Pranav Jeevan P

Part 1

Most people believe that democracy means voting in an election every 5 years. Elections in a representative democracy is of course an essential part of the very idea of political democracy, but that doesn't mean that the very idea of democracy is limited to this right to vote. Moreover, every country takes pride in calling themselves a democracy, no matter how far away they are from it in reality, precisely because of the moral superiority and immunity that the idea of being democratic provides them.

The notion of democracy has evolved over time from direct democracy, in which the people directly deliberate and decide on legislation to representative democracy, where the people elect representatives to do that, such as in parliamentary or presidential democracy. Most decision making of democracies works on the principle of majority rule, though other decision-making approaches like supermajority and consensus have also been used to increase inclusiveness and broader legitimacy on sensitive issues and counterbalancing majoritarianism. In present liberal democracies, the constitution limits the majority and protects the minority through enforcement of individual rights. Democracy differs from other forms of government where power is either held by an individual, as in autocratic systems like absolute monarchy, or where power is held by a small number of individuals, as in an oligarchy. Democracy focuses on providing opportunities for the people to control their leaders and to remove them without the need for a revolution. The primary aspect of a representative democracy is the political right of universal adult franchise[1].

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Rahul Sonpimple

Charisma is elusive yet the most common term to define leadership. Charismatic leadership is usually perceived as essential and assenting, specifically in politics. However, the history of charismatic leadership may not allow one to continue with such romanticism. Nazism led by Hitler and Italian Fascism led by Mussolini are the two most discussed and disconsolate examples of charismatic leadership. Charisma indeed has been explained as an exceptional quality of a leader - endowed with supernatural and divine power.

For Max Weber - the architect of the concept of Charismatic leadership, charisma is one of the ways of establishing leadership legitimacy. Nevertheless, the nature and significance of charismatic leadership are subjected to the subjectivities of social structures and communities in which it evolves and operates. For instance, while Gandhi’s charisma rooted in his ideal of ‘Seva’ appealed to his Hindu upper-caste followers, Ambedkar’s charisma revolved around the philosophy of justice and attracted followers from the depressed classes. Gandhi’s appearance in public as a half-naked poor man (Fakir) helped him to gain leadership legitimacy to represent the colonized masses. On the contrary, Ambedkar's persona in public, as a modern English educated fiery barrister was seen more as a conscious construct against the elitist romanticism of poverty and tyranny.

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Shy of inquiry into privilege, social media posts flaunt antiquated attitudes to caste, reservations

Rahi Gaikwad

We are all to some extent the prisoners of our upbringing.
-PD James (Death in Holy Orders)

If anyone has any doubts about how the virus of caste has mutated into a 21^st century variant in the minds of upper caste English-speaking city-bred millennials – leave alone their rural counterparts – they need only to look at their social media offerings.  

Welcome to the cutting-edge of casteism, where calcified sentiments of ‘high-caste’ pride and ‘low-caste’ hatred find expression in snarky memes, reels and tweets. Masked under visual effects, filters and other such digital tools for content creation, they sail past community guidelines and permeate the virtual world.

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Dr Anuradha Bele & Dr Jas Simran Kehal

Reading about Mahavir and Buddha with my son in his class VI ICSE history textbook took us back to the 6th century BC. The chapter explained state of affairs that led to rise of a new religious revolution. The causes enumerated in the textbook forced me to connect contemporary past to the pandemic present.

 Let us copy-paste the causes enlisted in schoolbook-
 

# The Aryan religion had become quite difficult for the people to understand.
# Animal sacrifices had raised a reaction in people.
# Rituals had become very costly.
# Magic, charms and spells had begun to dominate religious practices.
# Caste system had become very rigid; it divided the society to high and low.
# The Hindus ill-treated the shudras.

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Bodhi Ramteke  

Dr. B. R Ambedkar once said, “If I was asked to name any particular article in this Constitution as the most important — an article without which this Constitution would be a nullity, then I could not refer to any other article except Article 32.¹ It is the heart and soul of the Constitution". This Article directly allows an individual to approach the Supreme Court if his or her fundamental rights are violated or they need to be enforced.  In addition, the right guaranteed by this Article “shall not be suspended except as otherwise provided for by this Constitution”. Indian Constitution ensures us with such important provisions, but do the backward and oppressed communities in the country benefit from those provisions?

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Shivam Mogha

A great churning of ideas is happening in the sites of the current farmers' protest at the borders of Delhi, being dubbed by many as the largest and longest peaceful protest in the world. As part of looking into various aspects of these protests, we have tried to understand the history of such mobilisations of the peasants and marginalized in India. We talk to Professor Vivek Kumar of Centre for the Study of Social Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is an eminent sociologist with a vast body of work on sociology of marginalized sections of India with a book titled 'India's Roaring Revolution: Dalit Assertions and New Horizons'. In this interview he talks about the historical aspects of peasant and labour movements regarding land redistribution specially with respect to Dalits and other backward castes in Uttar Pradesh.

 JNU Student and Trolley Times' co-editor Shivam Mogha had a talk with him.

Question 1. The demand of land redistribution has been for so long in Indian politics and social sphere. How and where do you locate the historical genesis of this demand?

