Jan 17, 2019
Hours after the young scholar's suicide, thousands of protesters were on the streets, waving blue flags.
The deaths had left a trail; in Hyderabad Central University (HCU) alone five Dalit students committed suicide between 2008 and 2016. Though university authorities tried to erase the names—Senthil Kumar, Balaraj, Madari Venkatesh, Puliyala Raju—from memory, the ASA had kept track; be it in Raju-Venkatesh park or in the Senthil-Balaraj cricket night cup started in 2012. In acronyms painted on hostel walls, in ‘songs of resistance’ sung during protests, and in names reiterated in slogans, students remembered their counterparts who died because they were denied research supervisors, hostel accommodation, or scholarships.
