Gee Imaan Semmalar Justice KS Radhakrishnan Panicker and Justice AK Sikri delivered a Supreme Court judgment on April 15,2014. That is all that can be said clearly. Who the judgment includes or excludes in its understanding of transgenders, whether transgenders can identify as male/female or third sex, what is being guaranteed to us as …
Liberal Democracy and Kymlicka’s Conception of Minority Rights: Towards a Perspective of Dalit Rights
Dr. P. Kesava Kumar Abstract The recognition of minority rights is an issue for debate in recent times. It has implication for a theory of liberal democracy. Especially, the communitarian critique of liberalism has come in strong defense of community against individualism. Will Kymlicka proposes minority rights in the multicultural context of the west …
Letter to the Prime Minister: Include Pali in Constitution of India
Please sign (inserting your name etc in the brackets) this appeal to the Prime Minister of India to include Pali, the ancient language, in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution by going to this site. ~ Letter to Hon. Prime Minister of India For Inclusion of Pali, ancient Indian language, in Constitution of India …
Legal Encounters by the Coward State
N. Sukumar and Shailaja Menon A sad day indeed when the news flashed that Afzal Guru who was convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack was executed. After a lot of dilly dallying when the powers that be accused each other of being soft on terror, Guru was legally encountered to silence the critics. However, the …
When Protests Become Intolerant
Dr. N. Sukumar Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realize that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.~ Baba Saheb Ambedkar1. The past few weeks have witnessed a plethora of views, …
“Agitate by burning down the Manu Dharma Shastra”: Kolathur Mani
[Via Ravi Chandran] On December 26, 2012, Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam will join hands with all other like minded progressive organizations who are concerned about annihilating caste, and agitate by burning down the Manu Dharma Shastra. Statement by Kolathur Mani: For more than 2000 years, the brahminical Manu Dharma was the one that was controlling …
Law, Society and Dalits in India
Karthik Navayan Society in India A society should be a humane society; the pre-requisite of a society is that the groups of people constituting it should be related to each other through persistent relations. But in Indian society, people are not only unrelated to each other but also hate each other, and the castes belonging …
Judges on Concept of Equality Under the Constitution
Nagesh Chaudhary On 8th September, 2012, a memorial lecture was organised in Mumbai under the auspices of ‘Adv. N L Belekar memorial lecture’ series. The speaker was ex-supreme court judge B.N. Srikrishna. The subject was ‘Concept of Equality under the Constitution’. J M Shah, chief justice of Bombay high court presided over the function. Three …
Cartoons, Caste and Epistemic Violence (Part 2)
Nilesh Kumar [This is the second part of his article on caste and epistemic violence. The first part explored how the Ambedkar cartoon in the NCERT text book was a metaphor for epistemic violence. Here, he tries to explain how the cartoon is just one more illustration of how entrenched violence is in academia; one …