File photo of Shyam Benegal File photo of Shyam Benegal

“In India, if you happen to be a caste Hindu, you really don’t know what is happening to a person who comes from the Dalit community.”

That was veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal at the Idea Exchange programme of The Indian Express in Mumbai on Wednesday, speaking about the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a second year Ph.D student of Life Sciences at University of Hyderabad.

Also Read: Rohith Vemula’s suicide exposes caste faultlines in Hyderabad university

Rohith, who hanged himself on Sunday, had been suspended by the university for allegedly assaulting an ABVP leader on campus. Also read: HRD in eye of political storm, but junior ministers keep low

“We know that caste does play a part in our lives. Most of us ignore it, because we can afford to. Very few people know how Dalits are looked at and how their world actually is.

Watch Video: Why did Rohith Vemula hang himself?

In fact, that’s one of the problems. Non-Dalits don’t think about or worry about the Dalit existence in India. It’s as if the Dalit experience is only related to Dalits. It’s not that way at all. They are a part of everything and they happen to be at the bottom of the pile. This boy who wrote the letter and committed suicide, I can understand the problems that he went through.”

When asked if the government was looking at students as political opposition, given the ongoing crisis at FTII and the suspension of Vemula and his fellow students, Benegal said he didn’t believe there was any movement in that direction and that the line taken by the government on both issues was just co-incidence.

Click here to read our full coverage on Rohith Vemula suicide case

With regard to the controversy surrounding appointments at the FTII, he said that he had advised the government and the chairman designate Gajendra Chauhan to have an unconditional meeting with students. “ I said that there are only 288 students and it would be easy to have a meeting. In case they didn’t allow him to enter the institute, he could have a gate meeting. But he should have gone alone and allowed the students to ask him questions. He (Chauhan) said yes, but then I later found out that the police had been present and that there was a scuffle and 25 students were taken into custody. There was no need for that,” said Benegal.

Benegal also said that he couldn’t see why the whole problem had arisen in the first place, since the chairman is only supposed to be a bridge between the FTII Society and the government. “He is not the director of the institute and is not a member of the staff, so he does not interact with the students at any time.”

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