Wednesday, February 2, 2011

[ZESTCaste] Govt turning blind eye to exodus of Dalits from Mirchpur:Dalit body

 

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Govt-turning-blind-eye-to-exodus-of-Dalits-from-Mirchpur-Dalit-body/Article1-657697.aspx

Govt turning blind eye to exodus of Dalits from Mirchpur:Dalit body
Press Trust Of India
Chandigarh, February 02, 2011
First Published: 19:27 IST(2/2/2011)
Last Updated: 19:29 IST(2/2/2011)

Haryana Valmiki Yuva Mahasabha, an organisation representing Dalits,
on Wednesday alleged Haryana government was turning a blind eye to the
exodus of fear-stricken Dalits from Hisar district's Mirchpur village.
"During the past nine days, most of the Dalit families have shifted
from there but the
government has turned a blind eye and they have not stepped in to stop
this. The Dalits have been forced to shift to other places in Hisar
and elsewhere because of sense of insecurity and persistent social
boycott and ostracisation," Mahasabha's President Sanjeev Gharoo said
here.

He led a delegation of Dalits and submitted a memorandum to Haryana
Governor Jagannath Pahadia here to bring to his notice the problems
being faced by Dalits at Mirchpur where a Dalit man and his daughter
were burnt to death last year allegedly by upper caste members.

Gharoo said they had brought to the Governor's notice the alleged
discrimination being meted out to Dalits in Mirchpur.

"Meeting their daily needs has become difficult for the Dalits who are
still left in Mirchpur because of the social boycott at the hands of
the dominant community. We cannot tolerate this grave injustice being
meted out to us, with the government remaining a mute spectator," he
alleged.

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/

PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com

TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/

Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/
.

__,_._,___

[ZESTCaste] Cong leader eats words after questioning Sonia's Indian-ness, leadership

http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Veteran-Cong-leader-questions-Sonias-leadership-eats-words/745098/

Cong leader eats words after questioning Sonia's Indian-ness, leadership

Agencies
Posted: Feb 02, 2011 at 1258 hrs IST

Hyderabad Senior Congress leader from Andhra Pradesh, G Venkataswamy,
who created a flutter by demanding Sonia Gandhi's resignation as party
president, today said he is ready to withdraw all his comments.

"I had to make those comments because I was worried that the party may
suffer in the Telangana region. I am ready to withdraw all comments...
I request her (Gandhi) separate Telangana," the octogenarian leader
said, appearing to be backtracking on the issue.

"If I am expelled, party workers in Telangana would form a new outfit
called Telangana Congress," he claimed.

Meanwhile, Venkataswamy's son and Congress MP G Vivek said he did not
agree with the comments of his father and that he has faith in the
leadership of Sonia Gandhi.

Slamming Venkataswamy for his attack on Gandhi, Youth Congress
activists met Andhra Pradesh Congress president D Srinivas at his
residence here late last night and demanded that disciplinary action
be taken against him immediately.

In a no-holds-barred-attack on Gandhi, Venkataswamy, a Dalit leader
from the Telangana region, yesterday alleged that the party is fast
losing its base all over the country and that corruption and inflation
have risen under Sonia's leadership.

He demanded that she step down from the post of party president and
make way for an lndian who has risen from the grassroots.

Taking exception to the Congress high command's move of inviting Praja
Rajyam chief Chiranjeevi for the two parties to work together,
Venkataswamy said the decision has lowered the stature of the
Congress. Chiranjeevi supports the united Andhra Pradesh demand.

Congress leaders in the state, led by Srinivas, have condemned
Venkataswamy's comments against the party president in one voice.

"These comments are most unfortunate. I condemn all the utterances
made by Venkataswamy. It seems he was not in consciousness. He was
talking about not being made the President (of India) and denied
appointment (by Gandhi). But these are all his personal issues,"
Srinivas said.

State minister and prominent Dalit leader in Congress D Rajanarasimha
said Venkataswamy's comments are aimed at positioning himself or his
son for the post of chief minister if a separate Telangana is
realised.

Several state ministers, legislators and other party leaders also
strongly condemned Venkataswamy's remarks against Gandhi.


------------------------------------

----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/

PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com

TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/

Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
ZESTCaste-digest@yahoogroups.com
ZESTCaste-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ZESTCaste-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[ZESTCaste] The arduous journey of modern Dalit literature (S Anand)

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/Story/719/Lighting-Out-for-the-Territory.html

Essay
Lighting Out for the Territory

The arduous journey of modern Dalit literature

By S ANAND
Published :1 February 2011


ANIL SAINI FOR THE CARAVAN
A bookstall in Pune on 14 April, the birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar.
I       N MANU JOSEPH'S DEBUT NOVEL Serious Men—praised by one critic as
"one of the very best novels ever to come out of South Asia" and the
winner of The Hindu's inaugural Best Fiction award in 2010—the
protagonist, Ayyan Mani, is a manipulative, sly, scheming
Dalit-Buddhist who almost gets away with passing off his partially
deaf son, Adi, as a prodigy, a
genius who can recite the first 1,000 prime numbers. The garb of
satire—where almost every character cuts a sorry figure—gives the
author the licence to offer one of the most bleak and pessimistic
portrayals of urban Dalits.

