For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Chandra Bhan Prasad (Originally published in The Pioneer on August 28, 2001) Was LK Advani’s Ram Rath a ploy to fight the Mandal Commission or only a tool with which to mobilise Hindus around the Ram Mandir issue? What must have been an electoral calculation – a subtle opposition to Mandal will earn the …
by Chandrabhan Prasad About a decade back, Rajasthan’s Nathdwara town was in the news. The town houses a Hindu temple into which Dalits are not allowed. The maverick Arya Samaj sadhu Swamy Agnivesh had organised a march to accord Dalits their right to enter the temple. Read More Most newspapers wrote lengthy editorials condemning the …
by Chandrabhan Prasad The entire anti-Congress formation, including the intelligentsia, had hailed NT Rama Rao as the saviour who uprooted the Congress from the largest southern state. To be bracketed in the “progressive” club then, one had to demonstrate his or her anti-Congress credentials. Quite logically then, NTR was made chairperson of the National Front. …
by Chandrabhan Prasad A novelist friend has just returned from Oxford. She was there to attend a Dalit-related talk where the UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, to be held in Durban this year, came up for discussion. She wondered why European scholars were not easily prepared to equate caste-based discrimination with that of race. Another …
by Chandrabhan Prasad Has any political scientist ever called the Communist Party of India’s (CPI) 1957 victory in Kerala a political triumph of the Ezhavas, Nadars and Thiyyas – major upper Shudra castes – but one which was headed by a communist-Brahman, EMS Namboodiripad? Read More Can the Left Front or Congress-led fronts win elections …
by Chandrabhan Prasad Despite having been close to becoming the first Dalit Chief Minister of UP, Ramdhanji has died an unsung death. On May 23, 2001, Dalits lost the mirror which most truthfully reflected the social contradictions of the “cow belt”. Read More Ramdhanji supported Indira Gandhi to the hilt during the Congress’ first split …
by B. R. Ambedkar Paper presented at an Anthropology Seminar taught by Dr. A. A. Goldenweizer Columbia University 9th May 1916. Text first printed in: Indian Antiquary Vol. XLI (May 1917) [1] Many of us, I dare say, have witnessed local, national or international expositions of material objects that make up the sum total of …
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Vision Of A New Social Order by Gail Omvedt It is truly an honour to be given the opportunity to deliver the first Dr. Ambedkar memorial lecture of the new century and the new millennium. Though this is officially the 5th Dr. Ambedkar Memorial Annual Lecture for the Year 1999, it has …
by Gail Omvedt To hold that distinctions of caste are really distinctions of race and to treat different castes as though they were so many different races is a gross perversion of the facts. What affinity is there between the Brahman of the Punjab and the Brahman of Madras? What affinity is there between the …