Anand Kshirsagar

There was a time in the American antebellum South like Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Alabama, and South Carolina where economic, social, political, cultural, and religious relations of the American society were established on the bloody foundations of slavery of blacks. These black slaves were brought bounded in chains from the West Coast of Africa and today's West Indies. Such black slaves were bought and sold to work on the cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane plantations of white slave owners.

Now, most of us Indians who have some basic idea of the 'system of slavery' know physical exploitation, involuntary bonded labour without any wage is the common sight in slavery. However, in the case of the American plantations in the  south, black slaves used to be whipped, beaten up, starved, hanged, burned alive, lynched, sexually exploited by white slave masters.

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Pralay Nagrale

The recent mobilization of the Valmiki community all over India was important in fighting for justice for the 19 year old girl of Bulgaddhi village of district Hathras, because till now, the protests of the Valmiki community used to be on local levels, mostly. But this resistance did not happen suddenly. It was a rage which was within the communities for a long time. There has been a protest against the TV serial in Punjab in September 2019 where the Valmiki Action Committee against the Ram Siya ke Luv Kush which was airing on Colors TV.

In September 2019 in Bhavkhedi, Shivpuri district, Madhya Pradesh, two children, Roshni (12 Years), Avinash Valmiki (10 Years) were killed for open defecation. Those two children were killed for defecating near the house of a Yadav family. After this incident Roshni, a 12 year old girl who wanted to become a doctor, had stopped going to school due to the casteist harassment by teachers of the school. In the school she was made to sit separately and asked to bring utensils from home. In this village there are only two homes of the Valmiki community and they were engaged in cleaning toilets in the village. The villagers did not attend the funerals of Avinash and Roshni.

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Bodhi Ramteke

What could be the priorities for any poorest state, where literacy rate is low, malnutrition level is high, having no proper educational & health infrastructure and other endless issues

The vision before such a state should be to overcome those issues through framing and implementing good and constructive policies in a very democratic manner.

The 'Secular' Congress Government has announced the development of Ram Van Gaman Path i.e., the way travelled by Ram, under the project 'Ram Van Gaman Tourism Circuit' in Chhattisgarh State. Temples are to be built in all the 75 places where Ram supposedly passed through.

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Pranav Jeevan P

توشاہیںہےپروازہےکامتیراترےسامنےآسماںاوربھیہیں- اقبال

तूशाहीनहै,परवाज़हैकामतेरा ,तेरेसामनेआसमांऔरभीहै - इकबाल

You are a falcon, your purpose is to fly, there are still more skies for you to transcend - Ikbal

India witnessed two large scale protests in last 2 years which saw millions taking to streets against the oppressive laws passed by the Government. These were the Anti-CAA protests and the farmers protests. During the Anti-CAA protests, the loudest voices of dissent have been the women, from housewives to grandmothers, lawyers to students, women across India have been at the forefront of this struggle (Jeevan, 2021). This female-driven political awakening has been most jubilantly epitomized by the sit-in protest at Shaheen Bagh, drawing a cross-generational, largely female crowd never seen in India before (Petersen & Azizur Rahman, 2020). Then came the farmer protests, where millions of farmers took to streets to force the government to repeal the farm laws and to highlight the issues of agrarian crisis which has been growing in India for the last few decades. In these protests, there is an unprecedented solidarity being displayed in the daily rallies that draw out thousands of people all over Indian cities crossing caste and gender boundaries. There are no visible leaders calling out to people to protest in one mode or another, yet the country has found a way to speak truth to power (Badwar, 2020).

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Dr Anuradha Bele

My deepest gratitude to all the peasants, and especially to the farmers of Punjab.

Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar once said that those who don't know history can't make history. In the light of this quote, this article aims to understand the history of jats and their current socio religious politics and reiterate the profound fact to the readers that the freedom in the truest sense is possible only if the caste structure is dismantled and that can be made possible only if multitude castes of Shudras and Ati Shudras walk under a common umbrella towards common destiny, i.e Buddhism.

