Saturday, July 31, 2010

Re: [ZESTCaste] The Dalit evangelists

 

JAIBHIM

I AM BHUPALAN, AN AMBEDKARITE, DESERTED HINDUISM, EMBRACED BUDDHISM, GAZETTE PUBLISHED WITH MY CHILDRENS.I LIKE TO JOIN WITH DHRM.
--- On Sun, 6/20/10, Siddhartha Kumar <mailsiddhartha.k@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Siddhartha Kumar <mailsiddhartha.k@gmail.com>
> Subject: [ZESTCaste] The Dalit evangelists
> To: "zestcaste" <zestcaste@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Sunday, June 20, 2010, 6:08 PM
> http://www.indianexpress.com/news/The-Dalit-evangelists/636003
>
> The Dalit evangelists
>
> Shaju Philip Posted online: Sun Jun 20 2010, 00:16 hrs

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[ZESTCaste] Now, caste wars over mid-day meal in UP

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Now-caste-wars-over-mid-day-meal-in-UP/articleshow/6239047.cms

Now, caste wars over mid-day meal in UP

Manjari Mishra, TNN, Jul 31, 2010, 01.03am IST

LUCKNOW: Caste war in UP seems to be assuming different dimensions,
proves recent spate of mid-day meal boycott in UP government schools.
The two major incidents at Sonbhadra and Kannauj which led to a lunch
hour rebellion in more than a dozen schools over a month, were
triggered off by a power-play between Dalits and backwards while the
`savarnas' -- in minuscule minority -- were relegated to the role of
fringe players.

Investigation carried out by a three-member team from Ambedkar
Mahasabha has thrown up quite a few surprises. On June 20, the
government school in Ghosra Sonbhadra hit headlines after its students
refused to partake lunch prepared by a Dalit cook. Ghosra, the team
discovered, was a hamlet with a predominant Kharvar, a Scheduled
Tribe, population. There are 70 Kharvar households as against 40
houses belonging to the Chamars.

The break up, says general secretary of AMS Veena Maurya, was Chero
(SC) 25, Turia (SC) two, Gond (ST) eight, Agaria (ST) 10 families. The
village has only one Baniya and five Yadav families, Maurya said.

The trouble began when the Kharvar kids refused to touch the lunch
cooked by Prabhawati, a Chamar by caste. In retaliation, the Chamar
group in the school decided to boycott the meal Phoolwati, the Kharwar
cook, had prepared, says Maurya. She squarely blamed the parents for
polluting the impressionable minds by transferring their age-old
prejudices.

Sub-casters within SCs and STs also have their own hierarchy system,
says police officer turned social activist Darapuri. So the Pasi or
Chamar community will not have any social ties with Valmikis, Khatiks
will maintain a distance with Chamars. Unless this issue is sorted out
within the SC and ST segment, the larger issue of unteachability and
exploitation cannot be tacked, he said.

For instance, in Bhadurpur Manjhganva in Kannauj, food cooked by a
Valmiki woman led to public violence when Dhobis, the dominant
community, laid a siege to the school. Similarly, in neighbouring
Haribhanpur headmaster BS Kushwaha, who shared a meal cooked by a
Valmiki to set an example before his students, became an outcaste in
Chamar/Pasi dominated village. Even in the affected belt of Auraiyya,
Kanpur Dehat, Mahoba, etc., the caste equation is more or less
similar.

Incidentally, till three years ago SC/ST cooks were more of exception.
A survey by Right to Food Committee in 2007 detailed that out of the
216 schools they examined, the ratio of SC/ST and Muslim cooks was
17%, 3% and 1%, respectively. Rest of the 79% work force hailed from
upper castes. Even then MDM strikes were pretty common.

Former chairperson of UP SC/ST Commission Shriram Arun suggests
community fine and stringent action against guilty to end the menace.
This could serve as effective deterrent and put an end to the evil, he
adds.

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[ZESTCaste] 5-year-old raped: bandh in Mumbai Dalit colony

http://hindu.com/2010/07/30/stories/2010073063081500.htm

National

5-year-old raped: bandh in Mumbai Dalit colony

Staff Reporter

Mumbai: Residents of Ramabai Nagar, a Dalit colony in suburban
Ghatkopar, observed a bandh on Thursday in protest against the rape of
a minor girl.

Ritesh Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Police, told The Hindu that
there was no untoward incident. He said the accused, who lived
opposite the girl's house, was a minor himself.

A case of rape has been registered and the boy, under arrest, has been
sent to a remand home.

Mr. Kumar said the girl belonged to a Scheduled Caste. Asked if the
police had invoked provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled
Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, he said, "It is a matter of
investigation."

Chintaman Gangurde, a resident and Republican Party of India (RPI)
member, said the five-year-old victim, whose father was a labourer,
was recuperating in a civic hospital. The colony has been branded a
sensitive area ever since the massacre of Dalits by a police officer
in 1997.

