Monday, January 4, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Union Minister Arun Yadav dines with Dalits

 

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/madhyapradesh/Union-Minister-Arun-Yadav-dines-with-Dalits/Article1-493618.aspx

Union Minister Arun Yadav dines with Dalits

Press Trust Of India
Bhopal, January 04, 2010
First Published: 15:36 IST(4/1/2010)
Last Updated: 15:39 IST(4/1/2010)

Taking a cue from Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, Union
Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprise Arun
Yadav dined at the house of a Dalit in a remote tribal-dominated
village in Khargone district.

Yadav, who visited Londhi village about 285 km from here yesterday,
said that his "going to a Dalit house was not politics but an attempt
to further the tradition set by Rahul Gandhi."

Initially he was not recognised by villagers.

Londhi is a part of the Khandwa parliamentary constituency which is
represented by Yadav and it is populated mostly by Bheelala tribals.

Apart from voicing their frustration over insufficient power supply,
the villagers claimed that no candidate had ever visited the village
during electioneering for Lok Sabha.

After a wait of nearly 30 minutes, one Devram's wife Kadavi Bai
prepared traditional Malwi food consisting of Jwar Roti, Amadi Bhaji
and buttermilk.

The Minister, who spent nearly an hour in the village, said he "wanted
to start 2010 amidst his own people and dining with Devram was the
best way to do it."

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[ZESTCaste] Call for first caste census

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100104/jsp/frontpage/story_11939668.jsp

Call for first caste census
CITHARA PAUL

people count
New Delhi, Jan. 3: India may next year witness its first census since
Independence that refers to caste, if the Centre accepts a social
justice ministry recommendation that could be politically
controversial.

Officials said the ministry had asked for caste to be included as one
of the criteria in the 2011 census, and recommended a differential
headcount of the Other Backward Classes and reassessment of their
conditions that could lead to changes in the OBC list.

The ministry's move follows suggestions for a caste census from the
National Commission for Backward Classes and various high courts. A
note will be placed before the cabinet for a decision, sources said.

The last census that cited caste took place in 1931, after which caste
was dropped from the exercise on the ground that it would lead to
divisiveness. The country's first home minister, Vallabhbhai Patel,
had declared that a caste count would never be done in Independent
India. Successive governments have since then resisted calls for such
a survey, fearing controversy.

Now, armed with the fresh demands, the social justice ministry argues
that such a count is necessary to assess the changes that government
schemes have brought about in the social, economic and educational
conditions of the various castes since 1931.

A ministry official acknowledged that the OBCs were at the heart of
the proposed caste census. Ever since the Centre accepted the Mandal
Commission's recommendations on job reservations in 1990, there have
been several demands for accurate OBC population figures.The ministry
wants the census directorate, which is under the home ministry, to
reassess the various groups' backwardness as well.

"In the eight decades since the last caste-based census, there would
have been dramatic changes in caste compositions and conditions. There
are opportunities for addition and deletion. But all this will be
clear only if we have correct data,'' the official said.

He added: "The government has a number of welfare schemes on the basis
of caste. Without knowing the exact figures of the various castes, how
can the government plan its schemes?''

The official said the parliamentary standing committee on the social
justice ministry had in a recent report said the government did not
have reliable data on the populations of the backward castes and those
living below the poverty line.

Several political parties such as the Janata Dal (United) and the Lok
Janshakti Party have asked for caste surveys but the Centre has so far
not responded, fearing controversy.

"We are not asking for an exclusive caste-based survey but only for
caste to be added to the list of parameters. There is no reason for
any controversy,'' the official said.The 10-yearly census is normally
based on socio-economic criteria such as age, sex, Scheduled
Caste/Scheduled Tribe status, literacy, religion, mother tongue or
languages known, and economic and migration status.

Former social justice secretary P.S. Krishnan said a caste-based
census would be a step towards eliminating caste in the long run.

"It is wrong to say that a caste census will re-affirm caste. Equal
opportunity for all will eventually eliminate caste,'' said Krishnan,
now an adviser to the human resource development ministry.

He said that when B.P. Mandal, the author of the Mandal report, had
been an MP, he had asked three home ministers — H.M. Patel, Y.B.
Chavan and Giani Zail Singh — between 1978 and 1980 to conduct a
caste-based census.

The next census will be conducted from February 9 to 28, 2011, with
March 1 as the reference date.


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[ZESTCaste] Relevance of Ambedkar (N Ram)

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/19910427014.htm

Volume 27 - Issue 01 :: Jan. 02-15, 2010
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents

POLITICS

Relevance of Ambedkar

N. RAM


Dr B.R. Ambedkar. No other national figure in Indian politics in the
20th century matched his scholarly orientation.