Ayyan Mani works as secretary to the Brahmin astrophysicist Arvind
Acharya at the 'Institute of Theory and Research,' where he bestows on
himself the subversive power of inserting anti-Brahmin statements into
the "Thought of the Day." While the novel's bumbling scientists are at
least earnest in their pursuit of ostensibly higher truths, Mani is an
open fraud—a conman. The novel's female characters hardly fare better:
the astrobiologist Oparna Goshmaulik is purely a 'sex item,' described
each time she makes an appearance, in Mani's gaze, as "always a
sight," "a commotion" and "an event"; the wife of Ayyan Mani, with the
unlikely Tamil name Oja, is draped in naiveté bordering on dumbness.

An undisguised contempt for women and Dalits goes hand in hand with
the ancient Brahminical book of social codes, the Manusmriti, and
Joseph decidedly lives up to his first name. Despite his savage
portrayal of female and Dalit characters—or perhaps because of
it?—Serious Men has won critical appreciation from a cross-section of
readers and critics, including some upper-class feminists ("dodgy
sexual politics but, basically, I had such fun reading it!"). As a
friend remarked, even though India has never had a regime of political
correctness, a section of the elite has decided it's okay to enjoy
jokes at such correctness.

At a time when a formidable body of Dalit literature— writing by
Dalits about Dalit lives—has created a distinct space for itself, how
and why is it that a novel such as Serious Men, with its gleefully
skewed portrayal of an angry Dalit man, manages to win such accolades?
In American literature—and particularly in the case of
African-American authors and characters—these issues of representation
have been debated (and, to some degree, resolved) for decades. But in
India, the sustained refusal to address issues related to caste in
everyday life—and the continued and unquestioned predominance of a
Brahminical stranglehold over cultural production—have led us to a
place where non-Dalit portrayal of Dalits in literature, cinema and
art remains the norm.

The journey of modern Dalit literature has been a difficult one. But
even though it has not necessarily enjoyed the support of numbers (in
what has come to be the trade publishing market) we must engage with
what Dalits are writing—not simply for reasons of authenticity, or as
a concession to identity politics, but simply because of the aesthetic
value of this body of writing, and for the insights it offers into the
human condition. In a society that is still largely unwilling to
recognise Dalits as equal, rights-bearing human beings, in a society
that is inherently indifferent to the everyday violence against Dalits
and their near-total ghettoisation in various spheres of social and
cultural activity, in a society unwilling to share social and cultural
resources equitably with Dalits unless mandated by law (as seen in the
anti-reservation discourse), Dalit literature has the potential to
humanise non-Dalits and sensitise them to a world into which they have
no insight. But before we can understand what Dalit literature is
seeking to accomplish, we need first to come to terms with the
stranglehold of non-Dalit representations of Dalits.

R       OHINTON MISTRY'S A Fine Balance, published 15 years ago, chronicles
the travails of a Chamar family in a north Indian village and follows
two characters—uncle Ishvar and nephew Omprakash—who migrate to Bombay
and yet cannot escape brutality. While the present of the novel is set
at the time of the Emergency, Ishvar's father Dukhi (an homage
to the equally pitiable Dukhi in Premchand's famous short story
'Sadgati') belongs to the era of the anti-colonial nationalist
movement. During one of Dukhi's visits to the town, he chances upon a
meeting of the Indian National Congress, where speakers spread the
"Mahatma's message regarding the freedom struggle, the struggle for
justice," but add that this is not a realisable goal unless "the
disease of untouchability, ravaging us for centuries, denying dignity
to our fellow human beings" is wiped out.

Neither in the 1940s, where the novel's past is set, nor in the
Emergency period of the 1970s—when the minds and bodies of the two
Dalits, Ishvar and Omprakash, are savaged by the state—do we find any
mention of a figure like BR Ambedkar or of Dalit movements. In his
'nationalist' understanding of modern Indian history, Mistry seems to
have not veered too far from the road charted by predecessors like
Raja Rao (Kanthapura) and Mulk Raj Anand (Untouchable) or, in Hindi,
by the likes of Premchand. Sixty years after Premchand, Mistry's
literary imagination seems stuck in the empathy-realism mode, trapping
Dalits in abjection. Mistry happily continues the broad stereotype of
the Dalit as a passive sufferer, without consciousness of caste
politics.

