Noel Mariam George

The book 'Guja-ratri: Reflections on Moditva' attempts to uncover the darkness that has engulfed the country since the rise of Motiva through a series of 17 articles. The attempt of this review is to look at the book through three conceptual frameworks.

Deconstructing the Binary of Dalit-Muslim

The book begins with Ambedkar’s quote that marks the impossibility of the constitution of an inorganic category like the Hindu; until there is a Hindu-Muslim riot. The Hindu, in that sense is a politically constituted category without the social. Raju Solanki attempts to look at this contradiction to prove why the idea of a Muslim- Dalit antagonism is in fact two types if exclusions in the guise of conflict. The Muslim- as the political contradiction is the ‘excretion’ of the nation; while the Dalit as the social contradiction, is the ‘excretion’ of the Hindu Social order. The riot then cannot be understood as an entropic, anarchic process; but rather as a systematic production of ‘conflict’ that only furthers the regime of selective criminalisation by the brahminical state.

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Round Table India

T Siri Chandana, a BSc (Maths, Physics, Computer Science) student from Adikavi Nannaya University in Rajahmundry,  Andhra Pradesh, has received offers of Admission and Excellence/Merit Scholarship from three Universities in the UK: University of Salford in Manchester, Wrexham Glyndwr University in Wrexham and Solent University, Southampton to study Master's program in Computer Science/Information Technology (pl see attached images of the offers)

Siri Chandana has been a brilliant student throughout her scholastic career, having scored 97% marks (Grade A) in her tenth board exam, 92% in junior college (Grade A) and 88% (Grade A) in her BSc (MPCs) in 2019. She has also received several prizes, honours for her participation in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. Despite coming from very hard circumstances- having lost her father at a young age, around ten years ago- and facing financial difficulties, she has remained focused on her education, supported and encouraged by her mother and family.

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What do they know of Kathakali, Who they only Kathakali knows? Mistaken Modernities in Kerala

Umar Nizar

The cultural ecosystem in southern India, has been at the forefront of heralding an Indic future, from APJ Abdul Kalam on the Veena to TM Krishna performing live at the beaches of Kerala and TN, the southern matrices of intermeshed artistic borrowings have helped create a superstructural buklwark. This is supposed to keep alive the notion of an unending, continuous tradition whose flame has to be preserved at any cost for sustenance of tolerant notions of the Upanisadic 'Vasudaiva Kudumakom' as well as some sort of Harappan humanism.

The concept of 'invention of tradition' as propounded by Eric Hobsbawm and articulated in the modern revivalist efforts to claim an 'in order to have been' future anterior temporal status for South Indian cultural (Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Kutiyattom, Carnatic music) , political (Tamil Cinema, Dravidian rhetoric), aesthetic (Akam-Puram classifications of Sangham literature) and linguistic forms (Malayalam as classical language) forms the locus of this study. How much of the de facto classical in modern south India, such as the classical status of Malayalam and its cultural ecosystem comprising Kathakali, Kutiyattom, Mohiniyattom etc, is classical at least in a Foucauldian sense, stamps of credibility from global arbiters such as UNESCO notwithstanding?

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On March 4, 2020, hundreds of Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim and Christian minority groups and leaders from different parts of India assembled in the country's capital to condemn and peacefully protest the imposition of unconstitutional Citizenship Amendment Act through the implementation of the NRC and NPR, countrywide. The BJP's election manifesto in the general elections of 2019 promised to implement the NRC across India. This was reaffirmed on 19 November 2019, by the Home minister Amit Shah in the Rajya Sabha.

The unleashing of violence by anti-social elements under the political backing on the citizens of the nation, and particularly the women from marginalised religious and caste communities around the country and particularly in South East and North East Delhi and central public universities, viz. Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Milia Islamia and JNU, have led to a state of unprecedented insecurity among the people. The Government's move to carry out the NRC has already claimed several human lives and property, causing colossal damage and lives and country's exchequer, which stand to be assessed with objectivity. The citizens, especially the marginalised minorities fail to comprehend the necessity for this irresponsible and anti-people, anti-marginalised, anti-minority move of the Government of India, after having been voted to power twice by the very people now being targeted. In response to an RTI query, the Prime Minister's Office attributed the validity of CAA to Section 3 of the Citizenship Act 1955.

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Neetisha Xalxo

Tribal groups in a meeting in the Indian Social Institute, Delhi on 23rd February 2020 expressed their concern that the Indian government is determined to mark Tribals as Hindu. And with the same agenda only mainstream religions are mentioned in the census 2020. Sarna, Koytur and other Tribals' religions have got no place in the column for religions in the census. As a result the Tribal's religious identity is in dire danger. Therefore there will be no other option than identifying Scheduled Tribe as Hindus. And automatically this country will be identified as a Hindu majoritarian state.

This step of government is a serious attack on the diverse culture of India. Consequently the indigenous communities of this country will lose their identity.

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BAPSA (Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students' Association)

The Hindu Indian state once again reiterates its Brahmanical agenda by trying to scrap reservation for the oppressed. For the brahmanical state apparatus and its civil society the marginalized have always only been their slaves, cheap workers, manual scavengers, house cleaners who deserve to live and die in ghettos & slums.

The merit, talent of the marginalized, oppressed identities are not talents, but they are considered by the brahmanical society as a gift of the reservations they had provided as a surplus. At first, the right wing political parties supported by BJP created a false propaganda that reservation is dividing society, and adopted all the unlawful means to kill the dreams of oppressed communities. Since the priestly Brahmins could not do much, the secular Brahmins have fulfilled the unfulfilled dreams of all the Brahmins. With the recent judgement by the Supreme Court, the entire existence of SC,ST&OBC communities is jeopardized. The Brahmanical court, right after BJP came to power in 2014, has been showing its true nature in paralysing all institutions.

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Dipankar Kamble

Jai Bheem to all Ambedkarite sisters and brothers! This is a call for volunteers for translation and proofreading of Ambedkarite literature from Marathi to English. As we all know, there is a lot in Marathi when it comes to Ambedkarite literature.

 It's an ocean full of literature and merely a few buckets from that ocean have been translated to English.

The Shared Mirror-Round Table India have embarked on the project of translating some important books and literature and publishing them in the form of books.

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