For An Informed Ambedkar Age
A handbag. A false beard. Two seemingly innocuous objects which transform into fearsome symbols, when they adorn the statues of Mayawati and Hatshepsut respectively. These women statues have unleashed unprecedented amounts of societal outrage. Is the cause for outrage the engravings themselves, or the depicted demeanor, or is it the act of consecrating …
Human Rights Forum Demands Immediate Arrest of ABVP Activists Who Attacked Beef Festival in Osmania University We Human Rights Forum, strongly condemn the attack of ABVP on the ‘Beef Festival’ in Osmania University today. The ABVP exposed its undemocratic ugly face today by attempting to disrupt the beef festival. We demand immediate arrest of culprits …
V. Ratnamala The history of the press in India is the history of the freedom movement in the country. To a great extent, the Indian National Congress owed its popularity and position to the Indian press (Mazumdar, 1993). The history of the freedom movement happened to be the history of Congressmen. Hence the …
Gail Omvedt (An excerpt from her book ‘Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened India’) Less than two months after the huge conversion ceremony, Bhimrao Ambedkar was dead, found on the morning of 6 December, slumped over the papers he had been working on late at night. His death was followed by outpouring of grief as great as …
(The following is the text of a speech on Babasaheb Ambedkar delivered by the former President K.R. Narayanan at the Babasaheb Ambedkar Institute of Research and Training, Bombay in 1979) I am happy and honoured to be here on the auspicious occasion of the birthday of Dr B.R. Ambedkar. Babasaheb Ambedkar was one of the …
Gail Omvedt (First published in May, 2002) The publication of a collection of English translations of the writings of Jotirao Phule, the nineteenth century social radical, by LeftWord publications marks, hopefully, a transition in the attitude of the left towards the struggle against Brahmanism. It also marks an increasing recognition of the importance of Phule, …
Gail Omvedt (An excerpt from her book ‘Buddhism in India: Challenging Brahmanism and Caste’) Jotirao Phule (1827–1890) is considered a founder not only of the anti-caste movement in India as a whole, but also of the farmers’ movement and even the women’s movement in Maharashtra. He was born in a Mali (gardener caste) community of …
Gail Omvedt & Bharat Patankar Continued from here. The Rise of Dalit Movements Though attempts were begun by the dalit castes from the late 19th century to organise themselves, the various sections of the dalit liberation movement really began to take off from the 1920s, in the context of the strong social reform and anti-caste …
Gail Omvedt & Bharat Patankar [First published in February 1979. This is the first part of a pathbreaking article on the Dalit movement in the mainstream media. It was pathbreaking because mainstream discourse had until then consistently denied or tried to studiously ignore the existence of the Dalit movement and its vital role in Indian …