Caste | Culture | Online Blog
Rahul Sankrityayan’s Tibet Story
An excerpt from the book ‘Mystics and Sceptics : In Search of Himalayan Masters’, edited by Namita Gokhale.
Adi Shankaracharya: An Advocate of Caste System Or a Liberal Hindu Thinker?
Critical remarks made by Kerala minister M.B. Rajesh about the Vedantic exponent were rebuked by the Union minister V. Muraleedharan. Excerpts from Shankara’s philosophy vindicate the former’s views.
When a Woman in India Chooses Not to Take Her Husband’s Surname
From facing social pressures to financial setbacks, women recount the tribulations that followed because they kept their maiden names.
SC Decision on EWS Reservations Strikes at Basic Structure of Constitution
The People’s Union for Civil Liberates (PUCL), India’s premier human rights organisation, has said that the Supreme Court judgement, upholding reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), strikes at the “basic structure of the Constitution”.
Ambedkar, Buddhism and Dalit Liberation
Events of the last few days indicate AAP and BJP worship Ambedkar purely for electoral gains and not from commitment to his ideas.
‘A Woman and Fire are as Ancient as Civilisation’: Six Dalit-Feminist Poems
Written during the pandemic, these six poems stage the myriad everyday theatres of the self, the family, the domestic, the personal, the public, the political, the national, and even the civilisational, where caste and gender interlock to determine intimate pasts and futures of inequity and exclusion.
Caste | Caste | Culture | People's movements | Print Edition
Republic of Caste: Anand Teltumbde’s Thoughts Strive to Liberate Us Even as He Is in Jail
His vision of working-class unity with an anti-caste core may or may not be realisable, but it is an important line of argument and action at the very least.
Remembering Swami Achutanand: The Pioneer of Dalit Identity and Consciousness in North India
In the early 20th century, the trend of protest against caste-based discrimination found its profound expression in the works and activism of Swami Achutanand.
Battle of Ideas: Ambedkar Brass Coin vs Statue of Unity
Gujarati Dalits will ferry a one-tonne brass coin dedicated to BR Ambedkar to Parliament for the 75th anniversary of Independence. They want to remind MPs that they have failed to eradicate untouchability.
The Hinduisation of Ambedkarism
I would ask Dalits to not blindly extol and worship Ambedkar’s images, not to marginalise his thoughts by making him a deity. If you want to remain a slave, please do. The Indian constitution allows you be a slave willfully. But do not defile or kill Ambedkar.