<b>Mihir S Sharma:</b> Rohith Vemula's timeless timeline

Once, when illustrious men died, the generations that followed them would scour their letters and their diaries for signifiers of greatness. We live, today, in a very different world. Few people under 40 have real diaries; even fewer write letters. What will we leave when we pass on? Surely, people ask, intellects wasted writing posts on Facebook and 140-character snark on Twitter will be remembered less than those in the past who put pen to paper?

Perhaps not. Consider, for example, Rohith Vemula. The graduate student at the University of Hyderabad who killed himself in January this year wrote no books, and kept no diary that we know of. It was easy to fear that all we would know of him would be from his heart-breaking suicide note, which began: "I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write."
 

Yet, in fact, that was not all he wrote. From 2008 till his death, Vemula was a frequent poster on Facebook; and now, thanks to Juggernaut Books and the Hyderabad-based journalist Nikhila Henry, we have a chance to read what he said there. Organised and edited, it gives him depth, provides an arc to his beliefs, and fills out his thinking. (The e-book, called Caste is Not a Rumour, went on sale on Tuesday through Juggernaut's app.)

Vemula was bitingly sarcastic and dreamily romantic by turns. His anger was not reserved for the Hindutva forces that eventually caused his death, though they came in for sharp criticism (there is a short series of thoughts on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and yoga which caused me to laugh for a minute). He also grew to have a degree of contempt for the organised Left, just a few years after he joined the Students' Federation of India.

Here is, for example, a post on Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury: "Today sitting in my room, I was watching Yechury's speech on Constitution day. I reached the part of the video during which he was speaking about Golwalkar's book and my roommate came in. He sat on his bed for a few seconds observing me. Then he asked whether Yechury is a BJP leader… I was too critically engaged with the video that I didn't get bothered by his question. Then my roommate asked, 'What does he do?' I involuntarily said, 'He does nothing.' Then I stopped the video, thought for a while, lit a cigarette and after a few silent seconds opened another tab in Google Chrome, opened YouTube again and typed 'Chittiyaan Kalaiyaan' in the search bar."

Part of his disillusionment with the Left came from its willingness - indeed, its eagerness - to compromise with the Brahmanical order. Why, he asked, if Mr Yechury asked for caste-based reservations in the private sector, did he not have reservations in his politburo? And this: "Why is your 'tolerance' unidirectional? Why do comrades celebrate only Durga Puja, Onam or Saraswathi Puja and not Christmas or Muharram? Are these non-Hindu religions 'untouchable'? Or is it because [the communists'] vote base is this Hindu populace?"

This is not a tone you would find in the letters and diaries of past generations. If you did, you would think it pretentious; nobody likes the diary-writer who reveals that she is writing not just for herself, but for posterity. Facebook posts are completely different things; as immediate as diary entries, more public than letters, meant to be examined and disagreed-with. Taken all together, thus, they can be both sharp and introspective. And, with people like Vemula, the occasional brilliant observation too, causing you to mourn the loss also of the books he could have written: "Unlike Marxism which was unfortunately unrefined while it was imported [into India from the West], secularism was ironically modified too much, rendering it meaningless." This is absolutely true, and I dearly wish Vemula was still around to pitch the idea to someone.

Vemula changed his mind about many things - the power of the Left and nationalism among them. The book tracks this growth and development from, for example, the unthinking supporter of capital punishment during the December 2012 protests to the man who was suspended for protesting Yakub Memon's hanging.

But he never changed his mind about some things. He was a feminist from the start, inspired by his tailor mother, who earned enough to buy a fridge that was then used to store the entire colony's water ("Don't touch the water bottles in the fridge as most of them are neighbours'.") He seems to have got much of his drive from his mother, who also may share his ability to come up with good one-liners. Under a picture of his mother's sewing machine, he wrote: "This was the main bread-earner for our home before I started getting a Junior Research Fellowship (JRF)… This is my mom's favourite occupation. She used to say 'machine' can make women powerful."

And the second thing he never changed his mind about was atheism. As a young, science-obsessed man, he turned his back on one of his generation's heroes: "I still remember the morning I saw news about President Kalam visiting Puttaparthi Saibaba on his birthday celebrations, sitting at his feet on the ground reciting a poem praising him. I had just finished my Intermediate at Ananthapur and on that day I decided never to read Kalam's books again or regard him as a model scientist."

Science mattered to him, as his suicide note - which talked about how we are made of stardust - made clear. On Facebook, he wrote, talking of the exotic elements in the human body: "We are made up of Stardust and Dewdrops. We are amazing, even without having any worldly accomplishments." He may have thought he had none, just Facebook posts that vanish a week after they're posted. But he was wrong.