Gowd Kiran Kumar On August 7th, 1990, V.P. Singh tabled the Mandal Commission report in the Parliament which resulted in 27% reservations for the Other Backward Classes (OBC). This decision was followed by the Kamandal or the anti-Mandal agitation in the country. Right wing forces, led by upper caste elite sections, participated in the …
Caste atrocity in CSSS: Can the savarna apologize?
Georgy Kuruvilla Roy While the debate between Huma Dar and Partha Chatterjee over the past week has been enriching and enlightening; the point of this article however, is to show as Klemen Sarkoja sings “the structure of the joke is that this so called progressive intellectual, in order to score his small narcissistic point, …
Bhagat Singh – whose hero, whose revolutionary?
Gurinder Azad Bhagat Singh was a sensitive person. He could speak, from his own location, on the question of untouchables. He spoke on swaraj. I wonder why no meeting could happen between Babasaheb Ambedkar and him despite both becoming active around the same decade, the 1920s. I think it was because of absolute difference in …
Understanding the rationale of affirmative action in India
Sudhanshu K. Singh The Jat-Patel agitation and the anti-reservation protests of the 1990s are of the same pattern of angst against the grotesquely wrong conception of injustice that is attributed to Affirmative Action made possible through the Reservation policy. In a modern egalitarian political economy, one of the primary aims of the State should be …
Why India must carve out a Union Territory from the State of Manipur
The Case for Separate Administration:Why India must carve out a Union Territory from the State of Manipur ~ Min Khooptong “O stranger, thou who passes by,Go, and tell the hills high and low,That in defending their ‘morrow,Here we lie” An epitaph proposed for the patriots who gave their lives. Barely a month has passed since …
Are SCs, STs and OBCs less talented?
Mahitosh Mandal Often I notice people degrading, sometimes publicly, the SCs, STs, and OBCs as inefficient at their workplaces. Be it an SC doctor or an SC professor or even an SC student, the person in question is not an individual human being but a ‘reserved category candidate’, and hence promptly to be dismissed …
Beyond and Inside Inner Line Permit (ILP) in Manipur: Some Perspective
Thongam Bipin The Inner Line Permit (ILP) is seen and perceived as a shield from every form of exploitation in most parts of Northeast India. And particularly in the ongoing valley-Meetei led demand for its implementation in Manipur. ‘Outsiders’ are seen as responsible for all forms of exploitation – cultural, social and economic et …
Dalits and Inter-Caste Marriage
T. Sowjanya (This article is extracted from one of my research papers) Is the personal, political? Perhaps, we don’t disagree with this radical viewpoint of feminism i.e. personal is political. If this is so, then personal choices are also political in nature. Therefore, there is no personal arena into which academic research cannot penetrate. …
Making sense of the Patel Agitation: Democracy and its discontents
Dilip Mandal They are not socially or educationally backward people, not at all. They are not a community on the margins of history, politics or any other social matrix. Rather, they belong to a community which is looked upon with envy by people from other communities in India as they are known to be …