For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Shakyamuni Chandal A veritable danger lurks over the whole corpus of knowledge and practices developed as a result of Dalit existence, assertion and its resistance to Brahminism; in short, the entire Dalit episteme: from the teachings of Buddha, Ajiwakas, Siddhas, Naths, Bauls, south Indian revolutionaries like Akkamahadevi, Basavanna, Chenna Basavanna, Kinnari Bommayya, Siddharama, Allamaprabhu …
Yogesh Maitreya After watching Fandry, I remembered my grandfather who died a few years ago. The movie suddenly brought back his memories alive, in front of my eyes. An ‘untouchable’, his name was Gariba (poor). He used to break stones, all his life, to earn a few rupees with which he raised a large …
Shailaja Menon and N Sukumar “It takes years of “political, social, economic and human degradation to create a terrorist”. So “fighting terror can only succeed by rehumanising degraded societies, by undoing, one by one, the many individual acts of repression, obstruction, denial, marginalisation and autocracy.” ~ Rami Khouri, Jordan. Many eons ago, the Films …
Pradnya Mangala They cannot make history who forget history. ~ Dr. Ambedkar. History plays a very important role in a person’s life. To know our roots, we need to know our history, know where we belong, to make sense of our existence. The identities that we carry by virtue of being born in a …
Harish S. Wankhede We have adjectives like barbaric, heinous and violent in our regular usage. Are these modern civilized terms? No, these terms are related to the textual demonic medieval mythic orchestra that demonstrates the inhumane avatar of ‘non-humans/aliens’ who are blood thirsty and eat human flesh. A ‘barbaric’ ruler is one who is …
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 …
Braj Ranjan Mani Jotirao Phule, and his wife Savitribai, declared war on brahmanic-casteist culture and religion. This Maharashtrian couple presented the first major anti-caste ideology and led a mass activism against the ascriptive norms and values. Their distinct brand of socio-cultural radicalism was based on uniting all the oppressed, whom they would call stree-shudra-atishudra. (Literally, …
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 …
Ajith Kumar A S At Vellayambalam junction in Trivandrum, Ayyankali stands in the centre. We have to circle the Ayyankali square to get to our destinations. The heavy traffic in the junction may not help us to take a passing glance at the statue most of the time. But our politics would. That could never …