For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Prachi Beula The National Dalit and Adivasi Women’s Congress 2013 was something that was long overdue. I am yet to absorb the ‘explosion of knowledge and power’ that I experienced and when Anoop bhai said we could share our experiences I was glad to sit down and reflect. Many people asked questions like why …
Gopika Nangia & Aashish Gupta It is not a mere coincidence that Narendra Modi had labelled his tour across the state of Gujarat “Vivekananda Yatra”. In a context where Vivekananda has been posited as a “leader of the youth”, it is pertinent to remember the principles the man stood by – casteism, racism, slavery, …
Braj Ranjan Mani Jotirao Phule, and his wife Savitribai, declared war on brahmanic-casteist culture and religion. This Maharashtrian couple presented the first major anti-caste ideology and led a mass activism against the ascriptive norms and values. Their distinct brand of socio-cultural radicalism was based on uniting all the oppressed, whom they would call stree-shudra-atishudra. (Literally, …
The New Materialists Comrades, we have recently seen the Janmastami celebrations in JNU by right wing and casteist forces i.e. ABVP and NSUI in many places of JNU. Celebration of the Hindu festivals (in the name of celebrating Culture) is the act of enhancing and strengthening the caste system. Krishna, the god of Hindus who …
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 …
Anu Ramdas The Jan Lokpal bill is under 35 pages. The creators of this document successfully manufactured a ‘revolution’ out of this. The corporate media sold it as such, and some academics called it a ‘movement’. Media and academia largely did not comment on the contents of the document. Their preoccupation was with the …
Gail Omvedt PR, acronym for proportional representation, is new to the majority of Indian feminists – but one that deserves thinking about, now that another session of the Lok Sabha has ended without any significant change on the issue of quota for women. As an editorial in a Women’s Studies network bulletin put out by …
M. Swathy Margaret (First published in the March-April 2005 issue of Insight Young Voices magazine) I am a Dalit-middle-class, University educated, Telugu speaking Dalit-Christian-Woman. All these identities have a role in the way I perceive myself and the worlds I inhabit. I, as a Dalit woman, primarily write for Dalit women to uphold our …