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…
(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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
“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, 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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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’…
“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)…
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 …
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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?…
"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…
What happens to caste when Indians migrate to Western countries? Do their feelings of being born superior or inferior, their belief in the purity-pollution ethic, just melt away? The “model…
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