IN the centenary year of his birth, Babasaheb Ambedkar stands taller
than he ever did before – his role in the struggle for a modern, new
India gaining steadily in weight, stature and centrality at the
expense of various other outstanding national figures who were
contemporaries and opponents in the great battles of the freedom
movement era. This is essentially because the deep-seated and central
problems spotlighted by his life, struggles, studies and
experimentation in ideas remain alive and kicking while the big
socio-political questions he raised about the state, well-being and
future of India remain basically unanswered.

He was born Bhimrao on April 14, 1891, at Mhow in Central India in an
austere and religious Mahar family with a military service background
and considerable respect for education. In school (Satara and Bombay),
college (Bombay), service under the Maharaja of Baroda (briefly in
1913 and again between July and November 1917) and study abroad
(Columbia University, the London School of Economics, Gray's Inn, the
University of Bonn), he displayed a scholarly orientation, a
commitment to the life of the mind and trained intellectual gifts that
no other national figure in Indian politics could match over this
century.

He benefited from opportunities which had just opened up, which none
in his family (or, for that matter, in the recorded history of his
people) had access to over the centuries; yet every one of his
academic, intellectual and professional achievements was hard earned,
in social battle, against entrenched oppression, discrimination and
anti-human prejudice. By the time he was finished with his formal
studies in the early 1920s, Dr Ambedkar had acquired qualifications
that surpassed the M.A., Ph.D., M.Sc. (Econ), D.Sc. (Econ),
Barrister-at-law he had added, by right, to his name and title; the
young man had been through a real life educational experience which
most people (including the most renowned scholars) do not manage to
acquire in a lifetime.

There may be various opinions on the formidable range of issues and
controversies in which Dr Ambedkar figured as a protagonist over 40
years of his public life – which can be said to have begun with the
sharp and insightful paper on "The Castes in India, Their Mechanism,
Genesis and Development" which he did for Dr Goldenweiser's
anthropology seminar in New York in May 1916. He was a searchingly
honest, challenging, analytical eclectic liberal thinker who was
attracted to utilitarianism (and eventually to Buddhism) in philosophy
and to the ideals of the French Revolution as much as to the socially
forward-looking and humanistic elements and values in Indian culture
and civilisation over the millennia.

He delved into the Marxist classics (claiming, during the historic
anti-khot mobilisation of peasants in Bombay in early 1938, that "I
have definitely read studiously more books on the Communist philosophy
than all Communist leaders here"), but was not persuaded either by the
revolutionary theory or the practice. He was emphatically opposed to
Gandhism and to the Congress ideology, although on some social issues
he shared common points with Jawaharlal Nehru – who badly let down his
Minister of Law on the Hindu Code Bill in the early 1950s. Right from
his early days, Ambedkar made a mark as a restless and courageous
experimenter who, obviously, did not always get it right in the matter
of trade-offs (and did not claim to). He fell in love with ideas as a
socially oppressed and humiliated schoolboy who refused to be taken
for a ride by anyone, including Baroda's royalty. Throughout his life
(which ended on December 6, 1956, a couple of months after he publicly
embraced Buddhism along with his followers), he was interested in the
big picture. But the boy who was socially barred from playing cricket
with his schoolmates in Satara (by the curse of untouchability) never
took his eye off the ball. He concentrated in his public life on
attainable, practical goals and never became too big to go into
specifics, details, doubts, books, the problems of ordinary people,
especially the lowliest of the low in Indian society.

During Dr Ambedkar's lifetime, his many opponents and critics –
especially Congressmen – alleged from time to time that he had missed
the main strategic task or objective. Such criticism gained wide
currency, especially in the press which tended to patronise him as a
sort of sub-national leader, a sectional leader of the Scheduled
Castes rather than the towering and challenging national figure he was
in every objective sense. Unfortunately, some of the heroes of the
freedom struggle, social reactionaries themselves, completely missed
the point about how Dr Ambedkar's studious, tough-minded, powerful
social questioning and battles fitted into the overall picture; some
of them even questioned his patriotism and called him names, but who
remembers them today? Looking at this inspiring but contradictory
freedom movement experience in late-twentieth century light, we can
begin to appreciate why Dr Ambedkar was unerringly on target on social
questions and his critics and opponents dead wrong (even if they were
so for understandable reasons).

What is absolutely clear in this centenary year is that Dr Ambedkar
represented, in the truly national sense, the profound side of the
socio-political struggle which formed an irrepressible part of the
nationalist movement, although it was not often understood (by
conservatism and orthodoxy in politics) to be such. Politically
moderate, he tended towards radicalism and uncompromising struggle in
the social arena in which he generalled many battles. His lifelong
concern with religion, morality and justice in the idealistic sense
was marked by a restlessly serious attempt to get the intellectual,
social and political measure of these things. He did not believe in
class analysis, but intuitively and intellectually grasped the link
between caste and class in India. What is impressive is that the giant
whose moderately couched, constitutionally canalised socio-political
revolt we are observing retains a formidable constituency – in terms
of people, gut issues and social and moral dilemmas to be addressed by
a complicated nation which needs to find its way out of a host of
troubles.

