In 2016, the Indian student Rohith Vemula committed suicide and left a letter denouncing the discrimination he had suffered from the university administration for being Dalit, a term used to designate citizens outside the traditional caste system. His death sparked a series of protests, many of which were violently quashed by the state, such as the candlelit vigil led by Rohith’s mother, Radhika Vemula, and accompanied by students from all across the country. All those involved, including Radhika herself, were arrested and taken to police-station holding cells aboard public buses marked “00 Special Service.” In Special Service, the artist and filmmaker Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh returns to this tragic event. The atmosphere and narrative he creates, filming a candle burning from beginning to end, place the viewer inside the vigil and in the heat of the crackdown on the event, whose sounds and speeches we hear in the background.
