Wednesday, March 3, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Dalits prevented from celebrating Holi; five arrested

 

http://www.newkerala.com/news/fullnews-62207.html

Dalits prevented from celebrating Holi; five arrested

Noida, Mar 2 : Tension prevailed in a village here when Dalits were
prevented from celebrating Holi by four youths.

Police said the clash occurred in Ghadi Chaukhandi village of Sector
58 yesterday when Sandeep, Pradeep, Prahalad and Pankaj accused the
Dalits of eve-teasing and attacked them with lathis and stones.

Five people were arrested and a case had been registered, police added.

A Dalit, Kripal, in his complaint, said the four youths prevented him
and his friends from celebrating the festival of colours in the
village.

One of the accused Sandeep lodged FIR against Kripal and 10 others
accusing them of assault and eve-teasing, police added.

--UNI

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[ZESTCaste] Special Recruitment Drive to fill SC/ST/OBC posts backlog

 

http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=58763

Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions

Special Recruitment Drive to fill SC/ST/OBC posts backlog

18:9 IST
LOK SABHA

As per information received from 37 Ministries/Departments of
Government of India, the number of backlog reserved vacancies of the
Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes
as on 01.11.2008 were 3537, 2969 and 6439 respectively.

The Government has launched a Special Recruitment Drive to fill up the
backlog reserved vacancies of SCs, STs and OBCs.

This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of
Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Shri Prithviraj Chavan in
written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

RS/SR

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[ZESTCaste] Misra panel: BJP's chance to win over OBCs?

 

http://in.news.yahoo.com/32/20100303/1053/tnl-misra-panel-bjp-s-chance-to-win-over.html

Misra panel: BJP's chance to win over OBCs?

Wed, Mar 3 12:50 PM
New Delhi, March 3 -- With a government-appointed panel calling for
reservation for minorities, the BJP senses an opportunity to find
favour with the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) among Hindus. The
Ranganath Misra Commission has recommended 15 per cent quota for
Muslims in education and employment. In case the recommendation falls
foul of law - the Supreme Court has capped reservation at 50 per cent
and the provision will push it way beyond the ceiling - a minority
sub-quota within the OBC bracket has been suggested. It means that
from within the 27 per cent quota for the OBCs, 8.4 per cent will be
for minorities. While the Mandal Commission, set up with a mandate to
identify educationally and socially backward, said the OBCs
constituted 52 per cent of India's population, the National Sample
Survey Organisation put the figure at 41 per cent. Though the
government has not set a timetable for adopting the suggestions, the
Misra report can lead to political realignments. The Congress can gain
Muslim support, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The
Muslim-Yadav alliance nurtured by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad
in UP and Bihar, respectively, could be tested as the two groups will
be in fight for the same quota pie. And this is where lies an
opportunity for the BJP to attract OBCs to its fold - in line with new
chief Nitin Gadkari's emphasis on widening the party's social base.
Traditional base of the BJP is upper caste Hindus. "We'll oppose any
attempt to take away the rights of backward Hindus and give them to
minorities," deputy leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Gopinath
Munde, an OBC leader, said. The BJP's rise to power in the 1990s was
accompanied by substantial non-Yadav OBC mobilisation in the Hindi
belt, particularly in UP, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats.

OBC vote can be crucial to the party's revival.

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[ZESTCaste] Power of class ties (Opinion)

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/55842/power-class-ties.html

Thinking Aloud
Power of class ties
By Sunanda K Datta-Ray

The so-called 'red corridor' speaks of adivasi and Dalit resentment of
society's traditional upper caste leaders.

Maoist depredations in eastern India suggest a new social twist to
Marx's prediction of an epic struggle between the proletariat and
bourgeoisie. Class goes a long way in explaining the recent attack on
an Eastern Frontier Rifles camp in a West Bengal town where 24 jawans
were butchered, and Dalit and Adivasi support for the "Bon (Jungle)
Party", as they call the CPI(Maoist).

Mohit Sen, the son of a Calcutta High Court judge who joined the
undivided Communist Party of India, says in his memoirs that Ranjit
Gupta, one of the last of British India's IP (not today's IPS)
officers, was "a strong sympathiser" of the Communists and kept him
informed in the late Forties of official security plans. Now old and
ill, Gupta acquired fame — some say notoriety because of the methods
used — for liquidating Naxalites when he was Calcutta's Police
Commissioner in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Sen passed on
Gupta's information to the radical Oxford-trained historian Susobhan
Sarkar "resulting in almost all the top leaders of the CPI escaping by
going underground" when the "crackdown" came in 1948.

