For An Informed Ambedkar Age
— Jason Keith Fernandes A couple of days ago, an interview, of the part-time Goa resident author Amitav Ghosh, with Lila Azam Zanganeh for the magazine Guernica created something of a storm of outrage. Ghosh had suggested in the course of conversation, that ‘one of the wonderfully liberating things about India; [is that] it lets …
Translated by Gail Omvedt and Bharat Patankar After that the Arya Brahmans began to treat with disdain all the Kshudra peasant slaves who had come under their control. They completely stopped giving them education and brought their condition below the level of animals. And since they became illiterate and completely without access to knowledge, the Arya Brahmans plunder …
by Ashok Yadav & Khalid Anis Ansari The police firing and subsequent killing of five OBC Muslims in Bhajanpur village in Forbesganj of Araria district in Bihar on June 3, 2011 has been analyzed in most reports in the public sphere through the frame of ‘communalism’ and there has been little effort to grapple with …
Anoop Kumar [Thanks to Taha for his comment on Gujarat riots and the role of Dalits which reminded me of this particular incident. I wanted to write about this since long but keep on postponing it as I didn’t have much material except what I heard at the seminar held in Pune University] Almost …
Karthik Navayan, young lawyer, human rights activist, Dalit writer and poet, shares his insights on how Dalitbahujans can work towards attaining political power in an interview with Telugu News channel TV 1. Interviewer: Karthik Navayan, who tried to raise Dalitbahujans consciousness through his poetry and writing, is now with us. We’ll discuss what needs to …
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 …
Jason Keith Fernandes Introduction Sharing his experiences on Christian-Muslim dialogue in the March ’09 issue of Jivan, Fr Paul Jackson was unusually reticent on the challenges that face the Catholic aspirant on this route. To say that this route is a path of thorns would not be an exaggeration, since there are quite a …
Gail Omvedt Islam is a religion of egalitarianism and brotherhood. After the defeat of Buddhism, it maintained these values in India for centuries. Not only did those who became Muslims benefit by escaping from caste restrictions, but Muslim rule also provided a social and political context for the growth of Bhakti movements. Within these, to …
[This is one of the essays written by Dr. Ambedkar, in his book “Essays on untouchables and untouchability”. The importance of this article is the freshness, which it brings to our mind. Even though the article was written about 70-80 years back, It shows how hindus have tried every trick, in thier power, to stop the …