Introduction

 The term 'Hindu' is a myth, created by Muslims to address the people on the other side of the Indus river. So the so-called Hindu society is just a collection of castes.[1] The Brahmins, and Brahmin converts to Islam (Ashraf Muslims, upper caste Muslims), the sacerdotal castes, were most numerous wherever the soil was fertile and the people ignorant and superstitious.[2] Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had explained that the Shudras, the Tribes and the Untouchables are natural allies, and could use their numerical strength to bring down the Brahmanical economic order and subsequently the social order i.e. the caste system. However, he also bemoaned the fact that the Shudra still believes in the supremacy of the graded inequality created by the Brahmin and while the Shudra is anxious to pull down the Brahmin, the Untouchables rising to their level is not acceptable to them.

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A few days in Naxal-dominated Bhamragad

Bodhi Ramteke

The excruciating pain of Roshni and the loss of Jaya's life were both heartbreaking, and the concern for both of them and their family took me several miles away from my house to theirs.

It was the month of July. Roshni was nine months pregnant then and had gone into labour. The nearest hospital from her village was at a distance of 23 km. This journey was only possible through foot as the village was isolated from any modern means of connectivity or infrastructure. So there was no choice but that of walking on your own two feet. Then came the big question, for Roshni, “Should I do it?”

With her baby on the way, Roshni began to walk alone through the forest. She walked alone for a very long distance and could not even see the Asha Worker who was with her. The road was full of rocks. She continued on, crossing two hills along the way. If her foot had slipped off a rock, she would have fallen into a deep trap where any help would have been impossible. But, left with no choice and a long route ahead, she kept walking.

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Pranav Jeevan P

Before we start talking about different forms of Criminal Justice systems that are existing and that can be created, we need to sneak a peek into the current carceral Criminal Justice system in India. Our current criminal justice system is that of Punitive justice (PUNITIVE JUSTICE), where we seek to impose a punishment (deprivation or restriction) on the offender which is mostly incarceration. At the end of 2019, we had 478600 prisoners with an occupancy rate of 118.5% (Executive Summary, 2019). Seven in 10 of them are under still under trial, two-thirds of whom are from marginalized castes. Also, more than one in five (21.5%) undertrials were Muslim. Data shows that 27.7% are illiterate and over 70% haven't received 10th standard education. Also, trials are taking longer and the number of people awaiting completion of trial in prisons for long periods is increasing. The high proportion of undertrial population defeats the purpose of prisons, which are supposedly meant to correct convicted offenders of law (Paliath, 2020).

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Naichashakh (नैचाशाख)

The farmer's protests which managed to persuasively register themselves in early November as the farmer groups and unions moved past the barricades, heavy police deployment, water cannons, and several other obstacles to lodge themselves firmly at the seat of political power have opened up the many contradictions which make or rather un-make the Indian Republic. The response by the media, government, critics, and supporters makes in-fact a further fertile ground for uncovering the contradictions of making a political demand in "India". The widespread outcry at the events of the Republic Day by the media, ruling regime and a large section of the public intelligentsia is a prime example of the paradigm of the "political" in the unified India.

Let us pay attention to the charge made across almost all quarters of the "public sphere" that the tractor parade on the Republic Day was violent, unruly and unorderly. Some columnists also declared it an anarchic situation. Considering for a moment that the events were indeed "violent", what is important for us is the next argument which follows in the same breath that owing to the violence, the protesting groups have lost their moral ground of protest. Moral ground? Why is the ruling regime- and we can count the media and a large section of intelligentsia in the ruling regime insofar as they hold the power to affect the political battle the farmers are fighting- only able to understand the protest as a moral demand? What is the window through this which this "morality" is framed?

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Kranthi Kumar Mungamuri

Very recently, Telangana MLA Dharma Reddy (TRS), made a casteist statement over reservations by saying that "state is being ruined or destroyed due to lack of merit in government due to communities who had reservations" which led to a war of words between democratic, productive forces (SCs, STs and OBCs) and casteist forces. He also argued that upper castes are not securing jobs while others were getting positions without any merit. He made these comments while he was speaking at "Upper Caste State Maha Garjana", a meeting organised by the Upper Caste Aikya Vedika and attended by upper caste groups such as Velama, Reddy, Brahmin, Vaishya and Kshatriya who are historically anti-reservations and anti-empowerment of the marginalized.

