Gurinder Singh Azad [Gurinder Singh Azad, of the Dalit & Adivasi Students’ Portal, was involved in the Death of Merit campaign against caste discrimination and suicides of Dalit, Adivasi students in India’s premier educational institutions. The tragic death of Anil Kumar Meena, a tribal student from a marginalized background, in AIIMS brings back memories of …
What is wrong with Bhagvad Gita? (Part III)
Rahul Bhalerao Continued from here. To the question ‘what do Karma and Guna exactly mean according to Gita?’ a generic and philosophical meaning is proffered as the answer. According to this response, Karma is any act or deed, be it good or bad, which in turn produces good Karma or bad Karma respectively. But, irrespective …
What is wrong with Bhagvad Gita? (Part II)
Rahul Bhalerao Continued from here. Coming back to the justifications given by the supporters of Gita, one finds that they are merely based on a few ambiguous individual verses scattered around the Gita. They certainly lack the holistic understanding and message that Gita preaches; let alone the interpretations that have evolved in practice since the …
What is wrong with Bhagvad Gita?
Rahul Bhalerao Recent controversies, both local and international, have sparked a series of discussions and debates in media and social networks about the Hindu holy book Bhagvad Gita. When the Karnataka Education minister decided to saffronize the education system by proposing Gita teachings to be made compulsory, the left, liberal and secular voices attacked …
‘We will do a Chunduru on you!’
Desecration of Ambedkar statues: Truth is the first casualty (Part II) Continued from here. In this concluding part on the issue of desecration of Dr Ambedkar’s statues in Andhra Pradesh, G Jhansi, of Dalit Sthree Sakthi, maps for us the morphing forms of atrocities on dalit assertions. In her analytical narrative of the complex caste …
Desecration of Ambedkar statues: Truth is the first casualty
Truth, they say, is the first casualty in any war. Was it a caste war which triggered the series of desecrations of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s statues in Andhra Pradesh, starting with the destruction of four statues in Amalapuram on the night of 22nd January? Was it the result of inter-group rivalry among State Congress leaders? Was …
Reconstructing Silenced Histories
Cynthia Stephen (Book Review) [Debrahmanising History : Dominance and Resistance in Indian Society By Braj Ranjan Mani, Manohar, New Delhi, 2005, pp.456, Rs 895 (Hb), Rs 395 (Pb), ISBN 81-7304-640-9 (Hb) ISBN 81-7304-648-4 (Pb)] In recent years, Indian Historiography has had its share of controversies. The ‘saffron’ rewriting of the history textbooks and the stoppage of the publication …
Gujarati Dalit Literature: An Overview
G K Vankar It is difficult to say when first Gujarati Dalit writing came into existence. But undoubtedly the publication of Aakrosh, a poetry journal of Dalit Panthers, on 14th April, 1978, was an important milestone. The anti-reservation agitations in Gujarat in 1981 and 1985 generated intense awareness about dalit rights and led to a …
Analyzing the ‘OBC-Minority’ Sub-Quota–Part IV
Khalid Anis Ansari Continued from here. [IV] 4.5% Sub-Quota for OBCs within Minorities: The ‘Political’ Dimension The approach that merely concentrates on government jobs and seats in higher educational institutions is indeed a very savarna (upper caste) view of reservation policy. From the perspective of upper caste discourse, which has little appreciation for dignity of …