Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Casteism in India
“Will AI support social justice or is it waiting in the wings to bury social justice once and for all?” Historical biases already ingrained in present system of India will…
Caste
Kshama Sawant to be honoured as part of anti-racism campaign started by Spice Radio
Former Seattle City councillor, who was instrumental behind the historic 2023 anti-caste ordinance in Seattle, will be receiving this year’s annual Hands Against Racism award in Surrey on March 30. Started…
How Caste And Same-Occupation Marriages Locked Indian Brain Chip?
Abstract This article deals with generational marriages within the same caste and occupation skills of men and women over many generations. It examines how this practice has affected the brain…
34 SC families in IIT Kanpur without toilets in Open Defecation Free India
When Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur was set up in 1959, two villages were uprooted. The farmers were given meagre compensation for the standing crop. No compensation was given…
‘Caste and Revolution’ explores link of Caste with Class in Revolution
In 'Caste and Revolution' by N. Ravi, the author addresses questions raised by Dalit and Bahujan intellectuals inspired by revolutionary parties. These questions centre on caste issues and seek to…
Dalits should be cautious of the divisive policies of BJP-RSS:All India Peoples Front
• Dalits should be cautious of the divisive policies of BJP-RSS • Supreme Court's decision on SC-ST sub-classification is not based on facts - Prof. Thorat • Unity of Dalits…
Dalits’ Condition Remains Dire Despite Reservation, says Sukhadeo Thorat
Despite decades of reservation policies aimed at addressing historical injustices, the socio-economic condition of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in India remains dire, as highlighted by Sukhadeo Thorat, former Chairman of the…
Minor Dalit Girl’s Suicide Spreads Shock and Distress among People
They try their best to gain composure in order to be able to say what they want to tell, but they just cannot help it and break down time and…
Bhakti-Kal and Caste Question
An abridged version of talk delivered on 23rd October, 2024 at Calicut University I say this with emphasis that in Indian history two periods, only two periods, came as a…
Court Rebukes Caste-Based Discrimination in Prisons
In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court has directed all states and union territories to immediately amend prison rules to stop caste-based discrimination and segregation of labor in prisons. The…
Poona Pact and Its Adverse Effects
Caste is considered to be the cornerstone of Indian Hindu society. In this structure of hierarchical inequality, the untouchables are at the lowest level, who were officially called 'Depressed Classes'…
Has the Caste Vanished?
Amid the twin issues of Caste Census and Sub-categorization of reservation of SCs/STs and ‘creamy layer’ among SCs, it must be remembered that caste issues have always been tweaked and…
Justice Chandru Committee’s Report On Caste Discrimination In Tamilnadu’s Schools – More notable are the attitudes and responses in the Periyarist state
The one-man committee of Justice K Chandru handed over its 600-page report to the the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin (second from Right) on June 18, 2024. Three…
From Buddha to Bhakti Movement to BR Ambedkar, from Democracy to Modernity – The Antidotes to Caste Have Failed to Work
The caste system in India, a rigid social hierarchy that classifies people into different groups based on birth, has long been a source of inequality and discrimination. Despite numerous efforts…
On the Assassination of Armstrong, Tamil Nadu State President of the Bahujan Samaj Party
Very startling revelations have emerged from the investigation, conducted so far by Tamil Nadu police, into the broad daylight murder of State BSP chief K Armstrong. According to the latest…
Dalit Memory and Dalit Identity
Abstract Introduction Remembered histories make up our inner lives, and that of our families and communities. Happy and joyful memories, dimly-remembered and unexplained events as children have a way of…
Kararamchedu carnage: Remembering 40 years later…Whither Dalit Movement?