Aside from his collected works, there are some reasonably good
biographies, such as W.N. Kuber's Dr. Ambedkar: A Critical Study
(People's Publishing House, New Delhi, 1973) and B.R. Ambedkar in the
Builders of Modern India series (1978). Eleanor Zelliot's unpublished
PhD dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania (1969) and Gail
Omvedt's more recent studies on Dr Ambedkar and Dalit Labour
radicalism and protest movements do contribute useful insights. This
literature can be significantly improved upon if centenary celebration
resources are intelligently deployed in the relevant research and
study (as the Central government has promised).

Ideologically, Dr Ambedkar occupied the "centre", frequently the space
right of centre, but at times he moved sharply the other way, to the
radical side. This happened especially when his ideas, campaigns and
political organisational work were backed by powerful mass movements
(in the "radical" second half of the 1930s, for example, during the
1938 workers' struggle in Bombay against the anti-strike Bill). He was
the builder of the Independent Labour Party, which did not take off in
an all-India sense, but yielded some valuable political, ideological
and organisational lessons to the Opposition round the nation. Despite
his chairmanship of the Constitution Draft Committee in the
Constituent Assembly and his stint in the Union Ministry under Nehru,
Dr Ambedkar can be considered as a founder of non-Congressism and
anti-Congressism in Indian politics.

Even while championing social egalitarianism and popular liberties and
criticising the sway of big business and landlordism, campaigning for
social and economic democracy, he remained a conscious ideological and
political adversary of Marxism and Communism – for the basic reason
that he found them challenging in the same way he found Buddhism
inspiring. He had a number of interesting things to say about tricky
national problems – Kashmir, language, nationhood, citizenship,
ethnicity and so on – and his analysis lit up the field for a proper
democratic understanding of federalism and Centre-State relations in
India. On international questions and foreign policy, his approach was
that of a centrist-conservative dissenting from non-alignment and from
the Nehruvian (not to mention radical) world view.The social and class
basis of the following he commanded; the non-philanthropic,
non-petitioning nature of his social questioning; his passion for
social justice (going well beyond Gandhiji's compromising vision so
far as the ancien regime and the oppressed sections were concerned)
and democratic liberties; his openness to modern, scientific and
rational ideas, his unyielding secularism and progressive views on a
number of questions, especially on the condition and future of women
and on what it took to make a civil society; his great intellectual
gifts and wide-ranging interests; his ability to concentrate on
attainable, practical goals and his constructive sense of realism –
these marked him out as a unique kind of leader.

The recent period of socio-political development in India has seen a
blossoming of Hindutva and a majority chauvinist ideological and
political offensive which can only be classified as extremist in
relation to national unity. At this juncture, Dr Ambedkar's fearless
analysis of the caste system, of chaturvarnya, of notions of
pollution, of unalterable or rigid social hierarchy and so forth, and
of the implications of the hegemony of the shastras must be read,
re-read and made part of a national debate. His major theoretical
exposition of such questions is contained in a 1936 presidential
address which stirred up a hornet's nest, the radical "Annihilation of
Caste". This ideological offering to the building of a new India must
be ranked on a par with his signal and justly celebrated contribution
to the making of a Republican Constitution.

In this work, Dr Ambedkar emphasised the anti-social, anti-progress
character of an unjust social order as well as its vital connection,
through networks of force and ideology, with political power. The
caste system, in his analysis, militated against fraternity,
"sanghatan and cooperation for a good cause", public charity and
broad-based virtue and morality. When critics challenged him to
specify his "ideal society" in lieu of a caste-based order, he
replied: "My ideal would be a society based on liberty, equality and
fraternity." He specified that his ideal society would be mobile;
there would be "social endormosis"; there would be fraternity, which
was only another name for democracy; and democracy was primarily a
mode of associated living, of conjoining communicated experience and
breeding an attitude of respect and reverence towards fellow human
beings.

"Chaturvarnya must fail for the very reason for which Plato's Republic
must fail," warned the seriously read intellectual as social rebel. He
pointed out that "the lower classes of Hindus" were "completely
disabled for direct action on account of a wretched system". He
asserted: "There cannot be a more degrading system of social
organisation. ... It is the system which deadens, paralyses and
cripples the people from helpful activity." He attempted to follow
through the implications of this system in the political sphere. To
him the real remedy was "to destroy the belief in the sanctity of the
shastras" and their caste-borne tyranny.

It was no wonder that Gandhiji, a notable compromiser in such matters,
declared more than half a century ago: "Dr Ambedkar is a challenge to
Hinduism." He remains so today, which is why the votaries of Hindutva
and the forces which form part of the RSS constellation will not be
celebrating Ambedkar.

