Shame On India's Dark Racism

By Dr Vacy Vlazna

19 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

Open letter to High Commissioner of India in Australia on Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide

Office of the High Commissioner of India
3 Moonah Place
Yarralumla
Canberra, ACT 2600
Tel: +61-2-62731920; Fax: 62733328
Email: [email protected]

Your Excellency

On reading Rohith Vemula's searingly beautiful and profoundly loving final letter , one can only shed tears for India which is now bereft of a potential visionary humanist and scientific philosopher - an Indian Carl Sagan calling us to reclaim the dignity, wonder and respect for our shared essence of stardust - Life.

This extraordinary Dalit student's ultimate sacrifice was an act of noble redemption from a humanity, that is so "divorced from nature" and thus dehumanised "To a vote. To a number. To a thing."

This existential schism, according to Rohit, makes it "truly difficult to love without getting hurt" or for that matter makes it difficult to love at all- casteist elitism is not love, supremacist Hindvuta is not love, the denigration, abuse and rape of women is not love.

For Rohit, a young man of great intellectual sensitivity, to call his Dalit birth 'a fatal accident' and confess that he is "happy dead than being alive" is a damning indictment of an India and its authorities, that remain mired in and uphold the medieval foulness of casteism.

Shame on India's dark racism for accelerating Rohit's passing by decades "From shadows to the stars."

Deeply saddened

Dr Vacy Vlazna
Sydney

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.