Editorial Note, Jan-Feb, 2017

This special issue of Social Scientist coincides with the first anniversary of the death of the young Dalit scholar, Rohith Vemula. Though not intended as such, this issue attempts to probe some of the questions that his death brought to relief. Despite a long history of routine violence and unarchived instances of everyday discrimination, Vemula’s death became a precipice upon which many events and processes progressed. The special issue, then, identifies a point of departure in the events of last year but would hesitate in considering them as end-points of processes on a much larger continuum of history.