Anand Teltumbde

Ambedkar was more about class than caste, but the Left won’t see it that way 

India is a land of paradoxes. But no paradox may be as consequential as the divergent histories of the Dalit and the Communist movements. Both were born around the same time, spoke for or against the same issues, grew or splintered similarly, and find themselves equally hopeless today. And yet, they refuse to see eye to eye. A large part of the blame for wallowing in this attitudinal abyss is attributed to Ambedkar, simply because of his explicit critique of the Communists and Marxism. This is simplistic, if not grossly wrong.

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Braj Ranjan Mani

The supersexualised market and its mindless validation encourage the assumption that feminist and all equalitarian struggles have ended, that equality for all women and men has been achieved, and the deserving lot can now have anything they want. Its sexy-selfish template trivialises all social commitment and mocks any serious engagement with arts, literature, politics, or spirituality.

In the market culture, money forms the ties of affection and love. Personal relationships, like other things in life, are the function of wealth and possession. Promotional ads seldom depict a man's economic success without possessing a playgirl or a trophy wife, the more (women) the merrier. This fits in with the concept of possession—possessing property leads to possessing fetching and fertile females. The neatness of the fit between economic success and sexual success is not surprising since both are manifestations of the same dominant ideology and value system. This is in sync with the traditional—patriarchal—concept of woman as a maal (property). The modern capitalist commodification of woman is just an updated version of the patriarchal objectification of woman. The commercial culture just packages the old heterosexual stereotypes in a new feisty vocabulary of female empowerment and an exuberant celebration of the body.

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Braj Ranjan Mani

The tyranny of capitalism in India cannot be grasped, let alone resisted, in isolation from its wider social context. Capitalism is far more dangerous in India than in the Euro-America because of the culture and economics of caste.

Today, India (after China and the US) has the world's third largest middle class (250-300 million); 49 enlisted dollar billionaires (black market economy and overseas banks allow some crooks to remain unlisted); and the single largest concentration of the world's poor (800 million), most of them illiterate or semi-literate, considering 70 per cent in India's 1.2 billion are either illiterate or have no more than a primary education. A political analyst, representing the views of Indian elite, calls this "a new triad of India's political economy," and adds, "The poor were always with us, but billionaire businessmen and a huge middle class were not. They constitute a historical novelty for India." A more empathetic view with compelling stories and statistics, delineating the depredation of the elite and the suffering of the people, is brought home in a new book which demonstrates that the economy "may be in good statistical health," but "it is by no means in good social or ecological health." Unravelling the social consequences of the growth story, the authors point out that the footprint of the wealthiest Indians is 330 times that of the poorest 40 per cent; and that with each new Special Economic Zone, India loses the capacity to feed 50, 000 to 1,00,000 people each year. * [Aseem Shrivastava and Ashish Kothari, Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2012).]

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Gail Omvedt

"Dalit", "Scheduled Caste", "Ex-Untouchable" and "Harijan". These are only some of the many words used to refer to the most oppressed sections of Indian society, "untouchable" in the traditional caste order, performers of the most degrading task, and still today caught in the throes of poverty, discrimination and the remnants of untouchability.

"Dalit" is still probably the most widespread of these terms, but it is not uncontested. Many are uncomfortable with its apparent militancy. It means literally "crushed" or "ground down", and it has an interesting history. It is first found, apparently, in the '30s, when it was used as a Marathi and Hindi translation for the British term "Depressed Classes." (As elsewhere, "classes" here meant "castes", something to remember when we are discussing OBCs.) Ambedkar used it in this way to refer to his Depressed Class conferences, though in English we most often find him using the simple and descriptive term "Untouchable". His conflicts with Gandhi in the early '30s were at least partly a matter of terminology. Gandhi had, for him, the brilliant idea of using the term "Harijan", taken from the bhakti movement. Ambedkar resisted this, just as he resisted Gandhi's attempt to turn an Untouchable League (which Ambedkar thought should take up general issues of civil rights) into a paternalistic organisation controlled by upper-caste Hindus. Ambedkar, and militant Dalits ever since, have seen the word "Harijan" as demeaning and false, hence oppressive.

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Sukhadeo Thorat

The insights in the NCERT cartoon report can help to make the curriculum and the classroom more inclusive

While the NCERT textbooks report has generated much heat, it has also shed positive light on the issue. It is time to reflect on this side of the debate and deal with the questions it raises.

The committee's mandate was to identify educationally inappropriate materials in textbooks and suggest alternatives, if necessary. The committee used the 2005 National Curriculum Framework (NCF) guidelines to review the text. In the case of the cartoons, due to the absence of clear guidelines, the committee used the existing literature on cartoons besides the 2005 NCF. This literature recognised the value of cartoons in teaching, but also advised caution: cartoons should be made and used for well-defined educational purposes, they must be tested for their consequences, sensitivities of various groups should be addressed, and the use of animal images to represent human beings, and the overuse of cartoons be avoided.

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Dr. K. Jamanadas

Dr. Ambedkar asked to use temple money for public good

In a special editorial in Mahanayak of 14th July 2012, titled, 'Name of God, wealth of Brahmins', the author has given interesting statistics. The following is the gist of it.

Mr. Sharad Yadav has recently demanded that the money collected in the temples should be taken over by the government. Sharad Yadav is one of the militant OBC leaders who emerged after the post-Mandal agitation. India is considered to be the most backward country in the world in the matters of education, health, malnutrition of children, poverty and neglect of human rights. But the people in the country are quite generous in donating money to the temples. They are far ahead in this respect of all throughout the world.

On 24th of January 1954, Dr Ambedkar had said in a conference of the devotees of Saibaba, that money is collected in the name of religion and spent on improper matters. In the present condition of poverty and misery, it is a highly criminal tendency to collect the money in the name of religion and spend it on festivals or on Brahmins. The money should be spent on hospitals, on education, on industrial enterprises, to provide employment to the unemployed, on poor and helpless women, on vocational training, and matters like these. The suggestion of Sharad Yadav is in consonance with the ideas expressed by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Therefore, we support the suggestion of Mr. Sharad Yadav, wholeheartedly.

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