Prof. Vivek Kumar: Starting with the basics of Indian philosophy and social structure, we all know that scheduled castes who are now known as Dalits, or ex-untouchables, were not allowed to own property. The ancient Vedas and the Smritis both have deprived them from owning land, which continued well into the medieval times. It was only after the Zaminadri system that Zamindars started giving some fallow land to their ploughmen or to the people who were grazing their cattle. These private lands which were not allowed to be used openly, nor could they have their titles. We also see that revenue villages were always those villages which were populated by the land-owning communities. The ex-untouchables who were supposed to live outside the villages, in settlements often called Dalit Majras, were not even actually counted for the revenue as a part of the villages. It was only after the British came to power that they started reorganisation of the land that the landless got some fallow land which often turned out to be marshy, sandy, unploughable, and infertile. That is the long history that we have to understand. However, after the abolition of Zamindari, Dalits got some fallow land and after the poverty alleviation programmes Pattas were also given to them. In certain areas, there was also this tendency that Gram Samaj land can be owned by everyone, thus Dalits started owning or taking illegal possession of these lands. You can look at this way that since most Dalits lived in villages (about 88%) as compared to other communities, now needed more land.

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Asha Singh & Nidhin Donald

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar conceptualizes education as a ‘vital need’ which helps us fight notions of ‘inescapable fate’ or ‘ascriptions of caste or religion’. He counted education as a socially inherited value which defines one’s access to power. Education was always a keyword, an indicator which he applied on issues of political representation and regional imbalance. Thus, beyond the inherent value of education, Babasaheb was keenly aware of its emergent meanings in a socially unequal society. In his writings, Ambedkar engages with the question of education as an educationist, policy maker, institution builder and above all a political philosopher. He generously borrows universal themes on education from philosophers of his times and qualifies them in our contexts. This qualification often translated into specific policy proposals on questions of primary and university education.

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Dr. Aniruddha Babar

“Chinese ‘might be induced not to be hostile to us’. And why would that be? Because “I have some slight reputation with the leaders of Communist China because of the Medical Mission we had sent. I have corresponded with Mao Tse-Tung and other leaders in the past. This might help…”.[1]

 ~ Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

The 21st century is most certainly evolving in terms of global power politics and power structural dynamics. However, the very root and essence of Communism and China is likely to remain unchanged. Even though modern China has embraced an open economic policy, its governance, political structure, ruling culture, and mindset is still very much primitively ‘Communist’ where an ancient Latin Maxim “Rex non potest peccare” (The King can do no wrong) is literally ‘venerated’. Modern China has posed serious threats to the entire world due to its expansionist policies and atrocious military interference in different parts of the planet. Even though China has undergone a complex transformation in the last hundred years, the seeds that Mao Tse-Tung had sown have now caused a great dark vegetation to spread in China, where bitter, venomous fruits of Communism keep the Chinese population in a threatening ‘amnesia’.

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Razaul Haq Ansari

To begin with, i want to say something about myself. I am Razaul Haq Ansari from Deoghar, Jharkhand, and was born in a middle class family of the Julaha (weaver) caste. I have completed my Bachelor of Technology from a private university in Greater Noida (NCR). I would like to share a couple of incidents through which i first became conscious of caste among Muslims.

The first incident is from when i was pursuing intermediate studies from a government college in Patna. I was living in a small lodge with more than twenty other students, and my roommate was also a Julaha from my hometown. Out of these twenty students, seven were lower caste Muslims and the rest were Ashraf upper caste Muslims. One day an Ashraf named Siddiqui Sheikh was debating some topic with my friend Hussain, who is a Julaha. Suddenly they started fighting each other in front of my room, and Siddiqui kicked Hussain. On hearing about their fight, we got out of our rooms and pacified them.

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Pranav Jeevan P

Schools are one of the primary places where the functioning of caste is passed on to the next generation. Savarna kids are indoctrinated of their superiority and Bahujan kids are shown their place in the varna system here. The trauma they suffer at a very young age from school they carry all their life. The schools function as ideal places to preserve and replicate caste system, to remind the Bahujans who they are and make them realise that they will never be equal to savarnas. The following is an analysis based on personal stories shared by Bahujans in social media who experienced horrible casteism in schools.

TW: This article contains experiences of casteism and sexism which might be triggering to some readers

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Dr. Chandraiah Gopani

The book under review entitled ‘Mula Dhwani’ (Aboriginal Sound) is edited by Jayadhir Thirumal Rao and Guduru Manoja. This book was released in 2019, both in Telugu and English with the same title. In the absence of studies on Bahujan Musical Traditions, the book is a unique work in documenting more than 50 musical instruments of Bahujan communities (SC, ST, OBC and Religious Minorities). The book is a result of long-term fieldwork of both authors. Majority of the instruments which are documented in the book are at the stage of extinction with only single performers. Hence, before writing the book, the authors organized a big Mula-dhwani music concert with more than 200 artistes. The music concert was recorded and later brought it into the book form for a wider audience (pp.ix).

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Preshit Ambade

India is watching the tussle between the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and Mr. Ramdev of Patanjali. Tall stories are being told about Ayurveda's ability to cure diseases. I am an Ayurveda graduate, and I do have complete faith in the system. There is no doubt that there are shortfalls in the allopathic approach to treating diseases. Even World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized traditional, complementary, and integrative medicines across the globe. Ayurveda, which is knowingly or unknowingly integrated into the daily lives of every Indian, has much more to offer to the world. However, when mythology intermingles with scientific temperament, it prevents Ayurveda from coming forward as a strong alternative. Also, there is something more systemic that has halted its growth for so many years. The monopoly by certain groups over the traditional knowledge, considering the Ayurvedic texts as sacred, and linking it to religion are the biggest hurdles in front of this practice. In the following text, I sift through Ayurveda’s history, the causes of its stagnant growth, and what we can learn from other parts of the world.

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