Radhika Sudhakar In the Swathi murder case, as mainstream media increasingly plays the role of judge and jury, while evidence gathering, judgement based on facts and adherence to the rule of law takes a back seat, it does immense disservice to the victim’s rights as well as the accused’s rights. In the process, it also …
2C or Not To See: A critique of PS Jaya’s ‘2C Awareness’ Project
Archana Bidargaddi & Prabu Venkat Introduction Hegemonic groups – media, artists, activists all alike – have been “using” Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder by brahminical educational establishment1, as an excuse to further their own interests in numerous ways. Kalakakshi2, an artists’ collective, called for members to come up with ideas to protest the actions of …
Babasaheb, knowing you as Babasaheb!
Pradnya Jadhav Dear Babasaheb, you have uplifted our lives, which can never be laudable without your mention… You are in our every breath, but in our long journeys, we forget to recollect the moments when each one of us first met you. Today I want to go back to see the time when we first …
An open letter from a Dalit musician, to whomsoever it may concern
Ajith Kumar A S The immediate provocation for writing this letter is TM Krishna’s letter to Modi (“Honourable Narendra Modi-ji”). So I think this letter has to be addressed to a large group of people who ‘share’ TM Krishna’s so-called radical mindset when muslims and dalits are attacked and murdered by caste hindus and …
Merit hona mangta: An essay on the FTII strike
Nidhin Shobhana This essay is a response to the on-going strike in FTII against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the Chairman of the said Institute. I would contextualize the strike on a larger canvas called Brahmanism (not read as Hindutva1). In the essay I would make a modest effort to understand the term …
The collective dilemma of the left, right and centre: What to do with Ambedkar?
Anoop Kumar (His speech at the ‘The Colonization of Ambedkar: Caste Politics behind Roy-Navayana’s Appropriation of Annihilation of Caste ~ A Discussion‘ held on 21st December, 2014, at University of Mumbai) My name is Anoop and I am not an academician or a very accomplished speaker so please excuse me if I am not …
A critique of ‘Court’ and the Brahmin agency behind it
Yogesh Maitreya As part of my fieldwork, I had been assigned to spend a year studying one of the prisons in Mumbai. To study the criminal justice system more closely and to know its nuances, I had to attend court trials, visit police stations and localities where mostly Dalit-Bahujans reside. Wherever I went, I came …
A tale of two prefaces
Karthick RM With her new preface to Dr. Ambedkar’s ‘Annihilation of Caste’ Arundhati Roy, and the publishing house Navayana, have received criticism from Dalit activists and writers. Very compelling critiques have been put forth explaining how Navayana’s annotated version of an Ambedkarite classic is an act of appropriation. In the short essay that follows, …
The ‘Myth’ in Mythology
Twish Mukherjee (This guest article tries to understand the protests by Bahujan students in JNU and other universities over Durga Puja and the demonizing of Mahisha and other Dalitbahujan personalities in Brahmanic mythology. These protests picked up steam around a year ago in JNU, and this article in Round Table India had covered the protests …