INCLUDE MENTAL HEALTH IN THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS!

 Ours is a constitution of a before mental health era. Today, when we know so much about the nuances of mental health, Why the state cannot guarantee us Mental health as a fundamental right? 

Okay, if you are provoked enough by my straightforward and probably naive assertion of a not so obvious proposition, let me dive deep into the correlations, problems and history of mental health as a fundamental right. 

I got in touch with the issue of mental health back when I was doing my BSc. I got to know about Rohith Vemula. Okay, I know, it is again a provocative standpoint that I got to know about it from an incident of death by a systemic and societal problem. The problem of Rohith was so symptomatic of the deeply entrenched nexus of the Bourgeois Hindu consciousness and its regressive hate towards its own people. The political nature of the caste hatred and how the mental health aspect of these issues we often ignore and even if we accept the discussion, the discussions are often very trivial. 

Rohith was the product of a consciousness which traces its history back to times of Ambedkar and Jyotiba, Dalit emancipatory politics and Dalit consciousness. His thought process was very scientific and very rational. I could make it from the suicide note that he wrote. I will paste the whole of it here and will do our arguments analyzing the suicide note. I believe it is in the most dreadful and sad notions of society, we find the most emancipatory and hence positive insight. 

"I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have become a monster. 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.

I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan.

I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.

The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.

I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.

My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.

Maybe I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.

I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty. Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing this.

People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone. I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the other worlds.

If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy-five thousand rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that to him from that.

Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive.

“From shadows to the stars.”

Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.

To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future.

For one last time,

Jai Bheem

I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for this act of killing myself.

No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act.

This is my decision, and I am the only one responsible for this.

Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone.

~ Rohith Vemula" 

Look at the manner he argues. His dreams of becoming a scientific journalist or a science communicator were broken. But he never explicitly shows his hatred or anger to the system or the hierarchical caste hatred due to which the university treated him with. He did not mention the problems he is facing in a lucid manner just the sublime expression of a philosophy of gloom. 

The place where he argues how the value of an individual has been reduced to a statistic, is so concerning. There, he is not talking about his caste identity. He is talking about humanity in general. He is talking about how political systems and its power hunger and its nexus with social bullies lead to reduction of human dignity to the lowest denomination of mankind, that is, just someone, A person. 

His strides are extraordinary. His visions are scientifically optimistic. The indicators of that are implicit in his sorrow of how man is not seen as the star dust and one which is capable of reaching to the stars. His repetitive assertion of how his birth was a fatal accident can be interpreted in many ways. One way is to acknowledge his Dalit identity and how he sadly, is forced to come to the conclusion that his birth was a fatal accident. Another way, and a way I like to look at it and maybe I am wrong to not acknowledge his Dalit identity, although I do and I think he must be identified as one since it is this identity which got him killed, is that his constant correlative statements with the star dust and him being a monster and how he fell into this accident is an indicator that how this person finds being a star dust illuminating and glorious and in comparison, his birth in a human society which is so divisive and hateful that A human feels undignified at every moment of life. The will to live can only be established on a firm establishment of an Individual dignity and self-respect. But when a society, full of caste hatred, tries to destroy your establishments as an individual, demolishes your self-respect as a human, how far will you fight to save your personal dignity? The fight to get education and eventually a job and of survival is a fight that a big chunk of students fights in this country. But, for people facing intersectional discrimations, that is, discriminations due to multiple identities like caste, sec, class etc., The fight of survival becomes a fight for survival of the fight itself. They succumb to the force and give up their fight and are forced to accept their fate. His acceptance at the end that people might call me coward or stupid, but I do not care since I will not be alive afterwards, is a dark but crucial observation which I interpret as a sigh of relief from a person who is mocked, tortured all his life for being a particular identity which he never wanted to be. Who wants to be a Dalit? Who wants to be an identity which is systemically, ritualistically tortured and is forced to like the torture because that, apparently, is his way to achieve enlightenment. Even people who support caste institution, and say Shudras and untouchables are there, do not want to be associated with the identity. They want to rise to the rungs of being a brahman. Who does not want to be a Brahman. The social and psychological positioning of the Brahman is that of a both morally and hierarchically powerful person. He holds both the material and the moral high ground in a society. He enjoys all of material life and is free from even the guilt of it since he feels entitled because he does not work for it, but he gets this in charity from the kings and the second best varna. His economic position in the society is that of a beggar but this makes his moral positioning so strong, He is not running for the material wealth of the world. On the other hand, A Dalit is not allowed to run for the material wealth, and he is constantly tortured for its sole existence. He does not even hold the moral high ground. In this sense, His situation is even worse than Marx's Proletariat who at least had an identity and a moral high ground. Even Neo-Vedantis Like: Vivekananda, Gandhi and others who saved Varna used to believe that Sudra and untouchable is but a milestone to become a Brahman. So, it is very much clear that no one would like to permanently be a Dalit. Here, A person's all sufferings are ultimately connected with an identity he is forced to embrace because he thought to strive for a fight for right to equality. I claim, A Dalit's identity in the modern world is the most uniquely disturbing one. It is neither like a class identity nor like a gender identity. Caste has nothing natural about it. But the historical and social suffering is so philosophically and psychologically profound that Modern day identity politics will not be able to help much. I agree, for gaining a certain self-respect, Identity Politics seems important. There are identities which are like that. You can embrace being a woman, a queer and so on. But how disrespectful it will be for a person to embrace a Chamar identity. Maybe I feel so, because I have an upper caste lens and I have seen the usage of the word in only derogatory sense. Still, I do not subscribe to the idea of being in romance with your identity as a mode of politics. You need to come out of it. You need to fire the whole Ravan's Lanka of this caste hierarchy. You need to say, "NO, THIS IS NOT ME, I AM NOT WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BE, I AM WHAT I WILL DECIDE MYSELF TO BE". 

