N. Sukumar & Shailaja

To those children who
In coal mines, soot, and ash,
Furnaces and masonry.......
Bathe in the dust of sand, lime and cement,
And carry the stinking leather from the bone mill;
And
In the modern social order----
In hotels, schools, hostels
And in the abode of the pseudo-religious
Become a victim of abuse,
And under the shadow of
Pain, misery, vulnerability, endurance---
Breathe, writhe.......¹

Raju Pulyala

~

History repeating itself is an oft-heard maxim but the tragedy is being played out at University of Hyderabad and other elite brahmanical academic institutions. From Sunitha to Senthil Kumar² to Pulyala Raju³, who will be the next victim to fall prey to the nefarious collusion of the mindscape which murders young innocents with impunity? Why were Mudasir Kamran's desperate pleas for assistance deliberately ignored by the English and Foreign Languages University authorities?

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(This is the first part of the paper 'Interpretation of Cultural Identity and Caste Hegemony in Selected Prose Writing of V.T. Rajshekar')

Grishma Manikrao Khobragade

Abstract

Dalit-Bahujan-Ambedkarite writers have come to the fore of literary studies and culture studies in the recent years. These writers reveal in their writings various factors that propel actions like caste hegemony, caste discrimination and caste apartheid. Their writings also address themes like self-expression, and search for identity. These writers represent the sentiments and issues of Dalits in India, about 85% of the population in India and many more in other parts of the globe. Indian writers of Dalit ethnicity also form a peculiar majority who articulate experiences of marginalization despite being the ethnic majority in India.

This paper is an attempt to look closely at one prose work of V.T. Rajshekar, Aggression on Indian Culture, to see how the writer mobilizes his language and social analysis to locate the instances of upper caste hegemony and apartheid in the form of untouchability and casteism respectively. Attempts are here made to find out how Rajshekar attacks both upper caste hegemony and caste based discrimination in domains such as society, politics, culture, religion and law. Rajshekar, in this selected prose work which is a collection of his essays, interviews and reflections, tries to show that in Indian context, caste is the common denominator or the base structure on which the super structures like politics, law, religion and social institutions are built. Readers find that Rajshekar is attacking this very base of Indian society to show how the related aspects such as religion, morality, social values and media are lopsided or biased.

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Dalit Camera: Through Un-Touchable Eyes

C. K. Janu has breathed new life into the land struggles of the Adivasis and the landless in Kerala, fashioned a new autonomous language of resistance for similarly marginalized groups fighting for land rights across the country. In 2003, after the Muthanga agitation in 2003, she had written:

The Adivasi decision is to return to Muthanga. The Adivasis had become victims of untold brutalities. Yet there is no other way but to return. And the Adivasis have been made refugees in their homeland. There are the spirits of the dead in the forestlands of Muthanga. Not only Jogi, but also the bodies and souls of all those who had lived here as one with nature have merged irrevocably with the soil. None can separate them now. Anyone who enters Muthanga can see the scattered coins in front of the Sacred Temple at Thakarappady. There is also a splintered bamboo there. This was the hundi (coin collection box) of the Adivasis, smashed by the police officers and the goondas as though it was some part of the weaponry of the Adivasis. No one would pick up the coins. These coins representing the beliefs and dreams would still be there when they return....

Speaking to George Kurivilaroy of Dalit Camera: Through Un-Touchable Eyes, she returns again to land, and what it means for the Adivasis. Ajith Francis and Sudeesh Kalasham of EFLU have transcribed the interview (from Malayalam).

~

Dalit camera: Why land matters?

C. K. Janu: Traditionally, Adivasis maintained a harmonious relationship with their land, both cultivated and forest land, and it formed an integral part of their lives. Also, these resources are inseparable to the Adivasi way of living. By and large, Adivasis were uneducated people and they earned their living by making use of the resources available to them - their lands. So they have a symbiotic relationship with the soil and even now they haven't turned away from this eco-centric culture.

