INSIGHT FOUNDATION Insight Study Circle Meeting held on 22 August 2010 (Sunday) at Indian Social Institute, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. A report on Opportunities for Dalit and Adivasi Students for Higher Education in World’s Premier Educational Institutions
CBI: Different strokes for different folks
by Abraham Thomas The CBI’s handling of cases involving Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad has exposed the varied yardsticks adopted by the probe agency in dealing with these political heavyweights.To start with, all three leaders faced Disproportion Asset cases in which the assessment …
Caste Census and Indian Muslims A rejoinder to Abusaleh Shariff : by Khalid Anis Ansari
Khalid Anis Ansari In a recent piece Mr. Abusaleh Shariff (‘Casting the Caste Net’, Indian Express, 23 August 2010) has attempted an imaginative intervention in the debate around the caste census. While he enters the debate both in his ‘professional’ capacity as a renowned economist/demographer (to ‘discuss alternatives for collecting caste data’) and as a ‘communitarian’ …
New vistas for deprived students
Urvashi Sarkar The need to highlight positive stories of Dalits and adivasis and the desire to spread awareness about higher education abroad prompted the Insight Foundation to organise an interactive discussion on opportunities for Dalit and adivasi students here on Sunday.Discussions centred mainly on universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Rama …
Adi Dharam World Mission Objects to Amrit Bani
OUTLOOK Adi Dharam World Mission, a Dalit body today extended support to radical Sikh organisation, Damdami Taksal Bhindrawale, and declared that newly-floated Ravidasia dharm was a conspiracy to drive a wedge between Adidharm samaj and the Sikh community.Kishan Pal Sood, President Adi Dharam World Mission, today told newsmen here that Amrit Bani, new granth of …
A History of the Untouchables: The Buraku and the Dalit
by Katelyn Coyle The Buraku of Japan and the Dalit of India remain the lowest caste of their respective countries. Experiencing more than just poverty and low status, the Buraku and the Dalit have been described as being lower than human, filthy, and contaminated. Members of these castes are considered to be the untouchables. Highly …
A Noun, Not A Verb
Oliver Mendelsohn Could Kanshi Ram in ’84 have imagined the BSP of ’09? Formative years: A young Mayawati at the mike; Kanshi Ram is second from left In 1984, Kanshi Ram founded the Bahujan Samaj Party, just in time for his young colleague Mayawati to stand for a parliamentary seat in a byelection the …