Pardeep Attri My final words of advice to you are Educate, Agitate and Organize; have faith in yourself. With justice on our side I do not see how we can lose our battle. The battle to me is a matter of joy. The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or …
UP Heading for Dark Age
Raj Kumar Ever since the change of government in Uttar Pradesh in the month of March 2012, the state is witnessing very bizarre, obscurantist and lamentable politics and some of the decisions of new government are profoundly baffling to democratic civilized society. The people of Uttar Pradesh voted Samajwadi Party (SP) to power with …
The cartoon controversy: Inside the mind of one ‘fanatic’ Dalit – I
Anoop Kumar ‘I have an open mind, though not an empty mind. A person with an open mind is always the subject of congratulations. While this may be so, it must, at the same time, be realized that an open mind may also be an empty mind and that such an open mind, if it …
Mayawati: Caste Anxieties and Patriarchal Fears
Continued from here. Her roofless abode gives her a clear view of the fields and the village she guards over. She is my paternal family’s deity, revered as a force of nature as are the scores of female gods of the Shudra, Atishudra and Adivasi cultures. Her free spirited nature echoes the attitude …
Mayawati or Hatshepsut: Her place has to be shown
A handbag. A false beard. Two seemingly innocuous objects which transform into fearsome symbols, when they adorn the statues of Mayawati and Hatshepsut respectively. These women statues have unleashed unprecedented amounts of societal outrage. Is the cause for outrage the engravings themselves, or the depicted demeanor, or is it the act of consecrating …
A paradigm shift called Kanshi Ram
Kancha Ilaiah [This article was first published in two parts, ‘A paradigm shift called Kanshi Ram’ and ‘Dalits and the horizontal ladder’, in 2003; we have combined the two parts into one single piece of writing. We, along with our readers, celebrate the memory of Manyawar Kanshi Ram on his birth anniversary- Round Table …
Voters were against BSP, not for anybody
Vivek Kumar This election is historical because, once again, upper castes have been kept out of power. This has been the trend in the state for the past two-and-a-half decades. Secondly, this election can also be seen as a backlash of upper castes against the consolidation of Dalit power in Uttar Pradesh. Dalit workers and a …
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 …
Buddhism and Politics in Uttar Pradesh: Recent Developments (Part II)
Shiv Shankar Das ( Continued from here) The promotion of Buddhist cultural symbols in public sphere by Mayawati led government is driven by the following three strong factors. 1. The Ideology of Kanshi Ram (1934-2006): Cultural Change is a Durable Change Kanshi Ram’s ideology to emancipate the Bahujan Samaj is very important to understand …