Rohith Vemula would be celebrating his 35th birthday had he been truly cared for, loved and treated well by the caste-privileged rulers of Indian academia. He was desperate to start a life without pain and emptiness but eight years ago in this month, Rohith was institutionally murdered.
In the letter he left behind, which has come to be known as ‘from shadows to stars’, he lamented that the spectre of caste has reduced Dalits to their ‘immediate identity and nearest possibility’.