HENNING STEGMÜLLER. COURTESY OF NAVAYANA PUBLISHING

The poet Namdeo Dhasal, a founder of the Dalit Panther movement, at
his village Pur-Kanersar in 2004.
It is not as if Dalit movements were not active during the periods
that form A Fine Balance's backdrop. Ambedkar's birth anniversary was
being celebrated in faraway Hyderabad in the 1930s, as the Dalit
historian PR Venkataswamy notes in Our Struggle for Emancipation,
published in 1955. In the northern belt, Swami Achutanand of Kanpur,
who ran the newspaper Achut in the early 20th century, was considered
an architect of Dalit consciousness. Around the same time, Chandrika
Prasad Jigyasu, a Lucknow Chamar, was reconstructing Ravidas, a
revered ascetic born in the Chamar caste. By the turn of the 20th
century, in other words, Dalits and lower-order shudras in much of
northern, southern, eastern and western India were in protest mode,
resisting the overtures of the Congress-led nationalist/anti-colonial
movement and waging struggles more pertinent to their own liberation.
In fact, such challenges began emerging in the mid-19th century across
the subcontinent. Jotirao Phule (1827-90) was a pioneer in western
India who viciously attacked the Congress' Brahminical nationalism and
established the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth-Seekers' Society).

For Mistry, even in 1995, it is the same, worn script which combines
the fatalism of Thomas Hardy and the compassion and good intentions of
Premchand. Despite the fact that the novel is set in Bombay during the
time of the Dalit Panther movement, and despite the constant authorial
references to the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution,
the Chamars, Ishvar and Omprakash, who struggle as tailors, remain
oblivious to an unmissable figure like Ambedkar and the larger context
of Dalit politics. While in 2010 Joseph seems to use the sleight of
evenhandedness to nail all his characters with comedy and satire and
thus gets away with giving the worst end of his stick to Dalits,
Mistry uses the heavy hand of tragedy and melodrama to deal
devastating blows to all his characters: his Dalit protagonists, whose
entire families are wiped out in the unnamed village, are
vasectomised, rendered legless (Ishvar) and castrated (Om) during the
Emergency. As the novel ends, they are reduced to pathetic beggars;
their dignity, dreams and desires are seriously compromised to service
gritty realism.

The concern with what non-Dalit writers do with their Dalit characters
also brings us to Arundhati Roy's Velutha in The God of Small Things,
Amitav Ghosh's Fokir in The Hungry Tide and, more recently, his Kalua
in Sea of Poppies. Here, the writers seek to bestow agency on their
Dalit characters, but again their portrayals do not keep pace with an
awareness of the history of the evolving realities of Dalit
politics—specifically, the assertion of Dalit identity and the
consciousness of caste oppression. If from Premchand to Mistry we have
empathy sans agency, in Roy and Ghosh we see that the Dalit characters
lack distinct subjecthood prior to their involvement with high-caste
characters.

In The Hungry Tide, Fokir, a survivor of the 1979 Morichjhanpi
massacre, is an unspeaking, noble but informed savage who guides the
American ethnographer Piyali Roy. Under Piyali's loving gaze, Fokir's
beauty and deep knowledge of the backwaters unfold; there's
unconsummated passion between the two. Roy makes bold to have the
mostly silent Velutha, with his attractive, muscular Dalit body—honed
by the labour of carpentry, not in a gymnasium, as Roy says in an
interview—love and be loved by the Syrian Christian Ammu; but there's
still the worry over his speechless suffering and inevitable death for
transgressing the Love Laws. Velutha's beautiful body is offset by
those of his father, with one glass eye, and his brother, with a
broken spine.

In Sea of Poppies, Ghosh bestows agency on Kalua, a Chamar, who saves
Deeti, an upper-caste woman about to be consigned to sati, and goes on
to make a life with her. Ghosh, however, slips when he shows Kalua
reductively as all brawn, "a man of unusual height and powerful build"
who can trump anybody in a wrestling bout—which comes in handy as a
plot device to enable Kalua to steer Deeti to safety. Towards the end
of the novel, we see that Kalua has superhuman strength whereas
Kalua's lover, Deeti, the protagonist, is the one with the mind.
Ghosh, even as he gives story-altering agency to Kalua, seems happy to
depict a mind-body binary between Deeti and Kalua—a division of labour
that plays into both caste and gender stereotypes.

"Attempts to incorporate Dalits into the discourse of a novel are
presumably preceded by some crisis in the dominant social groups,"
says TM Yesudasan, a retired English professor from a small town in
Kerala, referring to the limited representation of Dalits in fiction
set in the state. Dalits, Yesudasan says, are invariably "the Mute":
"Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as
an authority over them, making them Mutes."

In Roy's novel, it is the divorced Ammu's crisis that sucks in Velutha
(quite like Deeti's crisis sucks in an almost orphaned, community-less
Kalua in Sea of Poppies). Velutha is perhaps the first Dalit character
in contemporary non-Dalit fiction who is overtly political, a former
Naxalite who takes part in a communist protest march, and has sex with
an upper-class woman. However, Yesudasan, situating The God of Small
Things among other classic 'Malayali Enlightenment' novels such as
Potheri Kunjambu's Saraswativijayam (1892), Thakazhi Sivasankara
Pillai's Randidangazhi (1948), and Sara Thomas' Deivamakkal (1982)
argues:

The fictioning of pratiloma [a lower caste man in a relationship with
an upper caste woman] is motivated by… the savarna desire to become
more hegemonic, represented by a savarna woman in distress who
seeks/finds a Dalit paramour, reversing the traditional boy-meets-girl
formula and committing an act of sacrilege. She crosses the boundary
on a cultural mission of hegemony and consecrates the sacrilege in
order to close in on Dalits. This is like "primitivism" in Western
modern art, turning for creative rejuvenation to the so-called
"primitive" cultures of others.

