For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Karthik Navayan [Karthik Navayan wrote this article ten years ago, in 2002, after visiting Gujarat as a relief volunteer seeking to offer aid to the victims of the 2002 carnage. The one persistent thought on his mind after the experience was: how to stop Andhra Pradesh from becoming Gujarat? How to stop any other state …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Dr. Udit Raj (First published in October 2002) If you had visited Badshahpur, Akhlimpur, or Tikli with me on October 22 and seen what I saw, you would have decided right then and there to give a call to all the Dalits of the area to convert to Buddhism, Christianity or Islam. Anything but Hinduism. …
Gail Omvedt (First published in February 2003) The antagonism to conversion rests on an ideological foundation which takes ethnicity, that is a presumed community of blood and heritage, as central. IN 1996, during a six-month employment in Bhubaneshwar, fascinated by the beauty and antiquity of the area, I travelled with friends to Konarak and to …
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 …
Braj Ranjan Mani (First published in 2009) The image of India is that of a democratic, multicultural, inclusive society. But more often than not, appearances are not reality. India is a republic—a secular, socialist, democratic republic—where millions of children, women and men remain demoralised, enslaved to the powerful, crying out for fundamentals of life. Fragmented …
by Rajshree Dhali In recent years there has been a qualitative and progressive change in Dalit consciousness. This has resulted in Dalit assertion. Apart from mobilizing masses for political power, Dalits are now trying to reconstruct Dalit culture, literature and history so that they can claim for their identities. The present article intends to trace …