Opposition parties and leaders may or may not be able to cobble together a coherent counter-narrative, but citizens are beginning to take note of the abuse of public confidence and poll promises.
TDP MP T.G. Venkatesh addressed a press conference against the author and sought that he be “hanged publicly”.
While most people expend their rage against hate crimes with a simple “but what can we do?,” through the Karwan-e-Mohabbat, Harsh Mander has provided a response to the rising brutalities against the Muslim community.
The Karwan, a peaceful yatra promoting love and communal harmony can only travel with police protection, whereas vigilante mobs kill and lynch with impunity.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s terming of upper-caste traders as ‘smugglers’ who do not have any empathy for the lower-caste poor has not gone down well with the Arya Vysyas of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Gujarat has only 2.33% of India’s Dalit population but ranks fourth on atrocities against the community. Rights activist Martin Macwan explains why.
Activists question the tough action against the Bhim Army when several members of the dominant castes have been let off the hook.
“People hire ‘upper’ caste workers for the kitchen and ‘lower’ caste ones for other purposes.”
As elite scientific institutions ignore socio-economic realities to bypass reservation in the name of quality, students from marginalised backgrounds continue to suffer.
A senior government scientist in Pune has complained to the police that her cook ‘lied about her caste’.
The Backward Class Commission commission has been asked to prepare a report with the percentage of quota for reservation.
A film about two emerging Dalit women leaders, Laxmiben and Madhuben, and their participation in the Azadi Kooch march.
“At times we get justice when we complain, but on most days discrimination is a way of life for us.”
Deep inside the heartland of India, where jati-dharm have ruled hearts and minds for aeons, divisions along caste lines are etched in stone.
Sugata Bose, professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University, author and TMC MP discusses with The Wire his latest book The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood.
A mob of 100 people recently attacked a Dalit man and his mother in their home, apparently unhappy with where he had disposed of a cow carcass, and threatened to burn down the houses of all Dalits in the village.
Though the idea is still at a “very nascent stage”, it is apparently on the agenda of some top-level officials.
Divya Bharathi and her supporters wonder if the timing and very public nature of her arrest were meant to intimidate her into silence on the subject of manual scavenging.
The clause to granting constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes had to be dropped after nearly 30 government MPs were missing from the upper house during the vote.
“The party’s stand is clear…The temple should be constructed in a legal manner and there should be mutual dialogue,” said the BJP president, also addressing election reform, reservations, GST and cow protection.
His election is a key element of the party’s strategy for the 2019 election, and its aftermath.
This movement may have ended, but leaders said they will continue to take up the struggle of landless Dalits everywhere.
As far Gujarat is concerned, the cases of atrocities against Dalits have increased post Una, so has the state repression.
Tamil Dalit feminist poet Sukirtharani opens up about her childhood, her Dalit identity in poetry and the Dalit women’s resistance.
As democratic institutions – cabinet, bureaucracy, media, presidency and judiciary – weaken, the Modi establishment is riding high on overconfidence. This is bad news for the Indian polity.
Tracking the incidents of lynching over cow slaughter and the possession and consumption of beef from September 2015 to July 2017.
Marking one year of the public flogging of Dalits at Una, the week-long protest will continue despite the police revoking permission, activists say.
“I am happy because it has exposed the real face of the society, that such a thinking is still prevalent…But I am pained because such issues are still being discussed.”
Members of the 14 other castes in Garagaparru village in West Godavari district have boycotted Dalits from the Mala community after a skirmish over an Ambedkar statue.
The Azadi Kooch, or freedom march, timed for the first anniversary of the Una incident when Dalit youths were assaulted by cow protection vigilantes, was to press for Dalit land rights in the state.
An FIR has been filed against the priest and his two sons, who allegedly denied the Dalit girls entry and hurled casteist abuses at them.
According to the chargesheet filed by the CBI, one of the Dalit victims of the Una flogging was labelled a Muslim by an accused to rile others up further.
The Theresa May government, worried about upsetting powerful Hindu groups, is hesitating to go ahead with consultations on the caste discrimination issue.
K. Nagamma, the wife of a sanitation worker who died in a septic tank, and her daughters recount their struggles against a system that confines them – quite literally – to the gutters
The Sarvaiya family is still recovering from injuries and struggling to make ends meet, all the while waiting for justice that was promised to them a year ago.
But general statements that do not target specific individuals from the SC/ST communities would not be considered an offence, said the Delhi High Court.
In the third episode of Media Bol, Urmilesh speaks to eminent sociologist Vivek Kumar and senior journalist Tavleen Singh about representation of Dalits in Indian newsrooms.
Terming the forcible cancellation of the convention and subsequent arrests as “an attack on freedom of expression”, S.R. Darapuri said “The government is in a state of panic amidst the rising public voices against it.”
Citizens will hold a protest against the lynchings of Dalits, Muslims, and rationalists, calling upon the government and citizens to take a stand.
Hashmi went to the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) to hand over the award conferred to her in 2008, citing “total inaction, apathy and tacit support to the violent gangs by the government” as the reason.
A series that attempts to draw a comprehensive picture of those weeks and months when entire geographies and histories changed forever.
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