[Organized by The Patna Collective] Venue: Conference Room No. 1 (Main Building), India International Centre, New Delhi December 1-2, 2012. Conference ScheduleSATURDAY, DECEMBER 1 (DAY ONE)9:00 am: Opening Session Registration Welcome and Introduction by The Patna Collective Conversation One—Caste and Islam: Conceptual Approaches in Social Sciences Prof. Imtiaz Ahmad, Formerly Professor of Political …
Analyzing the ‘OBC-Minority’ Sub-Quota–Part IV
Khalid Anis Ansari Continued from here. [IV] 4.5% Sub-Quota for OBCs within Minorities: The ‘Political’ Dimension The approach that merely concentrates on government jobs and seats in higher educational institutions is indeed a very savarna (upper caste) view of reservation policy. From the perspective of upper caste discourse, which has little appreciation for dignity of …
Analyzing the ‘OBC-Minority’ Sub-Quota–Part III
Khalid Anis Ansari Continued from here. [III] 4.5% Sub-Quota for OBCs within Minorities: The ‘policy’ and ‘technical’ dimensions Let me state right at the outset that the recent 4.5% sub-quota was not a demand raised by the pasmanda movement but rather is informed by the second recommendation of the Ranganath Mishra Report which is as …
Analyzing the ‘OBC-Minority’ Sub-Quota–Part II
Khalid Anis Ansari Continued from here. [II] The Muslim Quota Debate The recent lower caste movements within the non-Hindu religions like Islam, Christianity and Sikhism have foregrounded the presence of caste-based differentiation and discrimination within these communities in the public sphere. As far as the Muslims are concerned the caste cleavages within them were duly …
Analyzing the ‘OBC-Minority’ Sub-Quota
Khalid Anis Ansari [I] The recent announcement of a 4.5% sub-quota for backward sections within minorities in the overall Central OBC quota by the UPA government on 22nd December, 2011 in the wake of elections in five states, including the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, has drawn in a number of reactions, some valid …
Corruption, an empty signifier: the need for a Bahujan Lokpal Bill
Khalid Anis Ansari I agree broadly that a caste slant will not help much even when it is writ large in the agenda of the forces that are supporting Anna. This is out and out a populist movement and populism has coexisted along with formal democracies right since its inception. In a way populism …
An Open Letter to Dr. Udit Raj
by Khalid Anis Ansari This is a response to Dr. Udit Raj’s (President, Indian Justice Party) note “Rather Upper Castes are nearer to Muslim than Dalits (untouchables)”. For the convenience of readers the full text of the note has been reproduced at the end of this letter. [I] Dear Dr. Udit …
Caste Census and Indian Muslims A rejoinder to Abusaleh Shariff : by Khalid Anis Ansari
Khalid Anis Ansari In a recent piece Mr. Abusaleh Shariff (‘Casting the Caste Net’, Indian Express, 23 August 2010) has attempted an imaginative intervention in the debate around the caste census. While he enters the debate both in his ‘professional’ capacity as a renowned economist/demographer (to ‘discuss alternatives for collecting caste data’) and as a ‘communitarian’ …