It is not that non-Dalit writers do not have the enlightened right to
portray Dalits; there cannot be any literary policing on such a
subject. But, as K Satyanarayana, who pioneered the teaching of a
Dalit Studies course in the English and Foreign Languages University
in Hyderabad, observed, "Despite their serious commitment, non-Dalit
writers miss the dreams, desires and visions of Dalits and objectify
them as either victims or romanticise them as great people. This
continues to be a serious problem."

To come back to the author we began with: Manu Joseph manages to
inaugurate a new template—he identifies his characters specifically as
Dalits (not as untouchable Chamars or Pulayas) and depicts them as
fully conscious of (but enraged by) caste oppression. Joseph's
rationale for making Ayyan Mani a Dalit makes for interesting reading.
In an interview with rediff.com, he says:

When Ayyan first formed in my head he was just the same but he was not
a Dalit. He had this anger and a comical interpretation of the modern
world and modern women and science and everything around him. But he
was not a Dalit. Then I asked myself, why is he so angry, can I give
him a justification? And the idea of a Dalit male who is trying to
create from thin air the first Dalit boy genius just fascinated me.

Consider what kind of social reality leads a writer like Joseph to
decide that Ayyan Mani ought to be a Dalit because he is "so angry."
Mani's specific kind of imagined 'Dalitness' is clearly a by-product
of the post-Mandal anti-reservation rage of the upper classes of
India, represented with deep sympathy by the Brahmin-controlled media.
Such a portrayal of a scheming Dalit—who is merely a prop in the
novel—would perhaps not have been possible in the period before the
1980s or the 1990s.

It is not that a Dalit character ought not to be dark and devious,
especially in a dark comedy. It is not as if one is looking for a
portrayal of triumph shorn of the complexities of human nature. What's
worrisome is how Mani's son Adi has to be a congenitally poor,
underperforming student with a hearing disability (to compound
matters), who has to cheat his way through tests and quiz
shows—lacking inherently in "merit."

Towards the end of Serious Men, a mindless Dalit mob with stones,
metals rods and sticks is on a rampage—breaking limbs and furniture
and everything in sight at the Institute of Theory and
Research—because the vile, anti-Dalit comments of the Brahmin
scientists there have been exposed. The marauding mob can hardly
engage in an intelligent battle—it has to use brawn. Earlier on,
Joseph does indicate how violent the angry Dalits of Bombay can be
when their sensibilities are offended. Either a Dalit-Buddhist can be
a conman whose aspirations are disproportionate to his talents, or
Dalits are congenitally disabled, or plain lumpen. In the West, such a
depiction of, say, blacks, would invite the charge of racism—a close
cousin of homegrown casteism. Here, such 'wit' may be legitimised with
endorsements in the form of awards and good sales figures.

What is worrying is that the majority of readers—most of them
presumably non-Dalits—seem undisturbed by the way Dalits have been
presented in fiction, whether by Premchand and Mulk Raj Anand or
contemporary writers like Ghosh, Roy, Mistry and Joseph. This
situation might have been more understandable—if no less
unacceptable—in a much earlier era. But there are no excuses today,
after a half-century that has witnessed the emergence of modern Dalit
writing, starting in Marathi in the post-Ambedkar period.

Ambedkar himself is said to have used the term Dalit only a few times
in his Marathi speeches, but the term really caught on only after the
emergence of the literature of the 1960s and the 1970s in Marathi. The
word 'Dalit' originates in Pali, where it means 'ground down' or
'broken', as in broken dal (lentils). In Pali Buddhist literature, the
term dalidda (daridra in Sanskrit) is used for the property-less poor
in contrast to the gahapati class of the rich.

The 1972 Dalit Panther manifesto defined Dalit in an all-encompassing
way: "A member of Scheduled Castes and Tribes, neo-Buddhist, the
working class, the landless and poor peasants, women, and all those
who are being exploited politically, economically, and in the name of
religion." As Gangadhar Pantawane, a Marathi Dalit ideologue, says:
"Dalit is not a caste; Dalit is a symbol of change and revolution. The
Dalit believes in humanism. He rejects existence of god, rebirth,
soul, sacred books that teach discrimination, fate, and heaven because
these make him a slave."

In popular and academic usage, 'Dalit' has come to function as a
politically correct substitute for terms like Scheduled Caste,
harijan, untouchable, or the Depressed Classes. But Dalit has an
emancipatory potential which caste and jati categories like Chamar and
Brahmin do not; Dalit is not a caste, but an anti-caste subjectivity
that someone born into untouchability occupies by rejecting caste.