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Ajay Choudhary

Indian society, which is plagued by caste discrimination, is often triggered by emotional and sentimental issues. The prevailing unscientific and irrational formal education system is unable to foresee and resolve such issues. While it is easy to mock, deep exploration of human experience reveals that informal education has instigated more students and youth to stand against the oppressive system. Cinema is also one type of informal educational tools in modernistic society where generations of people often get socialized and de-socialized to grasp the undercurrents that exist in society. It exposes the mindset of society because the issues dealt with dramatically in cinema are actually rooted in the reality prevailing in society. In other words, cinema is a reflection of society even if it is omitting or excluding the issues based on caste discrimination, which is a reflection in itself.

Such unified projection of Indian society through cinema was shattered to pieces because of the entry of new Dalit directors of films like 'Fandry' (2013) and 'Pariyerum Perumal' (2018) covering their own spaces, which was mostly absent since the 1950s and onwards. This earlier cinema endeavored to form the false consciousness of unity in diversity, which is nothing but a perpetuation of brahminical values through different media houses and also imposing them on the non-brahmanical consciousness. In the past decade or so, these brahminical values have become a matter of investigation in cinema due to the entry of humanistic values initiated by the anti-caste tradition in India.

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অনসুল কুমার

ভাষান্তর- বিধান চন্দ্র দাস

“এটা ঐতিহাসিক ভাবে সত্য যে ব্রাহ্মণ সবসময়ই অন্যান্য শ্রেণীদের সহযোগী হয়েছে এবং তারা তাদের তখনই শাসক শ্রেণীর মর্যাদা দিয়েছে, যখন সেই শ্রেণীগুলো তাদের অধীনে থেকে সহযোগিতা করতে রাজি হয়েছে। প্রাচীন এবং মধ্যযুগে এই রকম জোট তারা করত ক্ষত্রিয় অথবা যোদ্ধা শ্রেণীদের সঙ্গে এবং দুজনে মিলে রাজত্ব করত বাকি জনগণের উপর যেখানে ব্রাহ্মন তার কলমের দ্বারা এবং ক্ষত্রিয় তার তরবারির দ্বারা এই জনগণকে নিষ্পেষিত করত। বর্তমানে ব্রাহ্মণরা জোট তৈরি করেছে বৈশ্যদের সঙ্গে, যাদের বেনিয়া বলা হয়। এই ক্ষত্রিয়দের ছেড়ে বেনিয়াদের প্রতি জোটের স্থানান্তরটা স্বাভাবিক। বর্তমানে তরবারির চাইতেও বেশি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ হল বাণিজ্য করে পাওয়া অর্থ।পক্ষ বদলের এটা একটা কারণ । দ্বিতীয় কারণটা হল সমগ্র রাজনৈতিক যন্ত্রটিকে চালানোর জন্য অর্থের প্রয়োজনীয়তা। অর্থ শুধুমাত্র বেনিয়াদের থেকে পাওয়া যায়। এই হল সেই বেনিয়া , যারা কংগ্রেসকে প্রচুর পরিমানে টাকার যোগান দেয় কারণ মিঃ গান্ধী হলেন একজন বেনিয়া এবং তারা নিজেরা এটাও খুব ভালোভাবে বুঝেছে যে রাজনীতিতে অর্থ বিনিয়োগ তাদের বৃহৎ মুনাফা এনে দেবে।“--- বি আর আম্বেদকর, কংগ্রেস এবং গান্ধী অস্পৃশ্যদের জন্য কি করেছে।

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Dr. SPVA Sairam

Religion has played a significant role throughout the human history and its legacy is mixed. As a means of social control, it not only divided people and subjected them to the ignominies of the worst sort, but also, at times, it acted as a unifying force, unleashing the tremendous potential within humans to seek his or her spiritual ends¹.

 In this context, it is interesting to know what our anti-caste thinkers have to say about it. It will be illuminating to understand how Mahatma Jotiba Phule (1827-1890) viewed it.

Jotiba and Savitribai Phule had dedicated their lives to the cause of Bahujans. They raised the banner of revolt against the exploitation and subhuman treatment meted out to Shudras, Ati Shudras and Women by the Brahmins and allied castes².

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