Arrest warrant

Incidentally, the "underground" for Indrajit Gupta, a Cambridge
graduate who became Union Home Minister under H D Deve Gowda, was my
grandmother's flat in Calcutta. He lived there comfortably — my
grandmother was his aunt — while the police supposedly searched high
and low with an arrest warrant. His brother, also Ranjit Gupta but of
the ICS, was then West Bengal's Home Secretary. Less well-connected
Communists went to jail.

I am dredging this up to illustrate how law enforcers and lawbreakers
can be linked. The Gupta-Sen-Sarkar nexus highlighted the power of
class ties. They came from similar upper middle class backgrounds, had
gone to English-medium schools and the same college where Susobhan
Sarkar taught. They were what Lady Thatcher called "people like us".
There are PLUs at all levels, bound by similar ties of kinship and
friendship.
At the height of the Naxalite troubles a much younger and fitter I
accompanied the Army on a combing operation in West Bengal's Birbhum
district, tramping precariously along the slippery ridge between
waterlogged paddy fields night after night. It was a lark for the
soldiers. Even the local magistrate strode gamely along with a walking
stick. But the bedraggled policemen accompanying us whined unceasingly
and complained bitterly of the military victimising them because they
were Bengali. The Army officer's warnings that they could be heard
across the fields only made them talk louder.

I thought it was Bengali lyricism when they burst into Rabindrasangeet
before dawn broke. But, no, as a light flashed in the distant dark and
went out, to be repeated in another clump of trees, I realised the
singing (like their loud chatter) was to warn Naxalites lurking in the
outlying huts. Apparently, a band of Naxalites had turned up to demand
the ammunition only hours after the police confiscated a jotedar's
gun.

Collusion might still be common. Birbhum's policemen were locals like
the Naxalites. Commonalty may also have been a factor in the attack on
the EFR. It wouldn't have been easy otherwise for 50 Maoists in an
SUV, a pick-up truck and a fleet of six motorcycles to raid the camp
in the heart of a crowded township. The surrounding shopkeepers
obviously knew what was afoot and had disappeared. They had been
warned. But by who?

Few in West Bengal's villages regard the Maoists as untouchables. I am
not talking of opportunistic politicians like Susanta Ghosh, a CPI(M)
minister from West Midnapore, or Mamata Banerjee who have both been
known to play footsy with them. I mean Dalit and adivasi villagers who
regard them as saviours. While nothing is heard of the Rs 400-crore
development package announced last year for the area, Maoist cadres
have reportedly dug wells, built roads and dams and set up health
centres in remote places.

Ideological rebels

Class manifests itself somewhat differently in Bihar. Going to Arrah
district once because of reports of Naxalite activity, I found only
illiterate landless Dalit peasants whose crime was to ask for the
minimum legal wage. Their employers at once summoned the police and
denounced them as ideological rebels. Moustachioed village elders
stalked me as I talked to the Dalits, and ordered me to write they
should be allowed firearms without licenses. Physically, these
worthies looked like the village daroga.

A veteran former Communist, Jolly Mohan Kaul, writes that people
looked up to Jyoti Basu because he was an England-returned barrister.
The CPI co-opted many such men into its central committee without
making them go through the ranks as local recruits had to. But these
gallants or comrades like Prakash and Brinda Karat or Sitaram Yechury
hardly qualify as "indigent wage-earners", "labouring classes" or the
"lowest class of community" whom Marx held to be the only "really
revolutionary class". Dalits and adivasis do, explaining their
misguided support for the Bon Party.

The so-called "red corridor" is not a manifestation of the proletarian
revolution. It speaks of adivasi and Dalit resentment of society's
traditional upper caste leaders, and of Maoist exploitation of this
festering grievance.


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[ZESTCaste] Cop sacked for beating up Dalit woman

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/cop-sacked-for-beating-up-dalit-woman/581627/

Cop sacked for beating up Dalit woman
Press Trust of India Posted online: Friday , Feb 19, 2010 at 0044 hrs
Lucknow : A Dalit woman accused of murdering her husband was assaulted
repeatedly by a police officer in full public glare in Sultanpur
district, prompting a stunned Uttar Pradesh government to terminate
his service on Thursday.
Inspector Kailashnath Dwiwedi was earlier put under suspension for
beating up Sangeeta, who had on Tuesday night allegedly strangulated
her husband Deepak Kumar at Maniyari village in Aliganj area,
Principal Secretary (Home) Fatesh Bahadur Singh told reporters here.

"Station in-charge of Musafirkhana, Kailashnath Dwiwedi, has been
dismissed from service for manhandling and assaulting Sangeeta, who
was arrested on charges of killing her husband, during police
custody," Singh said. The incident happened at Musafirkhana area.
After the police brutality came to light, Dwiwedi had been suspended
by the Sultanpur SP and an inquiry ordered, he said.


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