For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Chandra Bhan Prasad (First published in January 2002) How do temple priests treat Dalits? An educated, decently dressed Dalit with some dignified source of income may be acceptable to them. Dalits with similar qualities may even get some acceptability among Varna landlords. But how does the media treat Dalits and the issues which concern them? …
Dr. Udit Raj Nearly a decade ago, it was considered to be in the domain of politicians to provide transparency in politics but now it is no more like that. It is a fact that corruption started from the top and percolated to the lower levels and gradually the public also became a part and …
Chandra Bhan Prasad (First published in October 2001) My Dalit scholar friend HL Dushad keeps coming up with ideas. This time he suggested, “The ultra-nationalist forces, the Left parivar and the Sangh should dissolve into their original Varna identities. That way, the people of India could fight them.” I asked, “Just what has got you …
Gopal Guru (First published in December 2006) The concept of untouchability travels from rural locations to the cities. CAN categories of understanding be divided on the basis of spatiality? The answer to this question could be given in the affirmative. By and large, it is true that the scholars working on Indian society and …
Anand Teltumbde The occupation of the Indu Mills near Chaityabhoomi in Mumbai by dalit youth demanding that an Ambedkar memorial should come up there is a heartening development. In neo-liberal India, dalits are a significant part of the “precariat” – a section of the people with no job security, indeed, with no prospect of employment, …
Gail Omvedt [Written in the year 2008] (A Reply to the Hindu Council of UK essay on “The Caste System”) * I owe thanks to Michael Witzel for his note citing Vedic references on caste and his careful reading of an earlier version of this essay. Introduction The essay submitted by the Hindu Council of …
Gopal Guru (First published in Outlook magazine in March 2009) Brahmins are fashioning new political rhetoric from old stereotypes Let me begin this piece with a dramatic question: what are Brahmins doing in political parties? Let me make it even more dramatic: what are they doing in non-Brahmin, Dalit or Dalit-led parties? If these questions …
Dr. K. Jamanadas Today is Christmas, 25th of December. It is celebrated all over the Christian world as the birth of Jesus Christ. But for the whole world of Dalits, it is an important day as “Manu Smruti Dahan Din”, as it was on this day in 1927 that Manusmruti was publicly burned by …
Gopal Guru (Published in Seminar magazine in May 2005) THE recent debate on the issue of reservation in the private sector in India is significant for more than one reason. This demand comes in the wake of a growing restiveness marking unemployed dalit youth in particular, and non-dalits in general. And it seems to provide …