The political and literary ferment of the 1970s remained confined to
the Marathi context—throwing up names like Namdeo Dhasal, Narayan
Surve, Baburao Bagul, Hira Bansode and Daya Pawar. It was only after
the 1990 Ambedkar centenary and the implementation of the Mandal
Commission recommendations that a Dalit literary upsurge began in
Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Punjabi and Malayalam. This coincided
with the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party, founded by Kanshi Ram and
now led by Mayawati, which gave nationwide currency to the term
'Dalit.'

It is not as if Dalits were not writing previously, but literature by
Dalits with an anti-caste consciousness seemed to need the charged
atmosphere of the 1990s. In its early phase, poetry, the short story
and autobiography remained the chosen modes of expression. But in the
past five to ten years, Dalit literature appears to have taken a new
turn, veering away from the first-generation writing that
overemphasised politics and protest. The work of this new generation,
however, is not easily or frequently translated into English—and
sometimes even resists the process. It is the journey of these writers
that needs our attention today.


------------------------------------

----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/

PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com

TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/

Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
ZESTCaste-digest@yahoogroups.com
ZESTCaste-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ZESTCaste-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[ZESTCaste] Dalits, upper castes face-off on temple entry

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/dalits-upper-castes-faceoff-on-temple-entry/744479/

Dalits, upper castes face-off on temple entry

Express News Service Posted online: Tue Feb 01 2011, 11:00 hrs
Chennai : Uthapuram, a nondescript village near Madurai that became
infamous over an 'untouchability wall', is in news again — this time
following tension between Dalits and upper caste Hindus over a temple
where the backward community is denied entry.

The Muthalamman temple, built and maintained by upper caste Hindus,
has always been out of bounds for the Dalits, and has been the cause
of skirmishes between the two communities.

A portion of the wall was demolished following protests by the Dalits
led by the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF), a
CPM-backed outfit, sometime back.

The Dalits had then demanded that the temple be thrown open to
everybody. But the community that owned the temple had opposed the
suggestion.

Taking up the cause of the Dalits again, the TNUEF and the CPM have
demanded that the temple doors should be thrown open to the backward
castes and also announced a temple-entry agitation on Monday.

After the Marxists took up the issue, the upper castes formed another
group to 'protect' the temple, leading to tension in the area.

The district collector issued prohibitory orders in Uthapuram village
and the surrounding areas. A large contingent of police was deployed
to prevent any untoward incident.

Despite warnings and requests from the district administration, the
party cadres, local Dalits and activists on Monday tried to forcefully
enter the temple.

Hundreds of people led by party MLA K Mahendran tried to enter the
temple premises but were prevented by the police, resulting in a
scuffle. Over a hundred people were arrested.


------------------------------------

----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/

PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com

TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/

Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
ZESTCaste-digest@yahoogroups.com
ZESTCaste-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ZESTCaste-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[ZESTCaste] Dalit oppression result of myriad years of caste system

 

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/analysis_dalit-oppression-result-of-myriad-years-of-caste-system_1502060

Dalit oppression result of myriad years of caste system
Published: Wednesday, Feb 2, 2011, 9:48 IST
By Manjula Pradeep | Place: Ahmedabad | Agency: DNA

Violence against Dalits is the outcome of thousands of years of
subjugation due to the existence of the caste system. But the
situation of Dalit women becomes more vulnerable due to the
intersectionality of caste with gender.

The oppression against Dalit women becomes multiple and is manifested
through extreme forms of atrocities committed against them by
non-Dalits and violence by the Dalits.

After the framing of the Indian constitution, very few laws have been
enacted to protect the rights of Dalits. One of the laws whereby some
relief is given to the rights of the Dalit women is sec 3 (1) (X1) and
3 (1) (X11) under prevention of atrocities against SC and ST Act,
1989. There are certain sections under Indian Penal Code (IPC) for the
protection of women in general, where Dalit women are also covered.

Some of the important sections relating to gender violence under the
IPC are sec. 304B (dowry death), sec. 306 (abetment to suicide) sec.
354 (assault or use of criminal force on a woman with intent to
outrage her modesty), sec. 376 (rape), sec. 498 A (punishment for
subjecting a married woman to cruelty).

Apart from the IPC sections there are no stringent laws for the
protection of the rights of women. A law to protect women against
domestic violence has been enacted in 2005, but it does not impose any
punishment to the accused.

Gujarat as an independent state is celebrating 50 years of its
existence and the prevention of atrocities Act enacted on January 30,
1990, has completed 20 years. The population of Dalits in Gujarat as
per the National Census of 2001 is 7.01 % of the total population.

While boasting about its development and progressiveness, the
government of Gujarat also needs to be questioned on the grounds of
implementation of laws and sections for the protection of Dalits and
Dalit women's rights.

As per the fifth report of the National Commission on SC and SC
of1998-1999, Gujarat stands second i.e. 62 cases per one lakh
population, in terms of volume of crime against Schedueld Castes, just
after Rajasthan.

