It's been two months since Rohith Vemula passed away, but students, activists, filmmakers, academicians and artists, under one roof are still struggling in their own way to bridge the gap between the castes in educational institutions.
In such a chaos, 'Aligarh' director Hansal Mehta too came up the best possible way to remember the 26-year-old Dalit research scholar of Hyderabad Central University and everything that he stood for.
The 47-year-old director transformed Rohith's heart wrenching last note, word-to-word, to a 10-minute-long video tribute him.
The letter, titled 'Reach For The Stars' in the video having Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub in it, spoke about the loneliness and struggles of the poor Dalit student who too has high aspiration, dreams and wanted to be a science fiction writer.
Speaking about this initiative, Mehta told "We are currently in a time where showcasing myself as a filmmaker is irrelevant. Rohith's letter expresses the anguish of a nation at the threshold of a revolt against these forces."
Revealing his intention to simply play Rohith's letters as a monologue was to "provoke us to think about the perils of further polarisation."
More From This Section
The director finally thanked Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Rajkummar Rao, Swanand Kirkire, Ornub Gayan, Apurva M Asrani, Harshit Sharma, Alok Tripathi and Vipul Arora to make this tribute possible.
This tribute video was released at the India Today Conclave 2016, which also features an intensive session of 'Why are Students so angry,' which mainly had various students from different universities and unions speaking out about the ongoing problems in our country.