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 …
ANCIENT INDIAN COMMERCE
ANCIENT INDIAN COMMERCE COMMERCIAL RELATIONS OF INDIA IN THE MIDDLE EAST * The imperial Romans flashed their sword both in the East and the West with different results. In the East ” they conquered the world only to give it to ” *(……..) in the West however ” they either Romanised the races who …
An open letter to Bangaru Laxman
by Gail Omvedt Dear Siri–Sami Bangaru Laxman, I would like to congratulate you on becoming the president of the BJP. (I should also preface this by explaining why I address you as Siri: Shri is Sankskritised and north Indian; most Maharashtrian Dalits prefer Ayushaman. Tamils, on the other hand, prefer Thiru. You, I understand, are …
The purpose of reservation
Gail Omvedt The wave of rioting at the time of the Mandal Commission showed that the goal of reservation had not simply been unfulfilled, but totally distorted. It revealed, among other things, the degree to which educated upper caste youth had gotten into the habit of considering the Government administration not as “public service” …
Reservation in the private sector
Gail Omvedt With quotas declared for Jats in Rajasthan and with controversy about some recent Supreme Court decisions, the issue of reservation has again come to the forefront. Probably, though, nothing is as controversial as the whole question of private sector reservation. Here, on the one hand many Dalit leaders have been led to oppose …
Rotting food
Gail Omvedt India’s food is rotting. The greatest harvest of foodgrains in the country’s history is beginning to waste away in storage, eaten by rodents and insects, spoiled by moisture. Some of it, for want of storage space, is sitting in the open, exposed to the late monsoon rains. Estimated losses of foodgrains, according to …
Women and political power
Gail Omvedt THE DRIVE for women’s political power had its beginnings in the rural areas. Even in 1975, when we had the first major feminist rally, a “Samyukta Stri-Mukti Sangarsh Parishad” in Pune, a group of rural women afterwards went back to their village and decided, with the help of some young male activists, to …
Women and PR
Gail Omvedt PR, acronym for proportional representation, is new to the majority of Indian feminists – but one that deserves thinking about, now that another session of the Lok Sabha has ended without any significant change on the issue of quota for women. As an editorial in a Women’s Studies network bulletin put out by …
The Y5K problem
Gail Omvedt (Probably written before the year 2000) “Millenniums” ring few cultural bells for Indians, not when time is envisioned in aeons, ‘kalpas’, endlessly recurring and unimaginably immense cycles… And so, in a society just being touched by the marvels of the information age, the “Y2K” problem is seen in quite mundane terms. IT’S official: …