Rally in Parliament Square, London,

On Monday, 4th March, 2013, 1.30 pm – 3.30 pm

The Peers of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Dalits have moved an amendment in Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (ERR) Bill to make 'caste' a protected characteristic in the Equality Act. The House of Lords will debate the amendment on March 4 and given time will call for a vote.

If successful, this would mean that Caste Discrimination will finally be Outlawed in the UK. 

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Women in Governance (WinG)-India, Women Alliance on Violence Against Women and Family members of Majoni Das

We will not allow Majoni to be the next in the list of those disappeared from custody mysteriously in this region. The family members have the right to know the whereabouts and safety of their daughter. The Police should provide the information ~ Bondita Acharya, WinG-India

Guwahati Feb. 20, 2013.

Enforced disappearances have been a very severe and a common human rights issue especially in North East India. The special powers entrusted upon the armed police and Police administration either by AFSPA or other draconian laws like UAPA has led to severe violation of human rights of common people resulting into disappearances, extrajudicial killings, mental harassment, rape as well as sexual assault.

Majoni Das, a woman activist, teacher, writer from Sibsagar has been a victim of enforced disappearance in suspicion of having links with insurgent groups. Majoni Das, D/O Mr. Dimbeswar Das, aged 30, was an active member women movement Nari Adhikar Suraksha Samiti (NASS) and also involved with fortnightly news paper namely AMI. Due to the poor financial condition of the family she was working with Purva Bharati Educational Trust, Jorhat, for last 13 months as a warden of the hostel run by Purva Bharati Educational Trust, Jorhat Assam.

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Organized by
Centre for Social Justice and Governance, TISS, Mumbai
Insight Foundation, Delhi
&
Dalit & Tribal Social Work International Collective
Library Conference Hall, TISS, Mumbai
15th -16th February, 2013

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[Via Shanker Sampangi]

Caste signifies social deprivation in the society and disability signifies physical and psychological deprivation. The condition of disability is prone to double oppression in the case of socially deprived sections including women. The layers of oppression need to be seriously understood and enough care should be taken to provide appropriate provisions of justice to relive the oppressed from the clutches of castiest culture. Justice is not to provide equal opportunities to all the Disabled in an unequal and hegemonic society but to provide appropriate provisions to raise the ability of every individual to do the same job with an aim of achieving equality at large. In this regard, EFLU seems to be purposefully creating hurdles to the marginalized Disabled sections of people under the disabled quota.

In the advertisement of Teaching and Non Teaching Posts, EFLU (The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad) reserved the disability positions following the reservation criteria for SC, ST and OBC within the Disability category in both the 2009 and 2012 (30th Dec, The Hindu) notifications. But the administration has gone back on implementing the reservation within the Disability Category by issuing a corrigendum. This is a grave injustice to the disability candidates from the socially deprived communities. It is impossible for Disabled aspirants belonging to Dalit Bahujan and Tribal backgrounds to compete with the Disability aspirants from the upper castes. The Disabled Students from the upper castes are generally from the elite class who has privileges like access to corporate education, technical aids, training etc; while the Dalit Bahujan and Tribal students do not have access to even basic education and other support. Therefore there exists a huge gap between the marginalized disabled students and the upper caste disability students.

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K. Satyanarayana

The controversy around Ashis Nandy's casual remarks at the Jaipur Literature Festival did not address a number of important questions of public concern. The frenzied 'Save Nandy' campaign that followed has actually foreclosed any productive discussion. His supporters have been trying to explain and contextualise Professor Nandy's flippant remarks through references to his scholarship and eminent status.

Sankaran Krishna seeks to locate Mr. Nandy's words in the wake of his earlier scholarship and criticisms (The Hindu, January 31). Such an approach is irrelevant to what Mr. Nandy said at the JLF. Harsh Sethi (The Hindu, January 28), Yogendra Yadav (Indian Express, January 28), Lawrence Liang (Economic Times, January 30) and several others have argued that Mr. Nandy's statements should not be read as casteist. What is pertinent is that both Mr. Nandy and his defenders invoke 'SC, ST and OBCs' in a manner that reinforces a stereotypical image of these communities as "intolerant" and "undemocratic." Shiv Visvanathan writes, "Dalits and OBCs are treated as sacred cows" (Firspost, Jan. 28).

One-sided

The other standard mode of response has been to combine the banning of Kamal Haasan's film Vishwaroopam, the Rushdie affair and other state censorship issues with Mr. Nandy's "freedom of speech" to conclude that Indian society is becoming intolerant and undemocratic. Manu Joseph writes in the New York Times ( Jan. 30) that India is "a paradise for those who take offence." That Mr. Nandy named the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes, a large population of the marginalised protected by special laws, as the most corrupt, is totally ignored.

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via Rupali Bansode

National Workshop on Caste Violence Against Women: Voices of Victimhood and Voices of Resistance: Jan 25th – 26th 

Dr. Sylvia Karpagam

(Please read an earlier article in Round Table India by Gee Ameena Suleiman for background information on the brutal eviction of poor residents from EWS quarters in Ejipura, Bengaluru, by the government)

The day before yesterday, women and activists screamed as the bulldozers advanced. The intent was single-minded – to raze to the ground the homes of the economically weaker sections of society at one of the large slums in Bangalore. They stalled it for a few hours. I was there.

Between then and now, the homes don't exist. The activists and women are in prison and all that lies there at the EWS quarters is rubble.

But that doesn't bother me so much. What bothers me, that I must share, is that I looked into the eyes of the policemen there. What I saw fills me with dread. I saw the cold murderous saffron madness. I came face to face – not with a policeman doing a difficult duty, but an enemy – armed with his eyes and head and rifle – to kill.

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