Navsarjan, an organisation dedicated to the upliftment of Dalits, has
been addressing the issues of social justice and rights of Dalits and
Dalit women in particular for more than 20 years in Gujarat.

Through the legal aid programme, we provide legal aid, moral and
social support to the survivors and victims of caste and gender based
violence in Gujarat. Navsarjan has dealt with and is working on
several cases of extreme forms of violence against Dalits and Dalit
women.

One of these cases was the multiple rape of a female Dalit student in
the Patan PTC College. Although the six accused were sentenced to life
imprisonment, in the judgment, the court removed the sections under
the Atrocity Act, its stand being that the rape survivor was raped by
a non-Dalit and Dalit accused so it won't fit in as an atrocity case.

There are several cases of rape of Dalit girls and women being handled
by Navsarjan in the past few years and are being highlighted in the
media, but in how many cases is the criminal justice system ensuring
that the accused are punished under the law?

A case of sexual trafficking of a Dalit girl who was kidnapped from
the primary school in Bavla and sold off at many places is going on in
the Ahmedabad Sessions court for more than one year, but due to weak
criminal justice system, the survivor is still awaiting justice.

Another case of gang rape of a Dalit girl who was studying in the 12th
grade in a high school in Limbdi town is pending in the Limbdi
Sessions court. The rape survivor has sent an application to the state
legal department for appointment of Nainaben Bhatt as special public
prosecutor, but the state is denying appointing her without giving any
valid reasons.

The recent cases of gang rape and trafficking of young Dalit girls and
women set off alarm bells to the vulnerable position of Dalit women in
the state. Ultimately the question to the state is, "Is there an
effective criminal justice system in place to ensure safety and
dignity of the Dalit community and Dalit women especially"?

The time has come when Dalit women should be recognised as a distinct
social group rather than classifying them under the general women or
Dalit category. Accordingly the state should evolve and implement a
specific focus andprogrammes on Dalit women's rights within the
broader framework of the Dalit and women's empowerment agenda.

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/

PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com

TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/

Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/
.

__,_._,___

[ZESTCaste] Dalits demand judicial inquiry into attack by Meos

http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/02/stories/2011020265230500.htm

Dalits demand judicial inquiry into attack by Meos

Special Correspondent

Police yet to arrest those responsible for mayhem

Dalit families scared to return to the the village

JAIPUR: About a fortnight after the houses of Dalits were ransacked,
looted and set on fire in Husaipur village near Bhiwadi in Alwar
district, the police are yet to arrest those responsible for the
mayhem and ensure the return of Dalits driven out of the village
allegedly by the dominant Meo Muslims. A sick Dalit woman staying in a
damaged house has since lost her life reportedly under the impact of
the cold.

The Dalits have charged State Medical and Health Minister Aimaduddin
Ahmed Khan – elected to the Assembly from the Tijara constituency in
which Husaipur falls – with shielding the accused. The lack of action
by the district administration against the "politically
well-connected" accused has baffled not just the Dalits, but other
civil rights activists here as well.

Meos allegedly launched a daylight attack on the Dalits belonging to
the poor Meghwal community on January 19 following an exchange of fire
between the two sides, in which a Meo youth, Zahid, was killed. The
dispute started when a hen reared by a Dalit family was crushed under
the wheels of Zahid's tractor.

While the police have arrested five Dalit youths on the charge of
Zahid's murder, the assailants who torched Dalits' houses and looted
their belongings including cash and jewellery are still at large.
Tension prevails in Husaipur with the dominant Meos allegedly
threatening the few Dalit women and children, who are putting up in
the village under the police protection.

Hundreds of Dalits staged a demonstration at Tijara on Monday
demanding a judicial inquiry into the ransacking of their houses amid
what they described as the ruling Congress leaders' support and
protection to the aggressors. In a memorandum handed over to the
authorities, they demanded stern action against the police and
district officers for their "inaction".

Jaipur-based Centre for Dalit Rights (CDR) patron P. L. Mimroth, who
visited Husaipur on Sunday to attend a meeting between the two sides
arranged by the administration, told The Hindu here that the Dalit men
belonging to the 13 Meghwal families in the village were scared of
returning because all of them had been named as accused in the case of
Zahid's murder.

Sunday's meeting ended abruptly without any result as a crowd of
five-dozen Meos allegedly threatened the Dalit representatives and
swore to take revenge for the murder of Zahid. Mr. Mimroth, who met
Alwar Collector Ashutosh Pednekar, said extremist elements seemed to
be dominating on both the sides and the Sangh Parivar elements were
provoking Dalits in the region.

With the administration having failed to take any step for Dalits'
rehabilitation, Meos are reportedly organising caste panchayats in the
nearby villages such as Khedi, Karenda, Kharkadi, Sarey Kalan,
Chaupakni and Chauksi and issuing "open and unrestrained threats" to
Dalits.

