting brigade neither seems to have regard for logic. So if a Dalit kills himself, is discrimination the only cause? Also, is caste-discrimination the only ‘d’? Undeniably countless, with gender, class, colour, sexual orientation as obvious instances.
So many students take their own lives, unable to cope with studies or owing to financial woes or even personal reasons as failed affairs. Why single out only Dalit suicides and why discriminate against ‘discrimination’ as the only culprit? Doing so would be a gross misstep in addressing a major concern, namely, rising student suicides.
The bleeding hearts are also being criminally irresponsible by playing with fire – throwing a lighted matchstick into a tinderbox society already vandalised by Mandalisation. Again, student politics is embedded with seeds of conflict and violence. Selective sympathies riding on suspect motives only aggravate because the victim can be just about anyone.
That brings us back to Rohith who has got the unkindest cut from his pompous posthumous sponsors who have completely overlooked the pain and profundity pregnant in his parting missive. He blames himself first; he then cites ‘fatality of birth’, harps on identity issues and then bemoans the plight of an individual who has been reduced to ‘a number, a thing, a vote’.
Not just a Dalit, but everyone can empathise with the ‘emptiness’ expressed in emotional eloquence. And apart from ‘fatality of birth’ which even the poor, handicapped etc can lay claim to, the futility of life and finality of death are also quite dicey invites to court an early exit, for all.
It is up to us whether we want to meet our Maker half-way or await His sure arrival. Why hurry and become unwitting body-donors to
dubious demagogues?
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