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Saturday, February 13, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Mumbai's Dalits upset with Rahul Gandhi

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2010/feb/070210-rahul-gandhi-mumbai-visit-dalits-upset.htm

Mumbai's Dalits upset with Rahul Gandhi
By: Varun SinghDate: 2010-02-07

Dalits angry that Rahul Gandhi had time to meet their community
members in UP but not in Mumbai

Rahul Gandhi might have won Mumbai over by commuting in a Mumbai
local, but he disappointed thousands of Ambedkar supporters waiting
for him at the Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar slums in Ghatkopar (East).

According to the Ambedkar supporters from Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar,
Rahul Gandhi has shown discrimination. "We were all eagerly waiting
for him to come to our homes, our gullies at least to see how we live.
In the north, he even ate food with them. Here we couldn't catch a
glimpse of the leader, we were forced to stay indoors
and were not allowed to come on the road near the stage," said D B
Kedre, resident of Ramabai Nagar.

Rahul Gandhi was in Mumbai on Friday and had visited the
Dalit-dominated colony to offer flowers to the newly erected statue
of Dr B R Ambedkar. He then met with the Indian Youth Congress members
present. Residents argued that if he had to meet his members he could
have done so some other place. "Why did he chose our area if he
didn't want to meet us? We feel humiliated. We were all eagerly
waiting for him so that we could discuss our problems with an
influential leader," said Vinod Kamble, another resident of the area.

However, Ramesh Ahire, leader of the Tarun Mitra Mandal said, "Every
one in the area was invited. We had erected huge hoardings. If people
couldn't make it, it's their fault. There were lakhs of people present
and the visit was a success."

September 2009: Rahul Gandhi visited Shravasti district in UP and even
spent the night at the house of the Gram Pradhan Chedi Pasi

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXg9pqG4kk&feature=player_embedded

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[ZESTCaste] Telangana dream sours (Kancha Ilaiah)

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/dc-comment/telangana-dream-sours-818

Telangana dream sours

February 13th, 2010
By Kancha Ilaiah, DC Correspondent

The movement for Telangana has now touched a peak. It has also become
a movement with unique characteristics. Masses belonging to all walks
of life have come out to the streets with their cultural symbols. We
can see dalit-Bahujans beating drums and dholaks, the Other Backward
Classes (OBCs) with their ploughshares and bullock carts, shepherds
with their flock, toddy tappers with their moku (rope assembly used to
climb palm trees) and muttadu (the belt they wear to keep their
hatchet) and stone-breakers with their own iron artefacts.
The festive game of Bathukamma (a women's festival celebrated mainly
during Dasara, pro-Telangana activists are performing the Bathukamma
on the highways as a form of protest and to highlight their Telangana
identity) was also enacted. It was being projected as a cultural
symbol.
During the age of Nizam, Bathukamma used to be enacted by the Shudras
— mostly OBCs. Dalits were not allowed to participate as they were
seen as pollutants even by the OBCs of lower order. And the upper
caste women — particularly Brahmins, Komatis, Reddys and Velamas —
would not participate as it was seen as a Shudra festive game. They
thought it was below their dignity.
Now suddenly some Dorasanlu (women of dominant castes) went to this
play as a symbol of the agitation. Is it for Telangana or for power?
The most interesting thing is that while the lower castes are using
their cultural symbols to achieve a separate Telangana, the members of
former feudal families are playing the politics of agitation. We also
see a surprising unity between some Reddy and Velama political lords.
The whole attempt by these two caste forces is to control the
political joint action committee (JAC) that is driving the Telangana
agitation. Some academicians have also been drawn in to mediate
between those two otherwise politically warring castes.
It is as if the stereotype of future Telangana is being played out —
"We will play politics and you should play Dhoom Dham, Bathukamma and
drums".
And some of these leaders are collecting huge amounts of money, mostly
to build their family's "political economy" while distributing
pittance to ring leaders from the lower castes.
As the balladeer Gaddar rightly says "kanche kaada nuvvu, collection
kaada neenu" (you should protect the fields and I will reap the
crops). But some intellectuals keep on saying, "Let us not talk about
any immorality — after all to achieve Telangana such small things need
to be done".
The most surprising aspect in the movement is the entry of the Maoist
upper caste elements in this "more collection, less distribution"
model of political economy.
In the name of achieving Telangana all ideological battles have been
set aside. One upper caste Maoist intellectual went to the extent of
saying that the JACs from village upwards were working like "Maoist
communes".
What this really means is that the sons — even some daughters — of
upper caste landlords have come back to the villages to head and lead
the JACs by "usurping" the legitimate village sarpanchs. Now Telangana
has come under the raj of the upper caste JACs.
Some former Maoist activists have become leaders of the Telangana
Rashtra Samiti and are praising their leader for conducting Yajnas,
Yagas and Kratus in the party office. He also walks around with a huge
Bal Thackeray type bottu (tilak) on the forehead and they seem to be
enjoying the neo saffron style of the leader.
But the Muslims are scared of these visuals and the Bharatiya Janata
Party probably sees a new rival in the region if it becomes a state.
The emergence of the Shiv Sena or of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena kind
of political entity in the region does not seem to be a problem for
the Maoists and they too seem to think that there is just one point
agenda — we must achieve Telangana and hand over power to "our
people".
What really worries all of them is the student movement mainly headed
by the dalit-Bahujan youth. This has become an inconvenient factor.
There is competition to buy them off or to make them foot soldiers.
There is a resistance from the students but one does not know for how
long the youth can sustain that resistance.
We also see the political JAC compromising with Centre and welcoming
the Srikrishna Committee without it making any reference to Telangana
state formation. Mr K. Jana Reddy welcomes the committee and K.
Chandrasekhar Rao approves it in silence. The Telugu Desam keeps
playing the double game quite skillfully. The Union home minister, Mr
P. Chidambaram, is doing some arm-twisting as he has a clear
understanding about "the unholy alliance between Maoists and money
collectors".
What is really painful are the deaths of about 300 youth and the cases
lodged against 10,000 students.
All these parties together have done is to put forth a chekka bomma —
a wooden doll — to speak for them.
For the failure of the 1969 Telangana movement we had someone to blame
— Marri Chenna Reddy. Now we cannot blame anybody.
At least those who played politics with a wooden doll in their hands
got sufficient money to flight the next election in the name of
Telangana.
Do the Maoists think that their class enemy has now become a class
friend because of Telangana's cut-throat politics?
Let them explain this to the people — the real people who played
Bathukamma, cooked their food on the roads, beat their chests and
drums and lost 300 of their children as well.

