Another JNU Student Sucicde

In a shocking incident, Muthukrishnan Jeevanantham, a Dalit PhD student studying at Jawaharlal University’s Centre for Historical Studies, committed suicide on Monday evening in Munirka, Delhi.

According to initial posts on social media, Jeevantham, who belonged to Salem, Tamil Nadu and had managed to get into JNU this academic year after numerous attempts, had been under a severe financial crunch. He had been staying at a friend’s place since he had not been allotted hostel in JNU.

In his last Facebook post, he said, “When equality is denied everything is denied. There is no Equality in M.phil/PhD Admission, there is no equality in Viva – voce, there is only denial of equality, denying prof. Sukhadeo Thorat recommendation, denying Students protest places in Ad – block, denying the education of the Marginals”.

Muthukrishnan had been an active member of the Justice for Rohith Vemula movement and was part of the Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA) in Hyderabad Central University. Shortly after the death of Rohith Vemula, Jeevantham had written a post called ‘A universal Mother without a nation‘ on his blog, in which he had said, “Dear anti-nationals, let me tell you, one day this nation’s leader is going to sell all. Just for a selfie and for a standing ovation from the outsiders. Hundreds and hundreds of Dappa Rao’s are going to kill thousands of Rohiths and they are going to say, “He/She was a gifted student”. All the intellectuals from the marginalised communities will get arrested just for mocking fictional characters. At the same time, all the leading national institutes will be headed by people who cannot even clear the 10th standard exam. These people claim dissenters as anti-nationals and seditious. They are going to kill many Rohiths, like us, just for eating beef, for being rational, for being intellectually productive for the country. But we are the real sons of this land and after we are all killed, there will be no nation.”