For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Bhanwar Meghwanshi For nearly four months they were subjected to social boycott, economic blockade and mental torture. They were not allowed to fill water from public taps, they couldn’t use the common space for defecation in the village, the only non-Dalit doctor had stopped their treatment, and they could not use the village land …
Nidhin Shobhana This essay is a response to the on-going strike in FTII against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the Chairman of the said Institute. I would contextualize the strike on a larger canvas called Brahmanism (not read as Hindutva1). In the essay I would make a modest effort to understand the term …
Yogesh Maitreya It isn’t an accident that the inventors and propagators of the concept of Hindutva, which later helped shape the consciousness or discourse of Hindu Nationalism, were all Brahmins. All hailed from the state of Maharashtra: V.D. Savarkar, Hedgewar, and M.S. Golwalkar. Golwalkar was born in a brahmin family in Nagpur, Maharashtra, and …
Gaurav Somwanshi (As the RSS mouthpiece Organiser comes up with a special issue on Babasaheb Ambedkar to attempt, futilely, to appropriate his legacy, we felt it necessary to look at one of the evergreen icons of Hindutva in this country, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and recapitulate the despicable, original roots of Brahmanic nationalism ~ Round …
Nikhil Walde After its electoral victory, BJP’s entire politics revolves around the Hindu religion which has brought about a dismal political scenario in India. The state seems to be departing from constitutional democracy- from the modern function of a state to the traditional monocratic form of state. All this is quite evident, for instance, …
Dale Luis Menezes and Amita Kanekar With the BJP coming to power in the last Lok Sabha elections, we have witnessed increasing violence against religious minorities and their places of worship. There has been no action to curb the violence, nor even a statement of condemnation from the Centre. Instead, in the last few months, …
Sumit Baudh Let me start on a personal note. I am seeking funds for my doctoral research and am tempted to apply to government schemes for Scheduled Caste (SC) scholars. There is just one problem: I do not have an SC certificate. Long ago, my Dalit parents decided not to get SC certificates for …
Gopal Guru On October 14, 1956, Babasaheb Ambedkar, along with several hundred thousand “untouchables”, embraced Buddhism. The moral and ethical strength of Ambedkar’s embrace of Buddhism lies in its cultural and intellectual capacity to sustain among the ex-untouchables a growing association with it. Conversion as a cultural-intellectual movement that took off in October 1956 …
Kancha Ilaiah No Shudra-OBC can be a priest either in a Ram temple, a Krishna temple, or a Shiva temple. But he can be the Prime Minister of this country. Today, when a Shudra-OBC is PM, it’s not because of the Gita, but because of Ambedkar’s Constitution. The Other Backward Classes are a historically …