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[ZESTCaste] A Neeli Sene to take on the swayamsevaks

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264247

karnataka: Dalits
Push Comes To...
A Neeli Sene to take on the swayamsevaks
Sugata Srinivasaraju

Dalits in Karnataka have raised a 'self-defence, peace-keeping force'
The force called the Neeli Sene (Blue Army) will be a counter to the RSS
The first batch of 50 volunteers have been trained in Belgaum
By 2010-end, the Sene hopes to have 3,000 volunteers across the state
***

The Dalits in Karnataka are raising a 'Neeli Sene' (Blue Army). It's
said to be a "self-defence" force for "peace-keeping" and they say the
'blue' is not to be mistaken with that of the bsp's ujala colours but
as denoting the even and azure expanse of the sky. The they,
incidentally, is the Dalit Sangharsha Samithi (Bheemvaad), for decades
now an organisation representing the socio-economic interests of the
Dalit community. The first unit of the Blue Army was inaugurated in
Bangalore on January 26, fifty young men from Belgaum dressed in blue
uniforms and navy blue berets alighting at the city railway station
and marching smartly across the city's main thoroughfares.

That said, there's no discounting the Sene's raison d'etre. According
to DSS state convenor Mohan Raj, the Blue Army was raised specifically
to counter the growing clout of the RSS in the state. "We feel that
communal forces have been strengthened after the bjp came to power.
The RSS and other parivar organisations have a free run now. We would
normally expect the police to protect the Dalits, backward classes and
minorities, but now that does not seem to be happening," he says.

The idea of the Sene first came up at a September 2007 meeting of the
DSS state committee in Raibag, Belgaum. The members during the course
of the meeting argued that if the RSS could march on the streets with
'lathis', why shouldn't they be raising a force that protects the
spirit of the Constitution and the privileges guaranteed therein. They
were also deeply concerned about Dalit youth in rural areas being
misled and becoming insensitive to the needs of the community.

The DSS has been putting in a lot of effort to train their Blue Army.
Damodar Gasti, formerly of the Mahar Regiment, oversaw the training of
the first batch of 50 volunteers in Belgaum. Training starts early at
5 am in the morning at the Shahu Maharaj Palace grounds. The palace
grounds hold special significance because Shahu Maharaj was apparently
the first to introduce reservations for backward communities, as early
as 1902. These men also attended an ideological camp every fortnight
where they read and discussed Ambedkar and Jyotiba Phule. The first 50
men were chosen from more than a hundred volunteers. The DSS insisted
that those chosen at least be matriculates and over 18. A second unit
is to be inaugurated in the RSS hotbed of Udupi on February 28. By the
end of the year, they plan to have about 3,000 volunteers in the Blue
Army in most districts of the state.

