by Gail Omvedt Dear Arundhati, I’m sorry to have to write a critical letter to you. I very much liked The God of Small Things. I also appreciated your intervention on the nuclear issue. I was impressed on reading in Indian Express that you had decided to donate some royalties to the Dalit Sahitya Academy. …
Wealth in the Bhopal meet
by Chandrabhan Prasad The Dalits constitute one-fourth of India’s population – about 250 million people – equivalent to the combined populations of four European nations (255.10 million): France (58m), UK (58.30m), Germany (81.60m) and Italy (57.20m).
Dalit women cases: Crime conviction rate poor
JAIPUR: Preliminary findings of a study by the state’s Centre for Dalit Rights reveal that the conviction rate in cases related to rape and sexual assault of Dalit women is less than 2%. The centre is compiling a detailed study of over 50 such, the final report of which is expected to be released later …
Grain banks prove a boon for Dalits
PATNA: About 150 Grain banks being run in Patna, Bhojpur, Gaya, Jamui and Saharsa districts by Dalit women have come as a great relief for Musahar and other poor families. Fed up with hunger and poverty, around 2,000 Musahar Dalit women had set up Grain banks in 2002 in about 60 villages under Paliganj subdivision comprising Paliganj and Bikram …
Village deities
Siddalingaiah, a major Kannada poet and activist, was a founder of the Dalit Sangharsh Samiti, which launched a powerful Dalit movement in Karnataka in the mid-1970s. He obtained a doctoral degree from Bangalore University for his research on village deities. His publications include Gramadevathegalu, a study of village deities in Karnataka, Ooru-Keri, an influential autobiography, …
Dalit women’s aspirations brought home impact of ‘double discrimination’
Emily Esplen visited a community in Dhaka where inspiring community organisers are showing change is possible. When I met members of the Dalit Women’s Forum in Dhaka last month, they told me about the changes they want to see in their lives and communities. They want their daughters to go to school and stay in …
‘The Hague Declaration on the Human Rights and Dignity of Dalit Women’
The Hague, 21 November 2006 WE, the participants of the Hague Conference on Dalit Women’s Rights, held in The Hague on 20 and 21 November 2006, after deliberating upon the issues of discrimination, violence and impunity against Dalit women, adopt this Declaration on the Human Rights and Dignity of Dalit Women. In South Asia – …
The Status of Dalit Women in India’s Caste Based System
by Sonia Mahey, University of Alberta In this paper I wish to present the devastating effects of the caste system on the educational, social, and economical status of Dalit women in modern India. My aim is to highlight the harsh reality of the suppression, struggle and torture Dalit women face every day of their miserable …
Intro Dalit Poetry in Malayalam
by K M Sherrif Dalit poetry as a distinctive mode arrived in Malayalam literature at the end of the Eighties of the last century. Not that poetry with a distinct Dalit sensibility by Dalit writers was absent in Malayalam literature before that. Pandit Karuppan’s Jathikkummi (Caste Songs) were written in 1904. Karuppan, a Dalit from …