For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Dalits in Nepal: Politically Manufactured Karma The facts on the ground Suresh Singh (First published in Insight magazine in 2005) Dalits are groups of people considered as ritually impure and imagined as living apart from the “mainstream society”. This poorly understood community is called untouchables or Dalit, a term borrowed from India. The literal meaning …
Gail Omvedt “Dalit”, “Scheduled Caste”, “Ex-Untouchable” and “Harijan”. These are only some of the many words used to refer to the most oppressed sections of Indian society, “untouchable” in the traditional caste order, performers of the most degrading task, and still today caught in the throes of poverty, discrimination and the remnants of untouchability. “Dalit” …
Stalin K Last weekend, I was a guest on Satyamev Jayate with Aamir Khan where we discussed the issue of untouchability and how this illegal practice is still shockingly a part of Indian tradition. In Dangariya village of Rajasthan, “lower caste” women are asked to remove their footwear as they pass “upper caste” neighbourhoods. This …
Shiva Shankar (Talk presented at the conference on ‘Dr.Ambedkar and the Modern Buddhist World’, Nagaloka, Nagpur, October, 2006) Dear Friends, We all learn early that in 250 BC the Mauryan king Ashoka waged and won a cruel war with the neighbouring kingdom of Kalinga, yet when he went to inspect his spoils, it was not triumphant glory …
Comments on Oxford India Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing (Part I) P. Dayanandan (Paper presented on 10th April, 2012 on the occasion of the release of the Oxford India Anthology of Tamil Dalit Writing) • I congratulate Ravikumar, Azhagarsan and Mini for bringing Dalit thoughts to English language readers at large. A quick look at Ravi’s …
(Report first published in November 2003) Continued from here. Violence against Dalits in Marathwada A Report by the Fact Finding Team comprising Dr. Anand Teltumbde, Akram Siddiqui, Subodh More, Hashim Mohamma November 2003 Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR), Mumbai 2. Murti incident Murti is a relatively bigger village with a population of about …
Dr. Bhalchandra Mungekar Introduction It must be mentioned in the beginning that, though Dr Ambedkar took oath in Yeola (in District Nasik of Maharashtra) in 1935 that, though ‘he was born a Hindu, he would not die a Hindu’, and he fulfilled his mission after nearly 21 years, by formally embracing Buddhism on 14th October, …
[This is the second part of excerpts from an interview with Baby Kamble conducted by Maya Pandit, originally published as part of the English version of her autobiography (‘The Prisons We Broke’)] Continued from here. How did you think of writing your autobiography? (Laughs.) It so happened that I used to sit in the …
V. Ratnamala The history of the press in India is the history of the freedom movement in the country. To a great extent, the Indian National Congress owed its popularity and position to the Indian press (Mazumdar, 1993). The history of the freedom movement happened to be the history of Congressmen. Hence the …