Rohith Vemula, 26, a Dalit research scholar, was found hanging in his Hyderabad University hostel room on January 17.
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In a sarcastic tone, he said, “I want to thank the people sitting in Parliament deciding wrong and right, the police and those few media channels”.
JNUSU leader Kanhaiya Kumar’s speech after his release on bail last night was nothing short of fiery.
Kumar was arrested on February 12 over a demonstration that India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, alleged was “anti-national” because it commemorated the 2013 execution of a Kashmiri separatist convicted for his role in the militant attack on the nation’s parliament in 2001.
“It is not just the Left-liberal opinion but also the broad democratic liberal opinion that the State acted unfairly against him and the student community”, Tripathi said.
Kumar said the struggle of peace loving and progressive sections of the society in the wake of the JNU row and Rohith Vemula suicide will be a long fight. It’s for the court to decide if that was “raaj droh” (treason) or not. Nearly three weeks after he was arrested on sedition charges in connection with anti-India sloganeering in JNU campus, Kanhaiya was released on bail on Thursday evening.
The release of Kanhaiya, 29, came even as a Delhi government-appointed magisterial probe did not find any evidence of him raising anti-India slogans at the February 9 event.
“Regarding the Afzal Guru issue, I want to clarify that Guru is not any icon”.
“The movement for Ram Mandir and that against the Mandal Commission were sectarian and not multi-class ones like the student participation in the Quit India Movement of 1942 or (the movement against the) Emergency”, he said. We believe in the law and the constitution.
“We Indians forget easily but the drama this time was so big that we still remember all the “Jumla” used during election campaign”.
Asked whether he will join politics, Kumar “I am not a politician, I am a student”, he said, insisting JNU students can never be anti-national as they understand the meaning of freedom of speech and meaning of freedom.
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“People who play with our constitution. we have to stand up against their evil designs”. I also want to assure tax-payers that no student of JNU can ever be anti-national. I want to become a teacher in the future. Unke khilaaf bologe tou inka cyber cell doctored video dikhayega, he said, smilingly taunting the government for producing doctored video tapes as evidence to prove the sedition charge against him. We are fighting for development (of the country). We have to make them realise that they are here for the whole country.