Police bandobust was maintained at Ramabai Nagar throughout the day.


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[ZESTCaste] A powerful literary testimony to the angst, suffering and attempted rebellion of a dalit community in Punjab…

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article541961.ece

In search of form
Mridula Garg

books and literature

A powerful literary testimony to the angst, suffering and attempted
rebellion of a dalit community in Punjab…

Before I review Changiya Rukh (Against the Night), I must record my
strong objection to the semantic quibble asserting that caste is not
on par with race; or else, I lose the right to review this or any
dalit work. Caste-based discrimination is one of the worst forms of
racism because it is practised against one's own countrymen. Like
race, it is determined by birth and does not end with death but passes
from generation to generation. In theory, it is possible to escape
caste (unlike race) by changing one's religion but in practice, we
know, caste follows us into whichever religion we convert to.

At first sight, Balbir Madhopuri's Changiya Rukh is a dalit
autobiography like many others with all the ingredients that shock and
shame non-dalit Indians; or ought to. The unimaginable, horrific
struggle for the barest minimum of survival and the daily
brutalisation of human instincts are etched as is the incomprehensible
capacity of people to survive, escape the tentacles of caste
repression and become people of consequence.

In the words of Madopuri himself:

Many a time

I'm dwarfed

Like a tree cut at the top

Over whom passes the power line

I get pruned out of season

When in passing

Someone is curious to know what my caste is.

Sensitive portrayal

Changiya Rukh is a powerful testimony to the suffering, angst and
attempt at rebellion of the dalit community of chamars in Punjab but
it is something more. It is this something, which makes it significant
as a literary work. It is a lively chronicle of a host of people, each
significant and memorable, not as a representative of a caste in one
part of the country but as an individual.

There is the sensitive boy, planting a mango sapling, acquired with
great labour, in his mud hut to have it roughly snatched by his father
(Bhaiya), telling him not to ape upper-caste Jats. "My heat wilted
like the plant. A storm had blown away the flowers of my desire. Even
so, I thought we too should have a tree in our courtyard, so the
sparrows, doves, and parrots may come to perch and bicker on the
branches." I heard the future poet in the little child as I read the
lines and my heart wilted too.

He is too small to understand the meaning of caste or of defilement,
for which he is taunted, abused, beaten, and denied basic human needs.
But he has no option but to understand quickly or suffer more
humiliation.

There is the dalit grandmother, Daadi Haro who, by sheer force of
personality and an acrid tongue, holds her own against everyone. "If a
Jat woman (or any other woman) passed near her without wishing her,
she would say loudly, "Wonder which arrogant bitch just passed by."
Daadi's authority is unchallenged. One day, Taro Tai (who belonged to
a Jat family) and Chachi Chinni are on the swing … when Daadi sees
them, no one knows what happened but she shouts, "'Is this the only
work left for these wanton women? They are not bothered about their
husbands… Loose women! Bad ones!' The swing stopped… the onlookers
slunk away."

Still around

There is the rebellious Phumman, who tells a Jat landlord, "Threaten
someone else; those days are gone when all of us bowed and scraped
before you. Think before you speak or else I'll pluck your beard."
Alas, 'those days' are not really gone, as Madopuri realises when he
becomes an assistant editor in the city. "It seemed to me that the
curse of caste had permeated our society and there was no indication
of its dying out soon. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the Muhay
formula may be the most effective method of establishing social
equality." The Muhay formula is no different from the Phumman formula,
deliver a sharp slap, termed a 'humanist slap on the face of
casteism', by the writer. Muhay gave a Punjabi poet a resounding slap,
when he kept taunting him about his caste, saying, after retirement,
he could sit under the Neem tree and polish shoes.

Seeds of hope

The oppressed and hapless father, Bhaiya, too declares time and again
in the chamarli of the village, "No one has the time to listen to our
plea that this caste system was not ordained by god, but has been made
by man for his own selfish motives." Though his ranting and railing
serves no purpose and he often ends up thrashing his sons, his
rejection is heartening. As is his instilling a yearning in Madhopuri
to study and escape the drudgery of his birth and help others do it
too, through political action. The mother, bua, and other women are
more down to earth. They accept their so-called fatebut find ways of
dealing with it with courage, determination, even benevolence. They
somehow manage to retain their person-hood and deal with life as women
and mothers do, anywhere, anytime. There are innumerable minor
characters who, transcending the caste-stereotypes, show their human
face, to make the writer title a chapter as 'an oasis in a desert'.

