The Latest: Top stories of the day

1. If Congress had acted in time, Rohith Vemula’s life could have been saved, claims Smriti Irani.
2. India needs tolerance very badly: Amartya Sen.
3. India does not need film censorship, says director Prakash Jha.
4. Suicide bombing near Russian embassy in Kabul kills four people.
5. Russian airstrikes in Syria have killed over 1,000 civilians in four months: UK monitor.
6. 2015 hottest year in recorded history, this year likely to be warmer.
7. A Gujarat Riots convict has allegedly attacked journalist Revati Laul.

The Big Story: Fire fighting
With the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula turning into a full blown political controversy, the Union government swung into damage control mode to limit the impact of a case. The fallout of the tragedy at the University of Hyderabad threatens to paint the Bharatiya Janata Party as anti-Dalit and could have significant electoral repercussions for the party.

On Wednesday, Smriti Irani, whose Human Resources ministry had sent five letters to the university that some claim led to the suspension of Vemula and four other Dalit scholars, held a press conference to refute allegations against the government. To “project it as a caste battle” was “malicious” she said. “This is not a Dalit versus non-Dalit issue as being projected by some to ignite passions."

She also denied that the Union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya had abetted Vemula’s suicide. While the minister had asked the HRD ministry to inquire into "anti-national activities" on the campus, Irani said that Vemula's suicide note does not mention anyone’s name.

Dattatreya too defended himself, arguing that while he had had shown to special attention to his party's student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, but would “happily forwarded representations of other student bodies as well”.

Irani’s point that this wasn’t about caste, though, was almost immediately contradicted by the fact that Dalit and Adivasi teachers from the University of Hyderabad unanimously resolved to resign from all administrative posts in solidarity with protesting students.

The resignation was in response to “the honourable minister’s fabricated statements” during the press conference said a statement from the University of Hyderabad SC/ST Teachers and Officers Forum. Apart from the teachers, the Dalit student body at the heart of the controversy, the Ambedkar Students Association, also strongly contradicted Irani’s comments as well as her defence of vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile. They alleged that he had “thrown out” as many as 12 Dalit students from the University of Hyderabad hostel in 2002 during his tenure as the chief warden.

The Big Scroll
Why do atrocities against Dalits not provoke liberal India into outrage, asks Ajaz Ashraf. And how Dalit discrimination even extends to entrepreneurship. And it’s not only Dalits: Adivasis, India’s original inhabitants have suffered the most at its hands.

Politicking and policying
1. Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati demanded legal action against Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya over the alleged suicide of a Dalit research scholar in Hyderabad Central University.
2. With an eye on the 2017 polls, Congress holds a protest for Dalit, Adivasi and Backward Caste rights in Gujarat.
3. The University of Hyderabad has never had Dalit on its Executive Council.
4. Aam Aadmi Party vindicated as the court slams Central Bureau of Investigation and orders it to give back seized papers during raid.
5. Amit Shah set to start his full term as BJP president Sunday. Until now, he has been serving the part of the term abandoned by Rajnath Singh after he quit to join the Modi government in 2014.

Punditry

1. What if law does not dictate how people live or die but allows old customs and traditions to do their work, posits SN Balagangadhara in the Indian Express.
2. India’s biggest source of FDI is India itself, money departing on a short holiday to a tax haven and then routed back as FDI. Will the government muster up the political will to clamp down on the tax-allergic business elite, asks G Sampath in the Hindu.
3. Educate, agitate, organise: The Dalit student won’t be silenced, argues Cynthia Stephen in the Hindustan Times.
4. Today I am coming out as Dalit: Yashica Dutt.

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How the romance between an Aligarh Muslim and a Lithuanian Jew has influenced an Indian pharma major.

"Yusuf Hamied, the chairman of one of India’s largest pharmaceutical firms, Cipla, is the son of an aristocratic Muslim scientist from India and a Jewish Communist from what is now Lithuania. Defined by his parents’ extraordinary marriage, he unites his father’s scientific skills, business acumen, and Indian patriotism with his mother’s compassion for the less fortunate. He charges the Western pharmaceutical industry with “holding three billion people in the Third World to ransom by using their monopoly status to charge higher prices,” and has devoted himself to making life-saving inexpensive generic medications for the inhabitants of poorer countries."