Anand Silodia

Screening of Project Heartland – Short Films by Pratik Parmar

Venue: Museum of the Moving Image, NYC
Time: Friday, January 24, 7:30 PM

Project Heartland is a collection of short documentary films by director Pratik Parmar telling the stories of Dalit-Bahujan folks across the Indian state of Gujarat, chronicling caste atrocities and acts of superhuman resistance. From the infamous Una flogging incident where seven members of a Dalit family were assaulted by a group of dominant caste vigilantes under the pretext of cow protection, to the frustration and despair of Muslim Bahujan citizens seeking political rights, the series offers a critical lens on what shapes and un-shapes political agency within Gujarat and India as a whole.

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Aditi Priya

Jai Bheem to all Bahujan women economists/aspiring economists! I work as a Research Associate at a research organisation headquartered in Chennai.

a) My organization is providing internship opportunities from February/March onwards for a duration of two to three months to Bahujan students who are either currently doing their Master’s degree in Economics or those who have completed that course.

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Tangirala Sony

He was a poet who caused a mighty storm in Telugu literature. His poetry emanated from the villages and the heartaches of Dalit mothers. Poetry tradition until then was different. With Madduri Nagesh Babu's writings, a new kind of poetry was set in motion.

He had such an effect on other poets that even the best of them who considered themselves accomplished had to relook at their poetry, undertake introspection. He reinstated poetry back on track, especially by compelling everyone to revise their poetry. It was only after Nagesh Babu started writing, a clear distinction between Dalit poetry and non-Dalit poetry emerged.

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Umar Nizar

The most political of India's literary awards, the Jnanpith has went to a chip off the old feudal coconut block, Akkitham Achuthan Nambudiri. This was long predicted, even before CAB was a twinkle in the right wing eye.

Akkitham is one of those rarities in the right wing intelligentsia that he has leftist pretensions. He projects himself as a rival to that other compatriot, EMS Nambudirippad. In the formal investigations into the genesis of hatred in Kerala, the fundamental issue is always cultural. The major preoccupation of culture in Kerala is poetry, and song. Akkitham excels in both. He is an aberration, a right wing intellectual with communist aspirations. But the hegemonic edifice and coporate Mafiosi that has bestowed this award upon Akkitham have no qualms about his avowal of the RSS.

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Nalsar Minorities' Forum

The NALSAR Minorities’ Forum called for a boycott of classes on 9th January 2020, which was supported by Savitribai Intersectional Study circle of NALSAR. The protest was a massive success, as it witnessed most of the NALSAR students boycotting their classes voluntarily and joining the protest holding placards. The protest started at the Thinking Man statue inside the campus at 9 AM. Protesting students marched from there to the main gate chanting slogans against CAA-NRC-NPR, the fascist regime of the BJP government and the police brutality in campuses. From thereon the students moved to the Keerthi Stambh and had a dialogue, wherein the minorities most affected by the legislation and the regime spoke about their experiences. The march was carried out till the admin block, where the students read the Preamble of the Constitution and the Vision and Mission of NALSAR University of Law. The protest ended with the recitation of National Anthem.

The boycott of classes was aimed at marking a protest against the fascist regime and the atrocities perpetuated by the Modi-Shah government through legislative and executive actions and other illegal means. This was also done to condemn the violence perpetuated by the state at various educational institutions, starting from Jamia Milia Islamia to Aligarh Muslim University to Jawaharlal Nehru University, specifically targeting the Muslims, Dalits and other minorities and to extend solidarity to the protesting students and victims of violence. We are seriously concerned by the way in which the state is suppressing any form of dissent coming from various walks of the society against its oppressive policies.
 

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Dipankar Kamble

The Bollywood filmmaker Anurag Kashyap has been continuously attacking the government over the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019, which was passed by the parliament in second week of December 2019.

There were protests across the country against the CAA. Even I participated in one such protest.

In a recent post on Twitter, Anurag Kashyap wrote: "The CAA/CAB is not going anywhere. It is impossible for them to take it back because for them, that would mean defeat. This government views everything in terms of victory and defeat. Such is their ego that even if everything gets burned to ashes, Modi can be wrong. Because illiterate people are like that"¹.

Anurag Kashyap's tweet proves nothing but privilege. Mr. Kashyap does not appear to me as a person who knows his country. Will the Revolutionary Anurag Kashyap acknowledge that access to education has been a privilege of Upper Caste/Class?

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Dr. B. Karthik Navayan 

Samata Sainik Dal (SSD), the organization founded by Babasaheb Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in 1924 with the objective of safeguarding the rights of all oppressed sections of Indian society is conducting a legal research on the closure of cases registered under Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, initially in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states.

It came to the notice of the organization that in a district of Telangana, in the last 4 years, around 20 cases registered under Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 have been closed by the police by filing a final report. There is an atmosphere of suspicion and doubt among the SC and ST individual victims who filed the cases and a need to examine if the closed cases. They suspect that the investigation officer who closed around 20 cases also fixed a rate for closing the cases by filing a final report. If true, this is a disturbing trend.

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