by Ben Antao 

THE WEAVE of My Life by Urmila Pawar is more than a Dalit woman’s memoirs; it’s a bold yet intelligent critique of casteism coupled with feminist politics in Maharashtra towards the last quarter of the 20th century. And to think that a woman from the Mahar caste could rise above her poor and deprived environment in the Ratnagiri village and survive to tell her story is nothing short of remarkable.

Read more...

by Gowri Ramnarayan 

The Grip of Change is a work of literature, not a manifesto. 

THE first thing that strikes you about The Grip of Change? Author P.Sivakami's translation makes you forget it was written originally in Tamil. More remarkably, in dealing with life in a Dalit community, it deals with life itself. It is a work of literature, not a manifesto. Avoiding shrillness makes the novel more poignant and powerful.

Read more...

NEW DELHI — A local council in northern India has banned unmarried women from carrying mobile telephones to halt a series of illicit romances between partners from different castes, media reports said Wednesday.The Baliyan council in Uttar Pradesh state decided to act after at least 23 young couples ran away and got married over the last year against their parents' wishes.

Read more...

Kolkata :West Bengal Women’s Commission on Women Victims of Maoist Violence (WBCW) on Wednesday expressed deep concerns over the growing attacks perpetrated by Maoists in West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts on women and appealed to them to abjure violence.

Dennis Baron

Global English may be about to go celestial. A political activist in India wants the country’s poorest caste to improve its status by worshipping the English language, and to start off he’s building a temple to Goddess English in the obscure village of Bankagaon, near Lakhimpur Khiri in Uttar Pradesh.

English started on the long path to deification back in the colonial age, and in many former British colonies English has become both an indispensable tool for survival in the modern world and a bitter reminder of the Raj. In 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay recommended to fellow members of the India Council that the British create a system of English-language schools in the colony to train an elite class of civil servants, “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect,” who would help the British rule the subcontinent.

Read more...

Abu Dhabi :The spotlight was once again on India at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, courtesy a British filmmaker. Kim Longinotto in ‘Pink Saris’ depicted the evils of child marriage and the caste conflict in the interiors of northern India – and a woman’s fight to bring about change.