Vemula and Afzal Guru

Death does always make a statement, carrying upon itself the testament of finality. It evokes strong emotions and multiple narratives. A secessionist and insurgent might be worshipped as a revolutionary or a freedom fighter. But when one draws upon cosmic or millenarian tales of victimhood, say in the instance of Rohith Vemula's suicide, or Afzal Guru's hanging, the larger picture subsumes the immediate. Which narrative would occupy the broadest mindscape militates against what we perceive as right and wrong.

Let's take the instance of Rohith Vemula first. On the face of it, he died not of a cosmic cause but due to a student brawl gone dangerously awry. Or due to a poor control mechanism of the self, or a sudden rush of self-pity. Arguably, Rohith would not have died had he not been sucked into the cesspool of student politics, had the Hyderabad Central University authorities not pushed him to take the extreme step, had the charges of 'manhandling' ABVP leader N Susheel by ASA activists in August 2015 not surfaced, had not the HRD ministry, under a far-right government, letter-bombed the university authorities, or more remotely, had not Yakub Menon been hanged, and had not the Modi government been in power. 

On a cosmic plane, he would not have died had he not been frustrated over a lonely childhood, and possibly, had he not been born a Dalit, though one needs to reflect on Rohith's caveat that our birth is "a fatal accident". His caste identity becomes important when we try to ascribe tales of Dalit deprivation to his death. When the government of the day tried to broaden the definition of the term "Dalit" and extend reservations for them in the 1990s, many students opposed the move and committed suicide.

If caste was to be destroyed, as Ambedkar once remarked, its religious foundation in the Vedas and Shastras also needed to be destroyed. Hinduism, in his reckoning, had neither morality nor revolutionary force nor social utility; instead, it promoted the interests of a particular class. To Ambedkar, his revolutionary movement for the liberation and advancement of the Dalits was a battle for the reclamation of human "respectability" which has been "suppressed and mutilated" by the Hindu social system and "will continue to be suppressed and mutilated if in the political struggle the Hindus win and we [the Dalits] lose". Dalits number about 250 million and constitute over 20 percent of the country's population. Hindu nationalists today include them in the Hindu fold, but there is no general acceptance of this embrace by the Dalits.

Would the present dispensation at the Centre seek to arrest Ambedkar, posthumously, for his alleged act of apostasy and anti-nationalism? If we spare Ambedkar, we had no dearth of narratives that run counter to the 'mainstream' ideas. Should we arrest every 'renegade' cheerleader for shedding unedifying light on how Hindu nationalism and neo-liberal economic reforms are currently transforming India into a police state? Or for showing how the deliberate and systematic marginalisation of religious and ethnic minorities and the increased power of predatory corporations that engineer the displacement of the poor on a gigantic scale remain hidden under the surface of a country that projects itself as the world's largest democracy?

Take the hanging of Afzal Guru, which the far right wants the nation to consider as just dessert for a traitor to the nation who must not be glorified; and those who oppose that view have made themselves vulnerable to the charge of treason.  In the aftermath of the arrest of the JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar on a charge of sedition, the State as an entity of governance seems determined to force people to believe its viewpoint, if it fails to convince them.

The 'mainstream' narrative of the State was evident from  the  way  in  which  the  execution  of  Afzal  Guru  on February 9, 2013, was  thought  to  have  mollified  the  'collective conscience' of the nation. The nationalists, represented by the BJP, were happy because Afzal's hanging was their imprimatur of patriotism. Our foreign policy mandarins as well as the Congress were happy that the hanging helped them score brownie points in their battle against terror. 

But there were other 'anti-national' narratives as well. Consequent to Afzal's hanging, there were narratives of the putative high-handedness of the Indian Army and the STF (Special Task Force) - spells of detention, intimidation and torture. What was worse was Afzal's implication about the involvement of some STF officers in the chain of events that led to the orchestration of the Parliament attack - a charge which, even if probed, never came to the public domain - because it is a question of our national security. Our nationalist and 'patriotic' press and majoritarian voices chose to ignore the atrocities in Kashmir where tens of thousands have been killed, many more tortured, raped or were reported missing, not to forget the numerous deaths of Indian soldiers. And when it comes to Kashmir, many versions of the truth and narratives are bandied about, and it is exceedingly difficult to separate the grain from the chaff. While wondering why Afzal is considered a "martyr" in Kashmir, we must remember that his family in Kashmir was not informed of his imminent execution, in violation of international standards on the use of the death penalty. Furthermore, his body was also not returned to the family for last rites and burial, once again in violation of rules. The unsavoury narrative is that Afzal was sentenced to a rigorous "trial by media" and that the trial court denied him a lawyer.

Noam Chomsky was a brutal critic of 'mainstream' America. Arundhati Roy is known for her 'anti-national' perceptions. Kanhaiya Kumar might be guilty of misplaced priorities. Multiple narratives also record that on December 13, 2001, in the course of an attack on Parliament, six policemen and an employee of the legislature had died... and this could well deserve an 'event'. On December 24, 1999, one of the passengers and crew of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 was taken hostage by a group of five hijackers. Ripan Katyal succumbed while his assailants were released. Nathuram Godse could be defended or etched in stone in a memorial. As a democracy, we must learn to pay attention to all the narratives even when strongly opposed to them. As for the arrests or hangings, there are "worthier" persons like the underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, the 26/11 mastermind and LeT founder, Hafiz Saeed, and the dreaded terrorist Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

-ANN/The Statesman
The writer is a freelance contributor.