For An Informed Ambedkar Age
Bobby Kunhu “My Birth is My Fatal Accident” Rohith Vemula As a law student I was obsessive about Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code which defines attempt to commit suicide as a crime and prescribes a punishment of up to one year along with fine. I believed that the section was unconstitutional and …
Vishal Thakare The recently concluded national conference of SC/ST entrepreneurs on ‘Dr. Ambedkar’s Thoughts and Ideas on Industrialization and Entrepreneurship’ poses many questions. The message given in the conference raises many concerns for dalits as to whether they should embrace its version of ‘Dalit capitalism’, what DICCI calls ‘Be Job Givers’, or continue their …
The Guilty Warrior To begin with, I work in the so-called “Corporate” sector in India. I was brought up in a small town, in a Mahar stronghold in Maharashtra and grew up under the strong influence of the philosophies of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. I was fortunate in academics to do well, mostly with the …
T. Sowjanya “I came here through reservations and I sustain myself through the political solidarity of my dalit community!” is my firm answer to questions such as “Are you a dalit?” “Do you belong to category?” “Do you have any reservation?” These are the questions any dalit invariably faces one time or the other at …
N. Sukumar and Shailaja Menon “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned” ~ The Buddha In May 2014, the pervasive idea was that Moditva has triumphed and before long the Gujarat Model would usher in Ram …
Fakru Ahmed Bashu While there is uproar from backward classes and downtrodden strata of the society to strictly implement the constitutionally earmarked reservations, there is, on the other hand, a vicious attempt through some recent events to bring the reservation system to an end. Upper caste people with vested interests, who came out openly …
Pranali Garud Caste is a disease that affects people of India in different ways. It treats its victims differently from its beneficiaries, but the preamble of the constitution of India endorses an undifferentiated fraternity. Though we are all Indians, caste does not allow us to live with the single identity of being Indian. You …
Yogesh Maitreya As part of my fieldwork, I had been assigned to spend a year studying one of the prisons in Mumbai. To study the criminal justice system more closely and to know its nuances, I had to attend court trials, visit police stations and localities where mostly Dalit-Bahujans reside. Wherever I went, I came …
Karthik Navayan Gramsci uses the analogy of civil society as a system of trenches and redoubts surrounding the state1. All political attempts by the underprivileged classes–castes in Indian context–to overcome the barriers are drowned by the development sector that claims for itself the status of the civil society. Does the civil society, popularly understood …