Dalit scholar suicide - Here is how Carl Sagan's wife responded to Rohith Vemula's death

Well known author and astronomer Carl Sagan's wife Ann Druyan wrote a letter on Rohith Vemula's suicide, the incident which has started protests in the Hyderabad University led by students, reports NDTV.  Three students on hunger strike were taken to the Health Centre on Monday night.

In his suicide note, Vemula had said that he always dreamt of being a science writer like Carl Sagan.

"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 note read.

Druyan wrote back pondering over the protests over the scholar's death. 

Here's what the letter said:

"Dear Rajeev Ramachandran, 

Deeply grateful to you for writing to me about Rohit Vimula, whose death and lost promise I mourn. To read his suicide note and to learn the details of his predicament is to get a vivid inkling of the actual cost of bias to our civilization. If we could somehow quantify the totality of lost contributions and innovations as a result of prejudice, I believe we would find it staggering. You tell me, Rajeev: Is it possible that the attention paid to Rohit’s story will lessen its chronic repetition? I am trying to find something hopeful in an otherwise heartbreaking example of needless suffering and squandered potential. 

Truly,

Ann"

Meanwhile, the students group along SC/ST reached an agreement with the acting VC to allow the university to function normally as long as their demands, one of which was to oust certain varsity members, were met.