Bobby Kunhu
On, 9th October, 2022 at the inauguration of M. Rasheed Foundation – founded in the memory of M. Rasheed, a freedom fighter, journalist, writer and one of the founders of Trotskyism in India – Dr. Raees Mohammed, Founder of Dalit Camera and the Nilgiris Sanitation Workers Union was the first recipient of the M. Rasheed Award. The award has been instituted to recognize contribution to social justice through politics, activism, journalism, art, literature, media or culture.
Cartoonist E. P. Unny gives the award to Raees Mohammed
Raees Mohammed comes from an Arundhatiyar family in Kotagiri, Nilgiris District, Tamil Nadu. After finishing his Doctoral Thesis on “Sanitation Workers in South India” from Indian Institute for Advance Studies in Shimla, he finished a post-doctorate from University of West Cape, South Africa. Raees was active with anti-caste politics in his student days at the Hyderabad central University. He founded Dalit Camera – a YouTube channel in 2011 – which has reached 90,300 subscribers. Dalit Camera reports and critically engages with issues around caste from the perspective of Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi and other minorities living in India.
Dalit Camera is a collective of young reporters and is completely self-funded by this collective. He also was one of the founders of the Nilgiris Sanitation Workers Union, the first registered trade union of sanitation and allied workers. Following the collapse of a 20 feet wall that was erected to keep Dalits out in Mettupalayam – which killed 17 people including 10 women and 3 children – Raees shed his previous identity as Ravichandran Bathran and converted to Islam adopting the name Raees Mohammed “in order to leave the caste system”. Despite his academic achievement, Raees works on the ground mobilizing sanitation workers and ekes his livelihood from running a small shop and operating a septic tank cleaning truck. Raees’ marital partner, Karpagam is a member of the Kotagiri Town Panchayat.
Following the inauguration of M. Rasheed Foundation by P. Nandakumar, member of the Kerala Legislative Assembly, poet K. Satchidanandan announced the M. Rasheed award online, as he could not attend the ceremony, and Cartoonist E. P. Unny gave the award to Raees Mohammed.
M. Rasheed was a personality who was more interested in pursuing his ideals of Trotskyism, rather than adorn privileges or positions, though they came his way many times. Two examples of his legacy were reminisced during the ceremony with Chand Begum narrating the story of how M. Rasheed aided the inter faith marriage between her parents and how along with his wife Beepathu teacher, they formed a support system for the couple – including housing them. Rasheed actively encouraged interfaith and inter caste marriages and has aided many such couples during his lifetime.
Late M. Rasheed
Another woman Sajna told us about how Rasheed encouraged her to pursue her writing when she was still a schoolgirl. They developed a close friendship through letters. One day Rasheed called up Sajna’s home and announced that he was Sajna’s friend and was planning to visit her the following Sunday. From a conservative Muslim family, her mother who had attended the call was traumatized and took Sajna to task. But everything ended well, when Sunday came, and the family realized that the visitor was Rasheed. Rasheed was a strong believer in the art of letter writing and he maintained friends through letters across the globe, including carrying on political debates. He corresponded regularly with political prisoners across the world and wrote about them in his weekly column in Madhyamam.
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Bobby Kunhu is a lawyer, researcher and writer.
