The family of Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula—who committed suicide over alleged caste discrimination—will embrace Buddhism on Thursday in a bid to ‘break the shackles of the Hindu caste system’.
B R Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar will organize the initiation ceremonies of Rohith’s brother Raja and mother Radhika into Buddhism in Mumbai.
“I have no ill feeling toward Hindus but my conscience doesn’t allow me to continue in this religion. It is because of the Hindu caste system that my brother was harassed, humiliated and forced to take his own life,” Hindustan Times quoted Raja.
“Millions of Dalits have suffered, just like my brother did, for thousands of years because of the Hindu caste system.”
They will follow the footsteps of Ambedkar who led millions of his followers into Buddhism in 1951 months before his death.
“I was born a Hindu but will not die one,” Ambedkar had famously said. Amebdkar exhorted the Dalit communities to accept Buddhism because of its ‘inclusive nature’ and the ‘lack of discriminatory structures’ in it.
The family had done Rohith’s obsequies rites as per the Buddhist religion.
“Although he did not formally convert, my brother was a Buddhist at heart,” Raja added. The family had earlier identified Rohith’s inclination towards Buddhism in November last year. According to Raja his brother wore a white robe when he attended a wedding ceremony in Guntur in November 2015.
“He came dressed in white robes. When my mother asked him why he was dressed like that he said that this is how Buddhists dressed. He spoke to her for a long time about the religion,” Raja said.
“He kept repeating this is the only religion where everybody is treated equal. He also said conversion to Buddhism was the way out of the caste system as shown by Babasaheb Ambedkar.”
Radhika Vemula, who also has been in the forefront of protest, said that by converting to Buddhism she wants to set an example before all the Hindu people in the country.
“When Rohith was alive, I didn’t take his talk about Buddhism very seriously. But now I understand the importance of what he was trying to say. He was more enlightened than all of us. We have decided to convert not just to honor his memory but also to set an example for Dalits across the country,” she was quoted.
Rohith committed suicide in January at the University of Hyderabad which ignited a wave of protests in campuses across the country against decades of caste discrimination against lower caste students.
