Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
On June 6th, a scuffle broke out between Rajvir Singh and a group of Dalit youths near Bhai Gurdas College in Sangrur district. Rajvir, the son of Manjit Singh Gharachon, member of the State Committee of Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ugrahan), claimed that he was hit by a Dalit youth. In response, (…)
Two recent books conjure up a society and polity in Tamil Nadu bound by a Dravidian consensus, but they fail to explore the economic and social contexts behind fissures in the Dravidian compact – especially when it comes to the Dalit question
On 6 March 2024, Justice Anita Sumanth, officiating (…)
In August, police filed criminal cases against Adivasi-Dalit anti-mining protestors, arrested 25 in southeastern Odisha, which holds more than half of India’s bauxite reserves, and allegedly abducted a global environmental prize winner. Acting on orders of the Biju Janata Dal government of chief (…)
Reservations for Dalits have been instrumental in correcting historical wrongs but ever since BJP’s ascent to power, it has tried to dilute the provisions.
Despite the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) claims of ‘Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas’ (development for all), the plight of the weaker sections (…)
Six new reappraisals show the gulf between Dalit-Bahujan and anglophone writing on B R Ambedkar
In Dalit-Bahujan folklore, poetry, songs, novels and biographies, B R Ambedkar appears almost like a deity or messiah, equivalent to the Buddha, Jesus or Nanak. Ambedkar is often mythicised and (…)
It is crystal clear that it is the March 27 ruling of the Manipur High Court to award Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the majority Meitei community (mostly Hindu) that led to mass protests by Zo-Kukis in early May which in turn led to violent attacks by Meitei vigilante groups and then a spiral (…)
Radical Socialist (RS) strongly opposes the Supreme Court (SC) judgement upholding the BJP government’s policy proposal to enable 10% quota reservations for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in Central government public sector employment and for access in its higher educational institutions. (…)
For several generations, India’s Dalits and other oppressed groups have fought for equal rights against upper-caste domination. The history of their courageous struggles can inspire resistance against Narendra Modi’s Hindutva repression today.
As it marks its seventy-fifth year of (…)
The plight of Adivasi women in India is dire. Like countless Indigenous women around the world, many Adivasi women are at the forefront of the anti-extractivist struggle with the goal of protecting their land. Doing so, however, places them in a vulnerable position, as the political repression (…)
Many school students protested Sunita Devi being removed for being a Dalit cook in Uttarakhand by not eating food made by her Brahmin replacement.
Can boycotts be an effective strategy to fight against untouchability in India? This is a question that emerged after Scheduled Caste students in (…)
Facing systemic exploitation and discrimination, India’s lowest castes have barely been acknowledged on the big screen. Now independent, mostly non-Hindi language filmmakers are challenging attitudes with powerful stories of injustice to give them a voice.
Many of the directors are from the (…)
The Suriya-led legal drama is based on an actual incident of police brutality in Tamil Nadu.
Tha Se Gnanavel’s phone has been ringing non-stop ever since his movie Jai Bhim started streaming on Amazon Prime Video on November 2. “I thought people would say this is a good film, but the response (…)
This paper attempts to understand the larger meanings that interlink social spaces of Dalits women and COVID-19. It tries to foreground the following questions.
How does it determine the realm of social distancing? Does it lead to a new world of caste and precarity? One of the central (…)
The first sustained resistance to colonial rule from the toiling people of India came from adivasis. Bourgeois nationalist historiography tried to marginalise these struggles, and when that was no longer viable, to portray these as somehow ‘primitive’ and therefore not worthy of being considered (…)
The month of January is marked by the birth and death anniversaries of Rohith Vemula. Five years ago, after he was pushed to take his own life at the University of Hyderabad—in what Dalits aptly described as an institutional murder—I reported on the defiant politics of Vemula and the Ambedkar (…)
Historian Aparna Vaidik, associate professor at Ashoka University, has researched the evolution of the idea of ‘love jihad’. She shares her views with Indrajeet Rai:
Has the ‘love jihad’ discourse moved to the mainstream?
The current discourse is at the core of Hindu identity as it was (…)
Driven to a frenzy over purported statements given by Maoist sympathisers, Andhra police have arrested several human rights activists from Andhra Pradesh and Haryana.
Hyderabad: Athram Suguna, a 38-year old school teacher of the Gond tribe from Telangana’s Fakrigutta in Adilabad district, has (…)
An excerpt from the forthcoming book ’Civility in Crisis’ explores how Yadav’s rule evoked feelings of dignity among the Bahujan majority in the state.
The ongoing electoral campaign in Bihar has seen three-term Chief Minister Nitish Kumar needing to remind his audiences about the alleged (…)
PUCL Maharashtra condemns the caste-based brutal rape and murder of the young Dalit woman from Hathras, UP, by upper caste men and the deliberate mishandling of the case, including delayed FIR, medical examination and burning of the body and destruction of evidence by state authorities.
PUCL (…)
Both ‘The Discreet Charm of the Savarnas’ and ‘Mr. Misunderstanding’ warn us of caste travelling and dominating through liberal-progressive Savarnas – locally and globally.
Two films released this year mark the beginning of an anti-caste genre in English language Indian films. In the past few (…)
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