HYDERABAD: Four years after the death of Rohith Vemula, a PhD student who committed suicide after allegedly facing institutionalised caste discrimination at the University of Hyderabad, more than 300 people gathered here in the city on Friday to pay tribute to him.
Speaking at the gathering organised under the banner ‘We the people of India’, Radhika Vemula, Rohith’s mother, encouraged more people to protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). "We should all unite and protest now. I could not save my son, but now is the time to fight and save our country," she said.
Remembering a few lines from Rohith’s suicide note, she said, "The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and the nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. My son wrote these lines in his suicide note, and the current government is doing the same."
Radhika announced that she would start a nation-wide rally to protest against CAA/NRC under the banner "We the Mothers of India," and added that the NRC was a ploy to wipe out Muslims and dalits from the country. She announced that along with the mothers of Najeeb and Dr Payal Tadvi, they would oppose the CAA/NRC/NPR as mothers who had lost their children to injustice and oppression.