Mr. Mimorth said while the Dalit youths – Rajvir, Bishan, Vikram,
Sanjay and Babulal – arrested in the murder case, who too had
sustained bullet injuries, were yet to be medically examined and
provided with treatment, the case against Meos registered on Dalits'
complaint had been "deliberately made very weak" by inserting mild and
irrelevant charges.

It was only on Monday that some relief in the shape of food and
clothes was provided to the Dalit families, 12 days after the
violence.


------------------------------------

----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/

PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com

TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/

Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
ZESTCaste-digest@yahoogroups.com
ZESTCaste-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ZESTCaste-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

[ZESTCaste] Activist Sandeep Pandey returns NREGS award in protest

 

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/activist-sandeep-pandey-returns-nregs-award-in-protest-82872

Activist Sandeep Pandey returns NREGS award in protest

NDTV Correspondent, Updated: February 02, 2011 09:54 IST

New Delhi: Magsaysay award winner and activist Sandeep Pandey has
decided to return the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(NREGS) achievement award along with the cash award of Rs 44,000 that
was presented to him in February 2009.

In a letter to Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, he said
that he is returning the award as no action has been taken yet in a
2009 incident in which dalit workers were beaten by the husband of a
former Panchayat leader in the presence of police when the workers had
come to inspect the NREGS documents related to their wages.

The main grievances of the dalit workers was that they had been paid
less than what was due to them. However, they were beaten up
mercilessly by a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) office-bearer.

Incidentally, the activist is returning the award on a day when
Congress is celebrating 5 years of NREGA.

Following is the letter written by acdtivist Sandeep to the Rural
Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh:

To: Honourable Shri Vilasrao Deshmukh
Minister for Rural Development
Government of India, New Delhi

Dated: 2nd February, 2011
From: Sandeep Pandey
A-893, Indira Nagar, Lucknow-226016
Telephone: 0522 2347365, Mobile: 9415022772
e-mail: ashaashram@yahoo.com

Sub: Returning the NREGS achievement award along with the Rs. 44,000
amount that was presented on 2nd February, 2009.

Respected Deshmukh ji,

As written to your predecessor Sh. C.P. Joshi on 22nd November, 2010,
and to you on 25th January, 2011, I am hereby returning the NREGS
achievement award along with the Rs. 44,000 amount that was presented
to me by Smt. Sonia Gandhi on 2nd February, 2009, as no action has
been taken yet in the incident involving beating of workers on 14/1/09
by husband of a (former) Gram Pradhan, Ghanshyam, in the presence of
police and irregularities in the Panchayat account of Aira Kake Mau,
Block Bharawan, Dist. Hardoi, U.P., including withdrawl of Rs.
6,20,000 by Ghanshyam in his name.

I apologize for any inconvenience caused due to my decision.

Sincerely,

(Sandeep Pandey)

Encl.: Cheque No. 100513, dated 1/2/2011, for Rs. 44,000 in the name
of Ministry of Rural Development (Govt. of India) from Asha Trust.

__._,_.___
Recent Activity:
----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/

PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com

TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/

Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/
.

__,_._,___

[ZESTCaste] Indian society can barely stand equality

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110201/jsp/opinion/story_13507439.jsp

A DIFFERENT POLITICS
- Indian society can barely stand equality
Anuradha Roy

The Swedish writer, Henning Mankell, was in Delhi this January, doing
what he does very well, telling stories. One of the stories he told
was of a morning years ago, during the civil war in Mozambique, when
he was walking on a dirt path in the hinterland. Everything there had
been burnt and destroyed in the fighting and, as he walked through
that scorched wasteland, he saw a man approach from the other side.
The man was starvation-thin. Most poverty-stricken people Mankell had
seen were unshod and in rags, yet this man was wearing shoes.

It was only when the man came much closer that the writer realized
those were not shoes at all. The man was barefoot. To conceal his
wretchedness he had painted the shape of shoes onto his feet.

Writers write the stories they want to read, said Mankell, and he is
one with all writers in this. At the same time, whatever he is writing
— theatre or fiction — the singular image inspiring him on is those
painted shoes, the human need for dignity in the worst deprivation.

Writers who situate their work in war zones like 9/11 or the Holocaust
are revered as "political". Mankell writes crime fiction and his
novels are not concerned with apocalyptic, epochal violence. Because
people think in genres, he is not generally seen as a political
writer. But his books are deeply concerned with the role of society in
crime, about the violence people do to each other, the violence in the
home, the violence caused by bigotry or poverty. Others who write of
the violence of the everyday — the small, individual acts that corrode
our daily lives — are also seen as unpolitical; quiet, domestic,
feminine, and Jane Austenish are the usual labels with which to pat
down writings on the subdued savagery of mundane experience.

Best known as the writer of the Kurt Wallander series of Swedish
detective novels that are translated into 32 languages and sell
millions, Mankell could live on an island of his own. Instead, he
gives away half his income to charitable causes and spends half of
each year in Maputo, Mozambique, where he is artistic director of the
Teatro Avenida. His theatre, like his life, is immersed in social and
political issues; he was recently part of the Gaza flotilla attacked
by the Israeli army.

