Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has written to Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, “requesting him to implement the Rohith Vemula Act in Karnataka” — a law named after a University of Hyderabad research scholar who died by suicide over alleged caste discrimination in 2016.
The Congress government in Karnataka has been planning to implement the Rohith Vemula Act to prevent “exclusion or injustice” to students based on their social, economic, or religious background.
At its plenary in 2023, the Congress had passed a resolution that if voted back to power, it would enact a special Act named after Rohith Vemula to protect and safeguard the right to education and dignity of Dalits, tribal people, Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and minorities.
In his letter to the Congress chief minister, Gandhi wrote, “the murder of bright young people like Rohith Vemula, Payal Tadvi, and Darshan Solanki is simply not acceptable”.
“It is time to put a firm end to this. I urge the Karnataka government to enact the Rohith Vemula Act so that no child of India has to face what Dr B R Ambedkar, Rohit Vemula and millions of others have had to endure,” said Gandhi.
Quoting Ambedkar in his letter, Gandhi wrote: “There was plenty of food with us. There was hunger burning within us; with all this we were to sleep without food; that was because we could get no water, and we could get no water because we were untouchables.”
Quoting Ambedkar’s experience in school, Gandhi wrote: “I knew I was an untouchable, and that untouchables were subjected to certain indignities and discriminations. For instance, I knew that in the school I could not sit in the midst of my classmates according to my rank, but that I was to sit in a corner by myself.”
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He said that he knows that Siddaramaiah “would agree that what Dr B R Ambedkar faced was shameful and should not be endured by any child in India”. “It is a shame that even today, millions of students from Dalit, Adivasi and OBC communities have to face such brutal discrimination in our educational system,” said Gandhi.
In a post on X, Gandhi said that he wrote the letter after he met students and teachers from Dalit, adivasi, and OBC communities in Parliament recently.
“During the conversation, they told me how they face caste-based discrimination in colleges and universities,” said Gandhi.
“Babasaheb Ambedkar had shown that education is the only means by which even the deprived can become empowered and break the caste system. But it is very unfortunate that even after decades, lakhs of students are facing caste discrimination in our education system,” the Opposition Leader said in his post.
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The suicide of 25-year-old Vemula on January 17, 2016, inside the university campus had triggered nationwide protests against casteism in educational institutions.
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