ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Undertrial Prisoners in Bihar

Following the liquor ban in Bihar in 2016, many people from Dalit and Adivasi backgrounds were arrested under the prohibition law. A majority of them were behind bars under exaggerated charges or because of procedural lapses by visiting legal aid lawyers. Most of the undertrials are unable to get released on bail due to their inability to produce suitable sureties or pay the bail amount. There is an urgent need for sociolegal intervention with undertrial prisoners towards ensuring their legal rights.

 

The Impossibility of ‘Dalit Studies’

The meaning and implications of the presence of “Dalit studies” in the pedagogical content of higher education in India need to be analysed. “Dalit studies” seeks to intervene into such a space of pedagogical practices and institutional policies in higher education which may have grudgingly accepted the physical presence of the Dalit through affirmative action, but which has nonetheless historically overlooked the thought of the Dalit.

What Is Missing In the #MeToo Movement?

How can we talk about sexual harassment in the context of a sex-negative atmosphere where conversations around sex and sexuality are considered taboo? Who and what is excluded from the available redressal mechanisms for sexual harassment as well as from the larger movement? Through these questions, this article examines the #MeToo movement and the limitations of the criminal justice system and due process.

Daring to Imagine Caste’s Antithesis

Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva by Anand Teltumbde, Delhi: Navayana, 2018; pp 432, ₹ 600.

Towards Political Power, Social Equality and Justice

Dalit Politics in Contemporary India by Sambaiah Gundimeda, Oxon, New York, Routledge, 2016; pp 32 + 298, 995.

Why Do We Need a Specific Law to Safeguard Dalits Against Caste Violence?

A reading list to help understand why the provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act should not be diluted.​

Pa Ranjith’s ‘Kaala’ and the Dalit-Left Revolution to Come

Kaala embodies the confusion and contradictions of the contemporary subaltern politics. It is conscious of the need for solidarity between the Dalit–Bahujan and the left, yet it cannot imagine what form it will take.

Does India Need a Caste-based Quota in Cricket?

In India’s 85-year-long Test history, only four of the 289 male Test cricketers have reportedly been Dalits. While concrete steps have been taken to address a similar under-representation of non-white players in South Africa, Dalit under-representation in Indian cricket has received scant attention. There is a need to understand this as a function of systemic barriers arising from corporate patronage post-independence and the urban stranglehold of the game, instead of attributing it to choice, inherent inability or upper caste “tastes.” The grass-roots development approach of Cricket South Africa can serve as an example to address this anomaly.

Why Indian Universities Are Places Where Savarnas Get Affection and Dalit-Bahujans Experience Distance

Dalit Bahujan students relentlessly dream and struggle to experience an intellectual ambience in elite institutions sans caste prejudice to recreate their “being” in radically new ways in a society that otherwise seems to be forgetting what resistance with conscience can deliver in reimagining life and politics afresh.

When ‘Anybody Can Be Brahmin’

The appointment of Dalit priests to temples in Kerala has been engendered by the growing departure of Brahmin youth from priestly jobs, coupled with existing aspirations of the lower castes to become priests in Brahminical temples. This move is aimed at the formation of a cohesive “Hindu community” through the reconfiguration of caste practices, not the eradication of caste.

Robbing Rohith of His Dalitness

The basic question that the Rohith Vemula case raises is about the existence of the rule of law in India. If his mother Radhika Vemula was rich, there would have been no issue about Rohith’s caste and all people named in the FIR for abetting his suicide would have been in jail. But her fault is that she lived off the pittance that Rohith sent her from his paltry fellowship!

A Voice to the Dalit Cause

Readings on Dalit Identity: History, Literature and Religion edited by Swaraj Basu; Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2016; pp 403, 895.

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