In my small Uttarakhand town there are also, surprisingly, several
Scandinavians — not of Mankell's eloquence or fame, but equally at
home in an alien culture. It began with one couple, who came many
years ago to set up a trekking company. (I will call them Eva and
Tor.) Now there are several from Norway and Denmark too.

I first encountered these Scandinavians when I was invited by Eva to
'open house' for Christmas. It was a brightly lit, cosy home, and was
quite literally open: for the first time I met — socially — the
neighbouring dhobi, the town's main electrician, and our plumber.
There was also a school principal, a retired civil servant, and a
doctor. We ate home-baked cookies and rice pudding and chatted. It
felt novel. It is almost inconceivable, given the extreme hierarchies
in our society, for middle-class Indians to spend an evening with
their plumber, however nice the plumber.

The unselfconscious egalitarianism of that evening seems evident in
everything the Scandinavians do. They are religious, and I went once
to a sort of bhajan-sandhya they organized in a hall where hymns to
Jesus were sung in Hindi to the twanging of a sitar. Again, they
invited the whole town, disregarding disparities in social status.
They live in humble houses in working-class neighbourhoods when they
can afford bungalows. Eva's children run wild with the local children,
always in and out of the home of the electrician who is their
next-door neighbour. Eva is a Viking-blonde woman who could be singing
German in Wagner's Rheingold but speaks a Hindi that is fluent, even
slangy. Her friends wear desi clothes, their daily food is daal-bhaat.
At Diwali time, they are enthusiastic and noisy with the fireworks.

Apart from the trekking, which provides their livelihood, the
Scandinavians run two small NGOs. One of these teaches rural youth
spoken English — the course is structured so they learn to cope with
social situations and handle job interviews. It is such a success they
hardly have enough room.

Their other NGO makes greeting cards. I visited their workshop one
afternoon, at the start of winter: three rented rooms in a ramshackle
building. The walls were painted a sparkling lemon and covered end to
end with durries and big heaters. The workers — all destitute or
widowed village women — sat cross-legged on mattresses, surrounded by
paper, beads, other tools of trade. There was an atmosphere of
camaraderie and hard work. They were being supervised both by the
Scandinavians and by Indian volunteers responsible for buying the
material to make the cards with, and for quality control. The cards
are eventually sold in Norway for a profit that is put back into the
NGO.

The NGO started small, just two women in Eva's living room. Now, in an
odd paradox, much as Gujjars agitate for low-caste status to be able
to get the benefit of reservations, women in our town clamour to be
seen as more deservingly wretched than the neighbour who has been
given a job by the NGO. The competition to outwail the employed is
serious, because it is not only the job. The NGO also pays for the
education of the women's children. Once a year, they take their
workers out of town for a day of pleasure — lunch at a fancy
restaurant, boat rides on the lake.

One of the old workers said to me, "This is the difference between
foreigners and Indians. If I was working for an Indian sanstha, they
would not heat the room, they would not cover the floors to make it
comfortable for us. They would never take us on an outing. Indian NGOs
would eat up all the extra money to buy themselves cars and new
buildings."

Of course this is not true, but it is the perception all the same.
There are many Indian NGOs equally committed, perhaps as egalitarian.
But Indian society is not. I have no way of knowing what society is
like in Scandinavia, but in our town Eva and Tor's lack of hierarchy
does not go down well with some of the middle class. There are
whisperings that it is not innocuous, their way of life; it is a
devious way of converting illiterate people to Christianity, by giving
them "ideas", by showing them a different way of life. The disaffected
women who are not given jobs at the NGOs add to the whisperings with
innuendoes about why some women get jobs and some don't.

It has never gone beyond speculation, though, in our town. Another
foreigner in a different part of the country was not so lucky. Graham
Staines in Orissa had done social work among its poor for 30 years.
Everyone knows what happened one day in 1999, while he slept in his
van with his two sons, aged six and ten. In one of Mankell's novels,
there is a vivid description of a woman set alight in a rapeseed
field. If Mankell's hands were not already full with Mozambique, he
would have felt at home in India.

Unlike our Scandinavians, Staines did missionary work too. Missionary
work is not illegal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad makes determined
efforts to convert adivasis to Hinduism. But Staines's killer Dara
Singh, says our Supreme Court, was only trying to "teach Staines a
lesson about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals
to Christianity".

Inequality is woven into our social fabric. Khap panchayats encourage
the killing of people who marry out of caste. Missionaries are killed
for showing marginalized people a different life. The man in whose
honour Mankell was delivering his Delhi lecture was Safdar Hashmi,
killed exactly 10 years before Staines, on January 1, 1989, for acting
in a play that demanded rights for workers.

Everything said, Henning Mankell is safer and better off doing his
political theatre in Mozambique.
The author's second novel, The Folded Earth, will be published in February


------------------------------------

----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/

PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com

TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/

Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
ZESTCaste-digest@yahoogroups.com
ZESTCaste-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ZESTCaste-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/