Fast For Freedom: Return Our Political Prisoners, Return Our Martyrs’ Remains [via Huma Dar] For us, Azadi [independence] means not just to get rid of the foreign occupation of our beloved motherland but also to remove hunger, poverty, ignorance and disease, and to overcome economic and social deprivation [i.e., class and caste inequities]. One …
The Panther has breathed his last
Eminent Marathi poet Namdeo Dhasal passed away today (January 15th, 2014). This is the collective tribute of a group of Round Table India writers. ~ Here-in the distanceRevolution rumbles everywhereYou hear it? His poetry did not belong to the pages, for neat archiving in some anthology. It had trees, but they were leafless. It …
Who is the “Aaam Aadmi” in AAP?
Suresh Mane, General Secretary of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), spoke recently to Ria De, of Dalit Camera: Through Un-Touchable Eyes, on the Aam Aadmi Party and the emerging contours of politics in India. This video interview was transcribed by Ajith Francis. Recently, Indian politics is undergoing radical changes- drastic changes especially in the …
Faltering of Imagination of an Indian Marxist Intellectual
Ashok Yadav The eminent Marxist economist and intellectual Ashok Mitra, who is reputed to take a view different from the official left line, has penned an article titled- For the Nation’s Sake- The Congress Deserves To Give Itself A Second Chance– that appeared on December 05, 2013, in The Telegraph newspaper from Kolkata. The …
Caste Discrimination in Modern Workspaces: The Case of ActionAid India
Karthik Navayan This paper attempts to highlight the covert caste practices and discriminatory behaviour of the dominant caste personnel in the top hierarchy of ActionAid bureaucracy in its Indian chapter, wherein the dominant caste members from both Northern and Southern India, with a deep sense of so-called ascriptive superiority endowed by the Hindu scriptures …
January 3rd – National Teachers’ Day
Bahujan Students’ Front Go, Get Education Be self-reliant, be industrious Work, gather wisdom and riches, All gets lost without knowledge We become animal without wisdom, Sit idle no more, go, get education End misery of the oppressed and forsaken, You’ve got a golden chance to learn So learn and break the chains of …
Congress, AAP and the Common Man
Ratnesh Katulkar The sudden rise of Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal is the most prominent political event that emerged in the recent assembly polls. This is certainly a big blow to the established political parties and is particularly a strong setback to the Congress which found its tally reduced to merely eight …
किसकी चाय बेचता है तू (Whose Tea Do You Sell)
Braj Ranjan Mani किसकी चाय बेचता है तू ~ ब्रजरंजन मणि अपने को चाय वाला क्यूँ कहता है तू बात-बात पे नाटक क्यूँ करता है तू चाय वालों को क्यों बदनाम करता है तू साफ़ साफ़ बता दे किसकी चाय बेचता है तू ! खून लगाकर अंगूठे पे शहीद कहलाता है और कॉर्पोरेट …
Caste and the sari
Kuffir In a Times of India column a couple of years ago, Shashi Tharoor tried to stand up for the sari, and was roundly castigated by many readers for trying to impose patriarchal burdens on Indian women, in the name of tradition. In his next column, though apologetic, he still tried to bring back …