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Dalit Camera: Through Un-Touchable Eyes

[This article consists of two parts: the first part is a statement issued by the Dalit Camera Team on the events surrounding the tragic death of a Kashmiri student, Mudasir Kamran (read more about his death here), in the English and Foreign Languages University campus, Hyderabad,  and the protests which followed it. The second part is the transcript of an interview with Munavath Sriramulu, an Adivasi student in EFLU, who had been taken seriously ill while protesting against Mudasir's death, and had to be immediately hospitalised. Sriramulu, speaking from the ICU of a local hospital, recounts his own long drawn struggle against the highhandedness of the casteist administration. For him, Mudasir's death proved to be a very traumatising event; he had been on a relay hunger strike only a week earlier to make the administration listen to the serious problems faced by students from marginalized groups like himself. Will EFLU listen at least now? The interview has been transcribed by Ajith Francis]

The students of the English and Foreign Languages University have been struggling for the past one week to ensure justice for the family of Mudasir Kamran, following his suicide on the night of 2nd March 2013. Mudasir was driven to suicide following the humiliation he suffered after he was turned in to the police by the Proctor, in the wake of a complaint made by Vasim (his ex-roommate, friend and classmate) in the late hours of 1st March. Instead of resolving the issue, the proctor got into a verbal altercation with Mudasir and called him mentally ill and a rascal. The proctor took Vasim to the Osmania University Police Station and asked the inspector to take Mudasir into custody. On getting wind of this, a group of students intervened and were able to secure Mudasir's release, after Professor Veda Sharan, the Warden, gave an undertaking that this was an issue internal to the University, and with proper procedures, this can be sorted at the university level. Meanwhile, the Proctor Harish Vijra reasserted his stand that Mudasir is a "rascal" and "mentally disordered" to a group of students who confronted him.

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Kima

And from the Heavens above, fire rained down upon the heathens, spreading death, mayhem and destruction everywhere.

A heathen, because he was born in a land that had belonged to his people for generations. A heathen because he refused to bow down to the draconian law of an occupying force.

Yet there was nothing the heathen could do. His voice was silenced by the majority, all acts of transgression erased from history. India never bombed Mizoram (back then, the Lushai Hills district of Assam), and stories about the mass bombings that killed many innocent citizens, razing towns and homes to the ground are just... hearsays, rumors. No, India is a democratic country, the land of Mahatma Gandhi who believed in peace and non violence. How can India ever do that. And yet, the irony is, it was another Gandhi who ordered that very bombing.

"The use of air force was excessive because you cannot pinpoint from the air who is loyal and who is not loyal, who is an MNF and who is somebody pledging allegiance to the Mizo Union, the ruling party in the Mizo district," DD Nichols Roy, an MLA from Assam said.

"But we air-dropped only rice and potatoes", Indira Gandhi supposedly said, when confronted by the media.

"Then dear PM, please tell us how to cook this type of rice!" survivors of the bombing replied, sending empty bomb shells dropped by Hunter and Toofani jetfighters deployed from Tezpur IAF base on March 5th and 6th, 1966.

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Senganglu Thaimei

It is with a compelling urge to let out my angst that I sat down to write in Tulihal, the airport in Imphal. A stringent curfew had been announced, and news of burning vehicles and sounds of tear gas or perhaps gunshots were welling up in the Imphal valley. This was because of the Meitei led (upper caste Manipuri community) protest against the assault on the Meitei actress Momoko - she was allegedly slapped and dragged by the hair during a fundraiser event - by a Naga man belonging to the National Socialist Council of Nagalim NSCN (IM), which is an armed 'revolutionary' organization. This is the 23rd of December 2012, and Manipur is burning yet again.

Unlike many of my co-passengers I have the privilege of a cousin who arranged a room for me in the Airports Authority of India guest house. While I am thankful, it is very weirdly mixed with extreme sadness. And the moment I got to sit down, my fingers punched away on my laptop as though to beat away my fear.

After endless phone calls and advice against coming home for Christmas the previous night, I had whimsically decided to brave the crisis. "After all I am only going home to meet my aging parents" I reasoned. Moreover, it was just a 15 minutes' drive from the airport to my house. The protest against the assault on the Manipuri female actor had reached its peak and would end soon, or so it seemed. But that was to be proven wrong as things only got worse.

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