One battle in which social orthodoxy and opportunist politics allied
to defeat progress was the instructive fight over the Hindu Code Bill
in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The leading author of the
Constitution led the effort to institute a reasonably forward-looking
and egalitarian Hindu Code law (especially from the standpoint of
women), but it was sabotaged by orthodox elements. The Congress party,
despite Nehru's claim to rationality and progressivism, refused to
support the Bill. The abandonment of this progressive legislative
measure meant the betrayal of Dr Ambedkar's vision on such gut issues.

His solid contribution to institution-building apart, he had a great
deal to say about democracy as a real way of life and about citizens'
rights, about authoritarianism and also about a healthy democratic
political system. He detested hereditary, dynastic rule and a
one-party system. "To have popular government run by a single party is
to let democracy become a mere form for despotism to play its parts
from behind it," is a typical Ambedkar formulation. He warned:
"Despotism does not cease to be despotism because it is elective. The
real guarantee against despotism is to confront it with the
possibility of its dethronement, of its being laid low, of its being
superseded by a rival party." Dr Ambedkar clearly had little use for
political stability premised on a single party's rule, or on a social
philosophy of "letting sleeping dogs lie".

Two other political principles which he focussed on have been honoured
in their systematic and cynical violation over the years. Do not lay
liberties at the feet of a great man; in politics, bhakti or
hero-worship is a sure road to degradation. Make political democracy a
social democracy; resolve the contradictions, else they will
undermine, or blow up, democracy itself. Over a historic century, the
many-sided achievement of Dr Ambedkar – as an individual of prodigious
intellectual, political and moral gifts and as a towering national
figure representing large forces of historical change in a process
that is painfully incomplete – inspires awe.


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[ZESTCaste] Balladeer of the mean streets

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Balladeer-of-the-mean-streets/articleshow/5408355.cms

Balladeer of the mean streets
Jyoti Punwani

4 January 2010, 03:20am ISTText Size:|Topics:mumbai university
Balladeer of the mean streets

His father, a cobbler whose shoes were much in demand among the
Panchgani elite, could never have imagined that his son would one day
be a visiting lecturer in Mumbai University, a special invitee at
Bangalore's Indian Institute of Science and a star performer at the
Pune Festival. Last weekend, as he presided over the Lok Kala Ani Lok
Sahitya Sammelan at Warud, Sambhaji Bhagat remembered his days as a
hotel 'boy' in Panchgani, working as he schooled. The lok shahir (folk
poet) credits his success to Dr Ambedkar, but his song asking the
Dalit God to step off his pedestal and give a new direction to Dalit
politics which has imprisoned him as a cult figure and a vote-getter,
reveals a mindset quite different from the regular Ambedkarite.

Shahir Sambhaji Bhagat's autobiography ends with his imprisonment as a
Naxalite in Nagpur Jail in 1986. He is no longer one; but his
understanding of politics remains similar to theirs. What is different
fortunately for him and his audiences is his style of getting his
message across. Imperialism, fascism, globalisation, capitalist pigs,
the exploitation of the proletariat—all the leftist jargon is
transformed into a riveting performance in Bambaiya Hindi in his hit
ballad 'Inko dhyaan se dekho re bhai/ Inki soorat ko pehchano re
bhai.'

If there was to be a ballad that voiced the thoughts of the millions
of poor Indians whose voices are rarely heard, it would have to be
Sambhaji Bhagat's composition. A bitingly sharp satire on the
Establishment, the song, written more than a decade ago, is always
contemporary. Sambhaji is constantly changing it, incorporating the
latest political situation, the latest ad jingle. It started off as an
expose of the Ayodhya movement—today, it mocks the many Babas on TV as
much as it shows up the ugly face of development.

It was a chance encounter outside Churchgate station in the '80s that
changed Sambhaji's world. He had come to Mumbai to join college. "I
used to roam around Dharavi, dreaming of writing a book on the
terrible conditions there and my solutions to end them, and sending it
to Indira Gandhi. She was after all, our ruler, and I felt she could
solve the problem,'' recalls Sambhaji. Then he met the people who made
him realise that Indira Gandhi was part of the problem. He happened to
see a street play being performed outside Churchgate station by
Aavhaan Natya Manch, one of the pioneers of the street theatre
movement in Mumbai, and knew he had to join them.

Aavhaan's ideology was far Left, its founders upper-class
English-speaking students from Elphinstone and St Xavier's. In
Sambhaji, they found the kind of talent they lacked, recalls advocate
Sanober Keshwar, whom Sambhaji calls his 'guru'. "He is a born
performer,'' says Sanober. "He enriched Aavhaan with his talent for
music and writing in the people's idiom.''


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