For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Gee Imaan Semmalar In Kerala, a new political and cultural assertion is happening amongst Dalit communities, filmmakers and intellectuals that radically questions the deafening mainstream silence and denial of caste. In the field of filmmaking, Rupesh Kumar and Ajith Kumar A.S have emerged as voices who bring power to a certain kind of representational …
Chandramohan.S Dr. Ajay Sekher, writer, translator, artist and Assistant Professor of English at S S University of Sanskrit (Tirur Centre) received the ‘Aadiyar Deepam’ award recently. In this conversation with the young poet Chandramohan.S, he talks about the award, his writing, research and translations. Chandramohan: Please enlighten us about this award. Ajay Sekher: …
Pallavi Muraleedharan As I was perusing the newspaper the other day, the photo of a teenager caught my attention. It wasn’t a very unusual thing to see a beautiful fair-skinned young girl winning the Bharatanatyam or Kuchipudi competitions in the school youth festivals. After all, those are perhaps the only competitions that satiate the …
N Sukumar and Shailaja Menon One of Kerala’s enlightened souls, Sree Narayana Guru, had proclaimed, “One Caste, One Religion and One God” for mankind, thus ushering in a radical transformation of society. The state also witnessed momentous struggles to liberate society from the shackles of caste and untouchability. The Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924-25, a historic …
Ajith Kumar A S The people in the protest land in Arippa in Kollam district in Kerala, are celebrating the first anniversary of their land struggle in the last week of December. It was on December 31st, 2012, that over 150 landless families, under the leadership of ADMS, ‘occupied’ and set up temporary shelters …
Sreebitha P. V. “Today if my grandmother was alive she would have been ecstatic to see me as a bride but at the same time heart broken to see me not decked up in gold from head to toe!! From a very young age I knew I didn’t want to wear so much gold …
Rupesh Kumar Sometime back my friend Ajith posed a couple of questions about my documentary “Don’t be our fathers” in his article (Dalitizing cinema : A critique of Rupesh Kumar’s ‘Don’t be our fathers‘) on Round Table India. The nature of that text by itself needs a separate analysis. But for now, I shall …
Understanding caste formulations after 1990s: Review of ‘No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India’ (This review is a part of the theory course taught by Dr Bhangya Bhukya, Department of Social Exclusion Studies, English and Foreign Languages University) Karthik Navayan Caste is interpreted in different schools of thought in different ways; …
Field notes from my micro-context1 Nidhin Shobhana As a child, I would always wonder why my house did not look as ‘clean’ as my Nair neighbour’s. Similarly, I always wondered why none of us Christians would look as ‘authentic’ as our Nair friends when we attended Malayalee Samajam Onam programmes. Jokes/comments such as ‘Christians2 …