The drawing is part of a graphic depiction of what happened in Karamchedu, after decades of Court battles - which is not unique to that episode.The culprits who belonged to…
Cinematic Caste Chronicles: Challenging Conventional Codes in Contemporary Indian Films
“Swami believes that a Dalit actor and an actor playing Dalit are two different things. Right?” “What’s the difference?” “Doesn’t matter.” – The Discreet Charm of the Savarnas This set…
Manudharma and Indian Secularism
(Chief Guest speech at DHPS Conference on Manudharma, Dalits and Constitution held on 17-3-2024, Visakhapatnam.) Manudharma, the ancient Hindu code is still haunting the lives of people. The importance and…
Caste Divide on the Wheels: A Tale of Bus Services and Social Justice in the Nilgiris
Pursuant to the news published in The Hindu on 29 February 2024 regarding the Badaga community members refusing to allow bus to ply to SC/ST villages in the Nilgiris, a…
Legal Framework to Empower Property Denied Castes in India
We are meeting today, the day that signifies this convergence of Law and Economics in the form of adopting the Constitution of India 74 years ago in 1949. The person…
Tamilnadu : Drinking water-tank of Vengaivayal dalit colony found with human excreta mixed: no arrests, no breakthrough even after one year
More shocking is this: Despite High Court orders, a CB-CID probe and CM’s assurances in the legislature to nab the culprits, attention of National Commission for Scheduled Castes, no arrests…
Separate electorate vis a vis joint electorate with reservation-True political rights to untouchables (SCs)
In modern democratic governance, political representation of citizens is vital to the public policy-making process. Every citizen must have the right to be represented in legislative bodies that frame policies…
Scriptural basis of varna/caste system in India
Let us see how the Hindu scriptures paved the way for the caste system. There are many important ingredients in the varna system that gave rise to the caste system.…
Chidambaram’s New Caste Consciousness
P.Chidambaram is a senior most leader of the Congress party. Besides being a Harvard law graduate, he is a well established political leader in the Congress party. He comes from…
The Unholy Origins of Castes in India
Adi Shankaracharya, reflecting on the sublime mysteries of non-dualism, the undifferentiated reality and the irrevocable principle of oneness governing all existence, emerged from the waters after performing his daily ablutions…
Brazen and unchecked casteism, even in schools of Periyarist Tamil Nadu, Dalit teen and sister hacked by dominant caste students
A 17-year-old Dalit student Chinnadurai, and his 14-year-old sister were attacked with sickles, at 10:30 pm on August 9 at his house, by six minors in Nanguneri in Tamil Nadu’s…
Bhagwat’s New Formulations on Caste: ‘Old Wine in New bottle’
“I (god) am in all beings. Whatever be the name or color, all have the same ability, same respect. All are my own. No one is superior or inferior…based on…
Seattle’s ban on caste discrimination has created history in America: Indian American Coalition
Seattle, WA (February 21, 2023) – A coalition of Indian-American civil rights organizations today commended the Seattle City Council for its leadership in passing the historic legislation to ban…
Climate Crisis, SDGs & Shit-dumped Water
Climate Disaster; as the mounting scientific evidence is pointing to a fast-approaching inevitable happening of ‘human extinction’, the attention of the world is turning towards the details of the potential…
Persistence of Caste as the axial principle of stratification
Based on his twenty-one-year fieldwork, Jonathan P Parry authored ‘Classes of Labour: Work and Life in a Central Indian Steel Town’, in which he argued the weakening of the caste…
Bhojpuri Songs and Branding of Caste Pride
The popularity of Bhojpuri music has grown to reach a wide audience, both in terms of listeners and watchers. Songs, in a sense, are a means through which cultural identities…
Atrocities against SCs and STs in Odisha shows an increasing trend – NCRB report 2021
The state is featured among the top five states having more number of atrocity cases against SCs and STs. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in its annual report Crime in…
From Ambedkars’ Chavdar Talab to Indra Meghwal
Indra Meghwal a nine year old student of Sarswati Vidya Mandir, Jalore in Rajasthan was beaten by his teacher on 20th July 2022. The crime of this boy, was that…
The Culturalization of Caste in India: An Interview with Balmurli Natrajan
by Balmurli Natrajan and Raghav Kaushik Dr. Balmurli Natrajan is Professor of Anthropology at William Paterson University of New Jersey, USA. He works at the intersections of the material and…
Bahujan politics needs a new radical alternative
Dr. Ambedkar is considered the father of Dalit politics. He raised the demand for political rights to the Dalits in the Round Table Conferences and despite Gandhiji's strong opposition, the…
Social Justice in words, Brazen Casteism And Slavery in Practice , in Tamil Nadu
A screengrab from the video showing a dozen men lowering the dead body of N. Kuppan. Courtesy: India today, August 22, 2019. There are still cases “ where the dalits …
The Shudra Kings And Brahmins: A mirror image of history
But for the accidental reading of Shahu Maharaj’s letter to the retired Governor of Bombay presidency, Lord Sydenham, written in 1918, I would not have thought of writing this essay.…
