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 Cen...