All this effort, of course, has not gone down well with the home
department. When contacted, Karnataka home minister Dr V.S. Acharya,
himself an RSS swayamsevak had this to say about the new Sene: "The
RSS is a nationalist organisation. It is not against anybody. I do not
know what threat the Dalits face in Karnataka. There are no problems
here, Karnataka is a law-abiding state. Nobody has any need to worry."
Madara Swamiji, pontiff of the 'untouchable' Madiga seminary in
Chitradurga, though, begs to differ. "In principle, I endorse the DSS
move to raise a self-protection force. In fact, our own math is
training small batches of youth in communally sensitive villages to
protect our people. The state police are not in favour of the Dalits,
they are dependent on the government for promotions and medals."

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[ZESTCaste] Meal row over food cooked by Dalit

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100213/jsp/nation/story_12100755.jsp

Meal row over food cooked by Dalit

OUR CORRESPONDENT
Bhubaneswar, Feb. 12: Untouchability has reared its ugly head once
again in Kendrapara district, as upper caste students have stopped
attending classes just because the school appointed Dalit women to
cook midday meals.

Authorities of the government-run Maa Marichandi Nodal School in
Rajnagar's Sanamarichapalli village engaged a local self-help group
(SHG) for cooking the midday meals.

Trouble began on January 19 when the SHG withdrew the two previous
cooks and engaged two Dalit women — Ketaki Sethi and Sebati Sethi — to
prepare the meals.

A section of upper caste parents objected to their appointment and
even had arguments with the school authorities.

However, when the headmaster refused to change the new cooks, the
parents turned violent. "Last week, they even locked up the two cooks
inside the kitchen for about an hour till we were able to free them,"
headmaster Rabindra Nayak said.

Following the incident, the cooks filed an FIR at the Rajnagar police
station. "We have arrested one Niranjan Pradhan. He was produced at
the Pattamundei court and sent to judicial custody after being denied
bail," said inspector-in-charge Maheshwar Sethi.

Pradhan was a member of the village education committee, added Sethi.

Following the incident, upper caste students refused to eat meals at
the school and cooking was stopped for some days but it has resumed
now and the same women are cooking it.

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[ZESTCaste] anti-black mass culture in kerala

By JOE .

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Joe MS <joems@rediffmail. com> wrote

Subject:Jayaram and Tamil....

Jayaram and Tamil: Some scattered thoughts on the anti-black mass culture in Kerala.
The recent 'jest 'of film star Jayaram against the Tamil as black skinned , buffalo like and therefore less human has been taken as just a joke by the cultural scene of Kerala. Not only that sympathy was expressed for the poor victim that he is, inadvertently cracking an innocent joke and thereby exposing himself to the ire of 'violent' Tamil,even solidarity was expressed with the right to crack such jokes by the 'ordinary folks'. The latent ideological and cultural premises hidden behind this whole controversy needs to be enquired into to understand the reality. The natural outburst of violence against Jayaram for the upholding dignity of the Tamil has been understood by the 'superior' Malayali culture as typical of them who are inferior, passionate, emotional, devoid of political education , filmy so on and so forth. The intellectual community of Kerala was not less.

The height of irony was the sigh of relief heaved by Sebastian Paul, the(retired? )left liberation theologist, in his newspaper article in Madhayamam (dated 12th February), for the subsumption of controversy as the fight against Jayaram has subsided in Tamilnadu. Here he presumes that Jayaram only made a joke and absolved him of all sins( because of the kinship called Malayali fraternity), and that the Tamils reacted violently and unnecessarily , which is nothing but parochialism. This is no wonder. At the level of mass culture, cracking of jokes and the wit mania , epitomised by mimics culture , and internalised by Malyalee to fill the philosophical void in his competitive life, is simply racist,. Popular culture as practiced in Kerala, is naked racism, which would have called forth acts of reprimand even from a capitalist state in the west.. And all such jokes insulting the physically challenged to the people of subaltern culture has escaped
criticism of the left-oriented Kerala

.For the left any act of subversion which questions the status-quo of Sanskrit-Brahminica l cultural dominance is smacking of parochialism and jingoism and therefore not progressive. This is due to parroting of historical materialism without understanding its real potential, for liberation and blind application without understanding the Indian context. Yes, it is true Marxism has the huge prowess to help in transforming and liberating a society. But only if applied with ingenuity.