Caste, Class and India’s Covid Catastrophe
Covid-19 patients dying on the streets gasping for oxygen. Hundreds of wailing, desperate folks searching for hospital beds to access treatment. Even the dead denied dignified funerals, their bodies dumped…
Salute to an anti-untouchability crusader within the Catholic Church
Today I write to celebrate the full life of a Roman Catholic Dalit priest, Rev. Dr. P. Antonyraj SJ who passed away on 10th May. I was nineteen years old studying…
Proportional Representation is the only way to resolve our reservation crisis
Though IIT Kharagpur teacher Seema Singh has apologised for her abusive remarks against the students of SC-ST-OBCs in an online class, the matter does not end here. When the video…
Privatisation as a Counter to Dalit Assertion
For Dalits now and backward castes then, from Phule to Periyar, while the education provided by the ancient natural philosophies like Budhism, modern egalitarian religions like Christianity, exploitative but ‘progressive’…
Without ‘Annihilation of Caste’, It is Not Possible to Establish an Egalitarian Society in India
“Inequality is the soul of Hinduism”. And that is why he finally came to conclusion that, “I was born a Hindu, but will not die a Hindu” (Dr. BR. Ambedkar)…
Ambedkar on Castes In India And Among Muslims
This is part-1 of an article, being published to mark the Birth Anniversary on April 14, of Dr. BR Ambedkar (1891-1956). Referring to “a great deal of controversy” regarding …
Untouchable
I live next to a textile mill complex from an era long-passed. Today, the old stone buildings have been reduced to rubble and the trees that surrounded them, more than…
A Dalit and a Brahmin
“I hear the lower castes are finding this lack of monsoons rather difficult for their crops,” droned Aashka’s father at their lavish supper (as usual), in the midst of her…
Caste In Heaven: Can Shudras And Dalits Find Moksha In Brahminism?
I kept watching the funerals of people killed by the brutal coronavirus in the global pandemic of Covid-19 on TV channels and read about them in newspapers. Those dead bodies…
So You want to ally with the Dalit Rights Movement?
On 25th May 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man was murdered in police custody in Minneapolis, USA. A video showing a white police officer kneeling on his neck for…
Political Economy of Caste in India
Caste plays a role at every stage of an Indian’s economic life: in school, university, the labor market, and into old age. The influence of caste extends beyond private economic…
Government must ensure our elite institutions free from caste prejudices
Supreme Court's order allowing the three accused of abetting murder of Dr Payal Tadavi namely Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehare and Ankita Khandelwal to complete their medical studies is deeply disturbing…
Who all among you is a “Srivastava”? Why Education Cannot be the Only Answer to Annihilation of Caste
The recent Hathras incident of violence against a 19-year-old Dalit girl has boomeranged the relevance of caste question in academia and at least digital media. It has again illustrated the…
How safe are Dalit women in Uttar Pradesh?
Recently Crime in India - 2019 report has been released by National Crime Records Bureau. In this report, in the year 2019, the statistics of crime of Dalit atrocities have…
Requirement Of An Independent Constitutional Body
The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 was enacted with a main objective to protect marginalised communities viz. schedule castes and tribes against discrimination and atrocities. Sec.3 of the said Act enunciates the nature…
Strengthen National Commission of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
Introduction National Commission of Scheduled Castes and National Commission of Scheduled Tribes, both constitutional bodies constituted to protect and monitor implementation of safeguards to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have…
Why is Bengal still Caste-less?
In early September, circles from the Bengali academia and Left political spectrum, strongly vocalized their seemingly disgruntled voices against the trolling of Professor Maroona Murmu, Assistant Professor from the Department…
Understanding The Dalit Struggle For Identity In Gujarat
ABSTRACT The recent incidents of Dalit oppression in Gujarat has got the attention of the entire country. Gujarat though known for its development and progress is still ruled by feudal…
I was born a bad person and my fellow savarnas, so were you all
I was born a bania, a savarna or upper-caste, and that is why I was born a bad person. Let me explain. I am part of that minority for whom…
Agriculturalism And Hindutva
In China there was a philosophical school called Agriculturism between 770 BCE and 221 BCE. The main philosopher, who represented this school with a sophisticated exposition of that philosophy, was…
No End to Humiliation of Dalits Even After Death
Does anybody still remember the Dalits of Chakwara, a village around 50km from Jaipur in Rajasthan, who had launched a struggle to gain access to the pond in their village?…
India’s Illegitimate Daughter
"Because of the ascendancy of lawlessness, Krishna, The family women are corrupted; When women are corrupted, O Krishna, The intermixture of caste is born. Intermixture brings to hell The family…
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