For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Anoop Kumar (His speech at the ‘The Colonization of Ambedkar: Caste Politics behind Roy-Navayana’s Appropriation of Annihilation of Caste ~ A Discussion‘ held on 21st December, 2014, at University of Mumbai) My name is Anoop and I am not an academician or a very accomplished speaker so please excuse me if I am not …
K K Baburaj After hearing the news of BJP securing individual majority in parliament, I visited a friend of mine. His father, a retired teacher and a well-known leftist locally being an ex-leader of a left wing teachers’ association, started talking to me enthusiastically about the election results. “This result is a reply to the …
Rupesh Kumar The questions raised by the political struggles of Chithralekha, the dalit auto rickshaw driver in Payyannur in Kerala, against the Left male violence on her family, gender and dalit identity is a hard punch against caste discrimination and patriarchy. Payyanur is part of the so-called ‘innocent North Malabar’, also known as ‘North …
K. Satyanarayana [This is a comment on the recent article by Dr. N. Sukumar (Dalit Revolution and Hindutva Counter Revolution in Indian Politics) on Round Table India which questioned the new discourse in the opinion columns of mainstream media on how the Dalit movement has supposedly taken a ‘rightward’ shift. Thanks Dr Satyanarayana for keeping the …
Kuffir In a Times of India column a couple of years ago, Shashi Tharoor tried to stand up for the sari, and was roundly castigated by many readers for trying to impose patriarchal burdens on Indian women, in the name of tradition. In his next column, though apologetic, he still tried to bring back …
Anoop Kumar Gujarat assembly elections are here, and Round Table India takes this as an opportunity to post an interview of French Scholar Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot that was first published by the Dalit students’ magazine ‘Insight Young Voices’ (Feb-March, 2008). This interview was taken by Anoop Kumar for the magazine on the eve of …
Gail Omvedt (From her blog ‘seeking begumpura‘) An article by Anand Telbumbde, “Not Red versus Blue” has been recently arousing controversy. Dalits have attacked it. In attempting to “mediate” between Ambedkarites and Leftists, Teltumbe according to many has fallen into the trap of turning Ambedkar into a semi-Marxist. In fact, Teltumbe does distort Ambedkar in …
Anand Teltumbde Ambedkar was more about class than caste, but the Left won’t see it that way India is a land of paradoxes. But no paradox may be as consequential as the divergent histories of the Dalit and the Communist movements. Both were born around the same time, spoke for or against the same issues, …
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 …