Maharashtra: Only hope for Dalits, OBCs and Muslims is the Tamil Nadu model
Dalits, OBCs and Muslims want security and self-respect, which they will never get from the Maratha-Brahmin political parties because the very existence of the power-hungry castes hinges on keeping these communities under their thumb and ensuring that they always feel insecure, writes Shrawan Deore
Maharashtra: Only hope for Dalits, OBCs and Muslims is the Tamil Nadu model
Dalits, OBCs and Muslims want security and self-respect, which they will never get from the Maratha-Brahmin political parties because the very existence of the...
Delhi Assembly Elections 2025: Three parties in contention eyeing Dalit votes
Twelve of the 70 constituencies in Delhi are reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC). But the 16.75 per cent SC population of the state...
Ambedkarite politics: Fashion or democratization?
Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement comes from his frustration and anxiety due to the swaying support from the Dalit community. Hence, fashionable politics of...
Joy to the World!
So to those who call themselves followers of Christ, we need to search our hearts. If our hearts are full of prejudice towards those...
Confronting violent politics in democracy through democratic politics
If the dam of controlled anti-Muslim violence built to contain Bahujan society gives way, a sensitive Brahmin like Dushyant Dave will not weep alone....
Pro-upper-caste bias warps Left’s sense of history
Remaining in denial about the caste system obfuscates the identity of its victims and leads us to forget their struggles. It also creates a...
Looking back at Indian cinema in 2024 through an anti-caste lens
Together, ‘Thangalaan’, ‘Kottukkaali (The Adamant Girl)’, ‘Blue Star’ and ‘Vaazhai’ signify a transformative moment in Tamil cinema, using the medium to interrogate caste-based discrimination,...
‘Vaazhai’: Love, compassion and resilience amid the harshness of Dalit life
Vaazhai is a testament to how personal experience can shape a filmmaker’s narrative arc, with Mari Selvaraj’s socially charged storytelling elevating the film’s themes....
RSS and the question of caste
On the one hand, they celebrate the Constitution Day and pay obeisance to the Constitution of India. On the other hand, they consistently talk...
When a film has a Dalit protagonist named Vedaa and defends the Vedas
This film exemplifies the Gandhian ‘upper caste’ saviour gaze, in which the Dalit characters, particularly women like Vedaa, remain marginalized within their own narrative....
‘Sahitya Akademi has brought itself honour by honouring Sanjeev’
In his more than a dozen novels, Sanjeev has depicted the reality of the post-Independence Indian society. The issues and topics that he has...
In his ‘Ambedkar: A Life’, Shashi Tharoor betrays his privileged-caste naivete
After coming out with ‘Why I Am A Hindu’, Tharoor has predictably set out to look for Ambedkar’s ‘flaws’ in his biography of Ambedkar,...
Phanishwar Nath Renu – who gave centrality to the toilers of ‘the provinces’
Renu took the genre of reportage to new heights in Hindi literature. No one has been able to match him to date. In his...
Rajesh Paswan: Criticism within Dalit Literature is still in its infancy
Our Dalit writers don’t take criticism well. They begin enquiring about the caste and ideology of the critic. They evaluate criticism on these parameters,...
Memoir: When Rajendra Yadav visited Gorakhpur
Both Rajendra Yadav and Namvar Singh participated in a seminar on Premchand in Gorakhpur University. At the seminar, Namvar Singh declared that fiction was...
As Jharkhand turns 24, a reason to celebrate and a reality check
Jharkhand stands at a crossroads. The state must strike a balance between preserving its rich cultural heritage and meeting the demands of modernization and...
How Ambedkar began mobilizing for conversion 20 years before the event
Ambedkar said that religious conversion was no child’s play and that it couldn’t be achieved with merely political measures. It had to be realized...
Ambedkar’s hitherto unseen intercontinental-travel and census records, some of which expose baseless claims
A powerful, authoritative biography of Dr Ambedkar, one that is based solely on hard, verifiable evidence, and not hearsay, is yet to be written....
Ambedkar the democrat shone in the making of the Indian Constitution
Unlimited powers were not vested in the Indian president. Instead, it was Parliament which was vested with all the powers. That was meant to...
Jagdeo Prasad wanted to forge a national confederation representing the exploited classes
‘DMK has been formed in Madras, Shoshit Dal in Bihar and Rashtriya Shoshit Sangh in Uttar Pradesh to secure freedom from the upper-caste imperialists....