As I read this personal saga full of brutality and pathos, I could not
help wish that Balbir Madhopuri had used the powerful yet intensely
humane material, gleaned from personal experience, to weave a novel
rather than an autobiography. It would have given him the freedom to
edit and prune the repetitive and sometimes inane details. It is a
paradox of human psychology that fictionalising facts does not reduce
but increases their credibility and poignancy. A well-honed novel has
a greater impact as a chronicle of truth than a recital of unedited
events. I could see a vibrant and unique novel straining to get out of
the pages of this autobiography. The fact that I finally read it as a
novel is a tribute to the literary sensibility of the writer and the
compassionate participation of the translator Tripti Jain.

Changiya Rukh, Against the Night: An autobiography, Balbir Madhopuri,
translated from Punjabi by Tripti Jain, OUP, 2010, p.215, Rs. 395.


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[ZESTCaste] Standing tall

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Standing-tall/654004

Standing tall
Rohan Swamy

Posted online: Mon Jul 12 2010, 00:04 hrs

For 84-year-old Prabhakar Joshi, it was Dr Ambedkar's will to work
against all odds that inspired him to pen the leader's biography in
Sanskrit
His unassuming modest appearance and a constant smile on his face are
an instant ice breaker. And when the octogenarian begins to talk about
his tryst with writing a book on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, one cannot
help but admire the sheer grit of a man who would give youngsters less
than half his age plenty of things to think about. For 84-year-old
Prabhakar Joshi, a Sanskrit scholar, the entire ordeal of losing his
eye-sight is nothing compared to the feat he achieved-of completing
the 160-page biography of Dr Ambedkar — the first one ever to be
written in Sanskrit.

Titled Bhimyanam, the book comprises 21 Sargas (chapters) and deals
with all important aspects of Dr Ambedkar's life. "It would be
incorrect to call this book just a biography," says Joshi, adding,
"The book is written in the form of a Maha-kavya, or as we call them
in English, an epic, on the lines of the Ramayana or the Mahabharata.
It is written in Sanskrit to pay tribute to Dr Ambedkar, whose love
for the language virtually knew no bounds."

Joshi, who began working on the book in 2005, says that he was
partially able to read back then when he started his research. "I
began by reading biographies that were penned down by other authors to
get an idea of the person that Dr Ambedkar was, and as I began reading
more and more about him, I realised he was one of the few leaders in
the country who never ever got what was rightfully due to him all his
life. And despite enormous odds he continued to do what was right.
That was something that kept me going even when I lost my eyesight and
began writing my book in 2006," he says.

About writing the book Joshi says it was something that he couldn't
have achieved without the help of his wife Aruna and his student
Madhusudhan Joshi. He says, "There were times when I would just write
down what I had to on sheets of paper, not knowing that I was
overlapping lines or even that there was no ink in the pen. And when I
would discover the same later on, it would be a tough task to
recompose the entire passages for the story but then with their aid I
eventually did it."

He also says that not many people knew that it was Dr Ambedkar's
father Ramji's desire to see him learn Sanskrit. And that it was
against insurmountable odds that Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar actually managed
to do so. "He did it even when he was refused the right to learn the
subject at the Elphinstone High School as he was a Dalit. Back then,
Sanskrit was strictly the privilege of the higher castes," he adds.

Joshi, who was a teacher at Fergusson College and also a guide at the
Pune University for Sanskrit students, says that Dr Ambedkar was a
staunch believer that Sanskrit should be the national language of the
country. He says, "Once when the issue came up for debate in the
parliament, one of the members asked him a question in Sanskrit to
question his love for the language but Dr Ambedkar promptly replied
back in the same language. It just goes to show how good his command
over the language was and how humble he was."

Giving a further glimpse of the literary genius of Dr Ambedkar, Joshi
says, " When Dr Ambedkar went to America to pursue his higher studies
he would study for long hours in the library. His efforts can be
gauged from the fact that while he studied for three years in the US,
he managed to work on four PhD level papers, of which three were
published. And this was something that most PhD level students would
usually do in seven to eight years. It just shows how deep his love
for accumulating knowledge was, and also gives us an insight into his
analytical mind."

Bhimayanam, as Joshi says, contains many such little insights about
the personality that Dr Ambedkar was. "More importantly, the book is a
source of inspiration for even students as after reading the book they
can actually see for themselves, how when someone has an unquenchable
thirst for knowledge they can go on to achieve even the impossible,"
he elaborates. The book has been published under the 'Sharada Gaurav
Granthamala' series by Pandit Vasant Gadgil after six years of
dedicated work by Joshi, who is also a recipient of Maharashtra
government's Mahakavi Kalidas award. While the state governor is
expected to formally launch the book soon, Joshi says his work is far
from being over. "On the anvil are two projects — the first being a
Marathi translation of this book with the original Sanskrit chapters
retained in it so that people can relate to it better, and the second
is a biographical sketch of Swami Vivekananda, which will be written
in Sanskrit," he says.


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