Bobby Kunhu On, 9th October, 2022 at the inauguration of M. Rasheed Foundation – founded in the memory of M. Rasheed, a freedom fighter, journalist, writer and one of the founders of Trotskyism in India – Dr. Raees Mohammed, Founder of Dalit Camera and the Nilgiris Sanitation Workers Union was the first recipient of the …
Bilkis Bano and the Murder of her Seven Family Members
Adv Soniya A Gajbhiye For the brutal, inhuman and barbaric murder of seven members of a Muslim family and rape on Bilkis Bano, the punishment of life imprisonment was awarded to all 13 accused. The premature release of the said convicted offenders by remitting the duration of their sentence by the state of Gujarat on …
Being a Tai-Ahom: The Anti-caste Movement and the Problematics of Self-identification
Arunabh Konwar (This is not a historical observation, just extrapolations on personal experiences and observations.) Over the last couple of years, because of my own limited apparent proximity to some manifestations of the anti-caste movement in university politics in the mainland, I have often felt at loggerheads as to how to identify myself in this …
Caste Discrimination In India’s Urban Private Sector
Preeti Chandrakumar Patil Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine Newman in their article ‘Caste and Economic Discrimination: Causes, Consequences and Remedies’ have defined Social Exclusion as a process by which certain groups are denied full or partial access to the economic, educational, and social institutions that determine social membership. Exclusion in India is defined by systems that …
What is a National Emblem?
Adv Soniya A Gajbhiye A national emblem is the official seal of a sovereign state. On 26 January 1950, India had adopted its national emblem, which was an adaptation of Emperor Asoka’s Lion Capital at Sarnath. The original Lion Capital at Sarnath has four lions mounted back-to-back on a circular abacus. This circular abacus rests …
Some Animals Are More Equal: Article 14
Bobby Kunhu “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past” – George Orwell, 1984 “If a larger country oppresses a smaller country, I’ll stand with the smaller country. If the smaller country has majoritarian religion that oppresses minority religions, I’ll stand with minority religions. If the minority religion has …
What an year at University of Oxford taught me about South Asians
Sumeet Samos In October 2021, I joined the MSc in Modern South Asian Studies programme at the University of Oxford. Before leaving for Oxford, I did not know what to expect in the programme as well as in the university life. However, I had heard of Professor Rosalind O’ Hanlon and David Gellner working in …
Advocate Bhagwan Das and his book ‘Main Bhangi Hun’
Dhamma Darshan Nigam This article is an attempt, one, to bring Advocate Bhagwan Das’s already popular book ‘Main Bhangi Hun’ to the light one more time; two, to look at a few of the present problems of sanitation workers and contextualize them with what Das has argued in this book as contemporary; and three, to …
End Political Reservation
Dr Jas Simran Kehal It is said that if we can learn from our mistakes and not let them rob us of our boldness or hope, then we can grow. It was perhaps this boldness which emboldened Dr B R Ambedkar to vigorously pursue the cause of real political representation of the depressed classes after …