The so-called post revolutionary mainstream culture of Kerala culture constituted by mainstream leftist too, has always been Brahmanical, pro-Sanskrit, pro-Hindi, patriotic and as a corollary posed against all discourse hostile to the dominanant discourse. The making of Sebastian Paul, despite being claimant to the revolutionary status of marginalised section with in the Christian communityre, shares the same outlook in aping the hierarchical configuration of the Siriyan hegemony, especially in its nurturing of caste system, And his stint with parliamentary leftism , would have instilled its theoretical approach in him, which abounds in 'bhadralokism'. The mainstream Malaya lee's canonical identity has been cultivated , and ideologically rooted in a kind of anti Dravidiansim , the pioneers of whom were naturally leftists. India is a country in which epidermically determined racism is still a reality, despite claims to the contrary from the left.
The scientific rigour exhibited by their intelligentsia in disproving the historical accuracy of Aryan-Dravidian divide, only as a colonial construct and discourse ,and the scant disregard for the efficacy of such a dichotomy at least in the cultural domain, is inspired by ulterior motives .

The need for a secular Dravidian myth, subversive and libertarian, was exemplified by the practice of Periyar The emotionality of romanticism in the mythicization of Che proved positive and progressive for the world. So there is nothing wrong in the Dravidian myth cultivated by Periyar, celebrated and manifest in the counter cultural practice of Keemayana, extolling the virtues of Ravana, the villain of the brahmanical lore, Ramayana. But all these efforts were sidelined by the left in their nation building enthusiasm and theoretical gratitude , engraved in the unconscious, due to the organic link to Brahmansim,( maybe existing as a scholastically oriented secular atheistic practice, in effect working as detached denouement in a genetically ordained socially stratified scenario,) to the aestheticised obscuranticism of Gandhian ideology. It has informed their outlook and practice, the result was , the mainstream culture of Kerala, of which the left
takes pride in, which is Brahmanical , skin-based; marginalises , dalit and adiviasis, and nakedly practice slavery to the people of dark-skin vagrants seeking job there. Jayaram is only the tip of the iceberg. (See the naked practice of Brhamanism in the nexus between Jayaram, kamala Hassan and N..Ram(the icon of such leftist culture exemplified in his secular atheistic, devoid of cultural rationality, despite their mutually absent save real acquaintance, facilitated through the working of social capital)The radical left, constituted by the self same class forces, despite some originality in introspection and nobility, stops short of owning up a Dravidian spirit.. The endless masturbation of the post-modern brigade, with European born anti Euro-centric theory, results in only sharing the crumps of state benevolence. .

Another incident which bears testimony to the Savarna hegemonic oeuvre of intelligentsia in India is the muted response/silence/ participation of the urban intelligentsia in the recent perpetration of genocide on the 'Dravidian race , by the powers that be in the subcontinent. Kerala , despite being , the bordering state, and which can boast of its intellectuals as a community, and which parrots an Immanuel levinas to Badiou, did not even take notice of such happenings , and shared the mainstream view. This is because the cultural sphere of Kerala , ploughed as it is by Marxism, is organically linked to the right , as the intellectual praxis here is without the radical rupture with in consciousness, , and practically amounts to economism. The Malayali identity is largely built and defined as contradictory to , distinct from, and as a counter-point to the Tamil(read black skinned), ridiculed as linguistically chauvinistic .Thus it was genetically
integrated in to the Sankritised terrain.The inherent tribalism , immediately inferred by Malayalee , to the angry nationalist outburst of Tamils to Jayaram's invectives , will be termed as jingoistic parochialism( see Nehru's invective on Tamil movement as 'Kattu Mirandi').The anti-Brahmanic cultural content in the struggles of periyar, his anti-casteist , anti-Hindi position etc. were never looked at with respect by the right and left intelligentsia . In fact Periyar's Dravidian rationality provides avenues for a counterculture , with its Dravidian lore, a libertarian site on which to wage the struggle of subaltern, oppressed culturally, thereby assimilating the multitudinal streams antagonistic to the dominant culture into its fold, and creating a space towards a radical rupture, extremely necessary to break from historic and ideological oppression, and to create a new proletariat , liberated from ideological subjugation of Brahmanism.
Like Black bolshevism, propounded by Harry Haywood .in the US, what India need is a Marxism dialectically linked to a Dravidian cultural rationalism with its emancipatory potential.
By joe

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Saturday, February 13, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Mumbai's Dalits upset with Rahul Gandhi

[ZESTCaste] Telangana dream sours (Kancha Ilaiah)

[ZESTCaste] A Neeli Sene to take on the swayamsevaks

[ZESTCaste] Meal row over food cooked by Dalit

[ZESTCaste] anti-black mass culture in kerala

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