For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Pallavi Muraleedharan As I was perusing the newspaper the other day, the photo of a teenager caught my attention. It wasn’t a very unusual thing to see a beautiful fair-skinned young girl winning the Bharatanatyam or Kuchipudi competitions in the school youth festivals. After all, those are perhaps the only competitions that satiate the …
N Sukumar and Shailaja Menon One of Kerala’s enlightened souls, Sree Narayana Guru, had proclaimed, “One Caste, One Religion and One God” for mankind, thus ushering in a radical transformation of society. The state also witnessed momentous struggles to liberate society from the shackles of caste and untouchability. The Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924-25, a historic …
Ajith Kumar A S The people in the protest land in Arippa in Kollam district in Kerala, are celebrating the first anniversary of their land struggle in the last week of December. It was on December 31st, 2012, that over 150 landless families, under the leadership of ADMS, ‘occupied’ and set up temporary shelters …
Sreebitha P. V. “Today if my grandmother was alive she would have been ecstatic to see me as a bride but at the same time heart broken to see me not decked up in gold from head to toe!! From a very young age I knew I didn’t want to wear so much gold …
Rupesh Kumar Sometime back my friend Ajith posed a couple of questions about my documentary “Don’t be our fathers” in his article (Dalitizing cinema : A critique of Rupesh Kumar’s ‘Don’t be our fathers‘) on Round Table India. The nature of that text by itself needs a separate analysis. But for now, I shall …
Understanding caste formulations after 1990s: Review of ‘No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India’ (This review is a part of the theory course taught by Dr Bhangya Bhukya, Department of Social Exclusion Studies, English and Foreign Languages University) Karthik Navayan Caste is interpreted in different schools of thought in different ways; …
Field notes from my micro-context1 Nidhin Shobhana As a child, I would always wonder why my house did not look as ‘clean’ as my Nair neighbour’s. Similarly, I always wondered why none of us Christians would look as ‘authentic’ as our Nair friends when we attended Malayalee Samajam Onam programmes. Jokes/comments such as ‘Christians2 …
Ajith Kumar A S Critiquing a friend’s film This time I would like to have an open dialogue with my friend Rupesh Kumar on his film ‘Don’t be our fathers‘. I think a dialogue in the public sphere would be more productive because more people could engage with it. This month I traveled with …
Two documentary films on caste in contemporary Kerala –’3D STEREO CASTE‘ (23 min; Dir: A S Ajith Kumar) and ‘DON”T BE OUR FATHERS‘ (30 Min; Dir: Rupesh Kumar ) will be screened at different colleges/universities in New Delhi from August 30th to September 3rd. Screening Schedule August 30, Friday – 9.30 am: Kamala Nehru …