Coming to the issue of Mental Health, you might argue the issue of mental health is so diverse. Why then reduce it to caste issue and that also of a Dalit student Rohith. I have three reasons to do that: 

1. I believe Rohith's case represents the entirety of our predicament in this country. 

        First, the caste hierarchy, which is almost blinding to the people of this country. The country suffers from an almost dyslexic view of life. Modern categories and emancipation are so foreign concept for our society that we do not even realize. We are mentally crippled people. We are cognitively delusional people.  Moreover, within this blindness, is also a constant power struggle with the Money mafia, capitalist goons and Political vendetta. 

2. Mental Health is a Systemic problem, not a Random problem.

            Taking an intellectual liberty of making a categorization of all the problems a human being faces: 

A) Systemic Problems, arising out of the external world, the system as such, be it social, political and economic. 

B) Random Problems, arising out of the internal turmoil of the human mind, the greed, the lust and the desires. 

I take this categorization from the analogous categorization of the Errors that can occur in a experiment of Physics. Namely, systematic errors and Random errors. In physics, Random errors cannot be removed from an experiment but systematic problems of the apparatus that may arise because of faulty apparatus and wrong arrangements perhaps, they can and must be removed to be able to do a scientifically accurate experiment. 

I claim, it has always been an attempt and even it appears naively so, that Mental health is a random problem, that is, a problem arising out of the internal turmoil of the mind of an individual. I do not agree with this proposition. On one hand, I do believe this, of course, it is a problem of the mind. But I want a materialist reversal of the view about mental health. I interpret that Mental health problems do not occur in empty space. We are trained in some way to be mentally disturbed after a certain amount of distress. I believe everything is a systemic problem and hence can and must be solved. There are no problems of humans that humans cannot solve. But the real delusion is, that the ruling ideology, many times it is the religious authority, many times it is the hegemonic discourse, which renders some problems of humanity as unsolvable. But why? I claim, this is an urge to have hold on the discourse and ultimately on power. Indian Adhyatmika discourse wants you to believe that all problems of your life are actually coming from your mind and are in fact, your projections. I am sorry, but this is the most disgusting statement one can ever make to malign the status of the man. Will you tell this to a manual scavenging family whose sole earning member died because of being exposed to harmful gases of a sewer which he was forced to clean because of his caste identity? Dare you? Can you? But this is precisely Hinduism told this community for hundreds of years. The fight of right vs left, is not just a class issue or a caste issue. It is a strive to establish a discourse that ultimately, the fate of humans is in hand of humans and can be rectified. It is precisely to establish, "No human problem is random, every problem is systemic and can be rectified with enough will and plan". 

3. I am talking about fundamental rights for a reason. 

       Why Fundamental rights? Why not include it in DPSPs? Why not Fundamental Duties? "It is a duty of every individual to take care of one's own and other's mental health" or some similar bullshit like that. "No", because these are click baits of the ruling ideology. I do not subscribe to the concept of non-enforceable rights. fuck you, but I want a guarantee. 

People who argue for DPSPs and non-enforceable rights, might say that our country do not have enough resources and health facilities to ensure every citizen right to mental health and so on. To which my reply would be "Aghh!" 

You idiot naive liberal or whoever you are! Let me use your own theory against you. Supply creates its own demand or some bullshit like that. You argue the same about economy, right? that demand and supply and how needs are fulfilled. I read it in an ultimately disgusting book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", "The poor always thinks, Oh! I do not have enough money; I cannot afford this While the rich thinks ways to afford this." Let us try to have rich mentality as a state and not have poor mentality. What say? you rich liberal bastard. 

Sorry for the outburst. 

I would like to highlight the increasing number of issues of Student suicides and its relations to neo-liberal aspirations and coaching industry which is precisely "Knowledge Mafia". Let me add more suicide notes here. Here is one from a 12th standard Student, Niharika, who committed suicide few days back in Kota. 

See! See and read! Whose fault? The father and mother who forced her? The State which behaves like a pimp today, does no welfare of people and believes in only bringing foreign investment? The Market which had made man itself a factory to produce himself daily? Someone who is not productive is a dead factory. 

Tell me! Whose fault? You rat bastard! Dare you tell me it's hers or her family's fault. 

BOTTOMLINE: ITS HIGH TIME, THE STATE SHOULD START DELIVERING. INCLUDE MENTAL HEALTH IN FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS. EVERY CITIZEN OF INDIA SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO GOOD MENTAL HEALTH AND SUFFIEICIENT MEDICAL INFRASTRCUTRE AVAILABLE TO ALL AS A WELFARE MEASURE.

Yes, I am not naive to think it is very easy to do. But it should be done. It should be enough reason to go all the way to do it. This is the problem, in tackling which, the state will have to solve problems multi-faceted. This, according to Zizek, is our hope for emancipation. In solving a seemingly minor issue, the state might fall in the trap and does something revolutionary. I rest here, however unrested. 

Resources Read: 

Journal of Case Research Volume IX Issue 02, Rohith Vemula Suicide Case – Unfolding the Lost Dream of a Philosopher Dr. Kalpana Sahoo Xavier School of HRM, Xavier University Bhubaneswar.