For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Kshirod Nag I joined JNU as an M.A. student of Sociology in the year 2008. I didn’t have any idea about ‘caste’, ‘class’, ‘gender’ ‘social change’, ‘revolution’, ‘Ambekarism’, ‘Marxism’, ‘Maoism’ or any other ‘ISM’ for that matter, except Gandhism and Hinduism (as if in India, one has a birthright to know these two isms). …
Yogesh Maitreya It isn’t an accident that the inventors and propagators of the concept of Hindutva, which later helped shape the consciousness or discourse of Hindu Nationalism, were all Brahmins. All hailed from the state of Maharashtra: V.D. Savarkar, Hedgewar, and M.S. Golwalkar. Golwalkar was born in a brahmin family in Nagpur, Maharashtra, and …
Ajith Cherian & Akanksha Verma (For Dalit Camera) On Monday, November 10, M S S Pandian passed away at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where he was admitted on Sunday following a cardiac arrest. He was 57. Professor Pandian taught modern history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The pioneering historian is …
Braj Ranjan Mani There is no competing cultural vision from below for the mind and heart of India. Dalit-bahujans are still absent in the contest of ideas, policies and visions—the fundamentals on which democratic competition takes place.This paralysis of the mind is linked totheir systemic cultural, intellectual and spiritual destruction. Without reference to history …
Kshirod Nag It certainly gives pleasure to see symbols as inspiring tools to motivate the generations to come. Contextually, we can take a look at the initiative taken by the state to confer the ‘Bharat Ratna’ on Sachin Tendulkar as one such symbol. It was felt necessary to honour a person who, undoubtedly, captured …
Jenny Rowena On a broken tar road in a rather remote area in Kerala (where I am right now), someone has scribbled this with white chalk: Sister, For You, Bad New Year(Sahodari, ninakkuvendi, bad New Year) This statement is addressed to the girl who passed away recently after being brutally raped in a bus …
Braj Ranjan Mani Jotirao Phule, and his wife Savitribai, declared war on brahmanic-casteist culture and religion. This Maharashtrian couple presented the first major anti-caste ideology and led a mass activism against the ascriptive norms and values. Their distinct brand of socio-cultural radicalism was based on uniting all the oppressed, whom they would call stree-shudra-atishudra. (Literally, …
Savari (Round Table India thanks Savari for sharing this article) Universally, the imagery of a whip evokes the reality of violence throughout human history. The whip is inseparable from violence against slaves, dalits, women, animals and children. Almost all histories of protest against injustice, be it feminism, anti-slavery, anti-caste or anti-apartheid movements have protested and …
Gail Omvedt (An excerpt from her book ‘Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened India’) Less than two months after the huge conversion ceremony, Bhimrao Ambedkar was dead, found on the morning of 6 December, slumped over the papers he had been working on late at night. His death was followed by outpouring of grief as great as …