After a month of peaceful protests, police-action induced violence, and a powerful march to the parliament, the youth have successfully made a minister take accountability.
There is a sense of hope in the air, and a sudden grounding of power. Quite suddenly, questions of prosecution are no longer fear inducing, there is companionship in numbers. There is space for cynicism, there is space for hopelessness still, but a large component of the feeling I am sensing is hope.
At Freedom Park, the variety in the crowd was incredible. It felt unreal that the movement had managed to gather people of many different classes and backgrounds.
The hopeless-ness that has cracked open comes from the environment this government has particularly created. Violence in this state has been guarded with extreme power. The power of people. Violence came at no cost, and most times to the benefit of the violator. This is the environment we have arrived at. Individuals have been held unconstitutionally, and without even any moral consequence. The Muslim man, woman and family have been turned into demons, individuals like Umar Khalid, whom no court has convicted, remain in jail.
People came together for the resignation of a minister. A small step in any other democracy. But for us it is a symbolic movement. 25th July will be remembered for the youth who showed up. But now that he has resigned, what other injustices will we come together for?
For whom does the youth demand justice? As Sudipto Mondal from the News Minute said on stage at Freedom Park, explaining why the protests are beyond just the resignation: ensuring justice for the smallest person would mean justice for all. The stage at Freedom Park was open for people. A student from the North East, spoke about the injustice of ignorance in Manipur, in Assam, he fell into tears as he sat down on the stage and prayed for peace. Sudipto reminded us about Rohit Vemula, and his love-letter to all of us. I was particularly moved that thousands of new people (including a few of my friends) were reading Rohit’s last letter for the first time. A letter that must move even the most thorny and baked hearts. I am including it here.
Good morning,
I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write.
I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan.
I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.
The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.
I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.
My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.
May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.
I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this.
People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds.
If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that.
Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive.
“From shadows to the stars.”
Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.
To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future.
For one last time,
Jai Bheem
I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself.
No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act.
This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this.
Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone.
As the day ended, and ironically, the police permitted 6pm closing time arrived, the crowd started moving out. The police did not have to remind us. But the police are amazing surrounders, I have seen this in one protest before, the permeate the crowd and form lines so that they can push the crowd towards one point. It is usually a detention transport van, this time, it was the exit. But they had to make a spectacle of it, their presence had to be felt, so hundreds of police personnel blew their whistles at the same time. It was ear-breaking.