Rohith Vemula: A Star Is Born

By Prof. Shah Alam Khan

20 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Do not ask me, stars, about the garden of the world;
It is no garden, but a town filled with sighs and screams,
The morning wind arrives there, only to leave again;
The poor bud blooms, but only to wither.

(Allama Iqbal)

Rohith Vemula, who was forced to end his life by the casteist and communal forces on the Hyderabad University campus, wanted to be a writer of science. His ideal: Carl Sagan. How ironic that the great Carl Sagan had once said, “The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff; we are a way for the cosmos to know itself”. Ironic, because the brave Rohith had talked of stardust in his suicide note. A dalit in India talking of the stars is but a miracle of sorts. The structural violence of the Brahminical society is a sequential crushing of dreams, hopes and stars in the hearts and eyes of the wretched of the land. The conspiracy to eliminate struggle adds to this hideous situation. The poisonous combination of a deeply entrenched caste system and an irresponsible and cruel political power makes struggle whither.

But people may perish and struggles may whither, stars persist. We are told some last a million years. Today, on my evening walk; I could identify a new star in the solitude of the vast blue sky. A star so bright, it made my heart fill with joy! A star so intense, that tonight its energy and zest would lighten up every other star in the sky! A star which taught me and you, that the emptiness of the cosmos is but filled by the valor of people like Rohith Vemula.

Prof. Shah Alam Khan, AIIMS, New Delhi