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 …
Buddhism and Politics in Uttar Pradesh: Recent Developments
Shiv Shankar Das Abstract: The present research note highlights the relationship and the reasons behind the association between the lower caste politics and Buddhism in Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state in India next only to China, United States, Brazil and Russia. There are three reasons behind this association. First, the currently ruling Bahujan Samaj Party’s founder …
Janeu, The Cat’s Cradle
Gopal Guru (First published in Outlook magazine in March 2009) Brahmins are fashioning new political rhetoric from old stereotypes Let me begin this piece with a dramatic question: what are Brahmins doing in political parties? Let me make it even more dramatic: what are they doing in non-Brahmin, Dalit or Dalit-led parties? If these questions …
Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal
[What is the ‘Dalit Prerna Sthal’? What is its purpose? Why was it built? The inscription shown in the picture above, displayed prominently in the ‘Rashtriya Dalit Smarak’ (picture below), provides many of the answers. We are publishing here the full text of the inscription for our readers. It was copied by hand, so some …
The media and violence against women in ‘Maya’s UP’
Bhanu Pratap Singh [Why is every crime in Uttar Pradesh reported as happening in ‘Maya’s U.P’, while similar incidents in other states are not publicized as happening in ‘Sheila’s Delhi’ or ‘Reddy’s AP’? This article discusses the sordid casteist politics behind the media’s consistent negative coverage of ‘Maya’s UP’, and the Congress and other …
UP and ‘untruthful’ political players
by Chandra Bhan Prasad Now that the Election Commission (EC) has decided to hold the UP Assembly polls in February, the accompanying trauma is all set to begin. Political parties will spend many sleepless nights while political analysts, in particular psephologists who seem to do brisk business via the electronic medium, will certainly also have …
From Limca Books to Forbes Magazine
by Nilesh Kumar Ideology of Bahujan Samaj Party is “Social Transformation and Economic Emancipation” of the “Bahujan Samaj” which comprises of the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and the Religious Minorities such as Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Buddhists. Reason for including all these classes is because they all were, …
All hail goddess English?
Dennis Baron Global English may be about to go celestial. A political activist in India wants the country’s poorest caste to improve its status by worshipping the English language, and to start off he’s building a temple to Goddess English in the obscure village of Bankagaon, near Lakhimpur Khiri in Uttar Pradesh. English started …
Rotting food
Gail Omvedt India’s food is rotting. The greatest harvest of foodgrains in the country’s history is beginning to waste away in storage, eaten by rodents and insects, spoiled by moisture. Some of it, for want of storage space, is sitting in the open, exposed to the late monsoon rains. Estimated losses of foodgrains, according to …