Opposition parties on Friday sought an apology from HRD minister Smriti Irani for reading out in Rajya Sabha "objectionable" comments made outside against a god, as she defended herself saying she was asked for proof of her statements against JNU students.
BJP-supported students' union, aided by a friendly government, is aggressively settling historical scores with Leftist students' organisations.
The government said it is open to debating the JNU row in Parliament during the upcoming budget session starting February 23 with Modi saying that it will address the concerns raised by the opposition.
In his suicide letter, Rohith chose not to chronicle the events that led him to make his decision to kill himself but instead wanted human beings to be treated as minds, "as glorious things made up of star dust, in every field, in studies, in streets, in life and in death".
Congress trained its guns on the National Democratic Alliance dispensation on a wide range of issues including economy, employment, price rise and foreign policy.
Union minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday alleged that a malicious attempt was being made to project Rohith's suicide as a "dalit versus non-dalit issue to ignite passions".
Hyderabad Central University VS Appa Rao on Wednesday asserted there had been "no pressure" from Union ministers or the HRD ministry to act against the youth.
'The innate fascism of the RSS is overshadowing Modi's development programme,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'The emphasis is on nationalism, which the party apparently feels will have greater resonance than one on religious identity which may have lost some of its appeal in recent years.'
Seeking to blunt Bharatiya Janata Party's efforts to 'appropriate' legacy of Ambedkar, Sonia said, "Congress had given Dr Ambedkar his dues by appointing him as chairman of the Draft Committee of Constitution."
Though he did not name anyone, the prime minister's attack appeared to be directed against Congress and its vice president Rahul Gandhi, who recently made two trips to Hyderabad Central University to join protests over the suicide of a Dalit scholar Rohit Vemula.
Voicing "dissatisfaction" over remarks by Modi on Friday at a university in Lucknow, the Joint Action Council spearheading the stir asked if the prime minister would now take action against his ministers.
'For a Dalit boy to reach the PhD stage, it requires a lot of pain and hard work. He was a scholar, an intelligent student.' 'This is not about the loss of just an individual, but the loss of this nation.'
'It is very hard to get the police to file a report against someone from an upper caste.' 'Things are so bad that sometimes we have to sit on a dharna with the body of a Dalit victim to get the police to file a complaint.'
'The BJP should avoid escalating every local issue and minor provocation into a national crisis and claiming a 'holier than thou' monopoly on patriotism.' 'And the Opposition should avoid paying the government back in the same coin by crying wolf about intolerance at the slightest provocation.'
The RSS realises that with a majority BJP government at the Centre and in several states, now was the best time to undermine and perhaps outdo the Congress-Left 'stranglehold' over campuses and young minds.
'When you come to Delhi, you see that there are many Kashmirs here -- the Dalits, Muslims, women, bonded labourers.'
In dramatic scenes, Umar Khalid, the Jawaharlal Nehru University student who had been untraceable after being accused of sedition, returned to the campus late on Sunday evening. Khalid turned up at JNU's administration block, where hundreds of students began to gather, and gave a rousing speech just shy of 14 minutes, insisting that he would stand his ground and asked that all students unite against the attacks on our country. This is what he had to say.
Rohith, like Mahatma Gandhi, was not allowed to speak the truth by the forces who killed him, said Congress vice president.
We need to question ourselves if we are to be implicated as well in the institutional murder of Rohith and many other Rohiths, if not bodily but in spirit, because of our complicity in naturalising this elitist, exclusionary, discriminatory-to-the-core conception of education, says Kishalaya Mukhopadhyay.
The 39-year-old, the fifth child of an illiterate labourer couple and only the second of their eight to be educated, now helms various ventures that bring in a turnover of between Rs 75 crore and Rs 90 crore.
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