For An Informed Ambedkar Age
(This reply was included as Appendix II in the second edition of Babasaheb Dr. B. R. Ambedkar‘s ‘Annihilation of Caste’) I appreciate greatly the honour done me by the Mahatma in taking notice in his Harijan of the speech on Caste which I had prepared for the Jat Pat Todak Mandal. From a perusal …
Ambedkar Reading Group (Delhi University) On the Student Protests in the English Department, University of Delhi A complaint letter issued by the M.A students of DU English Department demanding the removal of 3 newly appointed teachers (two of whom are from the SC and ST Categories) has now turned into a larger protest and …
Yogesh Maitreya I did not read Arundhati Roy’s introduction to Navayana’s edition of Annihilation of Caste and I am sure I do not need to read it. However, I have read and re-read Annihilation of Caste. The text of AoC itself introduces the exploitative nature and nuances of Brahminic caste and of Brahmins in …
Dr. N. Sukumar [The author mailed this article to The Hindu newspaper in order to continue the dialogue on the Dalit Movement as the argument first appeared in this paper. Unfortunately, even after forty eight hours, there was no response from the paper. Obviously, only ‘certain’ ideas are entertained as ‘meritorious’ by our ‘progressive’ …
Devesh Kapur, D Shyam Babu and Chandra Bhan Prasad Born to an indentured laborer father in a Dalit family where food mattered more than studies, Mannam Madhusudan Rao began as a construction worker. Today, he runs his own construction company that is completing a township worth Rs 250 crore. This is the story of …
Joby Mathew [Today marks the 150th birth anniversary of Ayyankali. On 18th June this year, which marks his 73rd death anniversary, Kerala University instituted a chair in his name and invited Arundhati Roy to deliver the keynote address in which she reduced the ‘Ambedkar-Gandhi debate into a Gandhi-Arundhati debate’ and ‘deliberately ignored’ Ayyankali] The …
Sunil Dudhe The elections are over and we have a reactionary, nationalist and totalitarian believer as our ruler. And soon after the elections we had an outburst of caste atrocities all over the country. And particularly in Maharashtra, which has a tradition of reporting bias in events of caste atrocities, such incidents have been …
Sinthujan Varatharajah When I wrote my piece for Round Table India, “Politicising the personal: Who am I, Who are ‘we’ as people?”, I wasn’t really sure what the repercussions will be of coming out as an inter-caste/Dalit to the outside. Of course I expected personal attacks and libel, which indeed followed in all predictable …
Yogesh Maitreya When I reached the 7th Grade, my parents admitted me into a school that was run by a Hindu nationalist trust. Sanskrit, which was foreign to my tongue till then, became the compulsory language for my 7th grade curriculum. The teacher who was to teach us Sanskrit was a traditional Brahmin- a …