11.03.2024.Indian Untouchables News.by Sivaji.ceo
Tribal woman gang-raped on the pretext of getting her accommodation, raped after taking her to meet an officer, FIR ordered
Sonbhadra. A tribal woman has been accused of gang rape by taking her to meet an officer to get her a government accommodation. The matter is of Bijpur police station area. Finding prima facie cognizable offense in the case, on behalf of the court of Special Judge SC/ST Court Abid Shamim, an FIR has been lodged with the Bijpur Police Station Head and investigation has been ordered as per law. Two men have been accused of raping a tribal woman one by one.
The accused came to the house and pretended to get the house sanctioned.
The tribal woman, resident of Babhni police station area, has informed in the application given in the court through her advocate that two months ago, Sudhir Pandey, son of Awadhesh Pandey, resident of Nadhira, Thana Babhni and Chintamani Vishwakarma, son of Uday Narayan Vishwakarma, resident of Amma Tola (Bakarihwa), Police station Bijpur came to his house. Said that the government house has come and we will get it approved. You should keep your Aadhar card, ration card and photograph ready.
Took to home on the pretext of meeting the officer, raped
It is alleged that both the accused reached his house at 5 pm on January 2, 2024. Said to bring all the papers, the officers have asked to come at 8 pm. After this, they made him sit in the car and took him to Bakrihwa and asked him to sit in the house. When it started getting late, he inquired and was stopped till 9.30 in the night, saying that Adhikar is coming. After this, both of them took turns to rape her. Threatened to kill if I told anyone. After the rape, both of them slept, then she ran away from there. It is alleged that they went to Bijpur police station and informed but no action was taken. The court called for a report on this from the police station. There was a report of no case being registered. After this, the case was heard keeping the facts in mind and prima facie finding that a cognizable offense was committed, an FIR was lodged with the Bijpur police station and investigation was ordered as per law.
Vaishali: Bullies wreak havoc in Vaishali! Attempt to rape a Dalit girl, when she protested, her father was held hostage and beaten.
Vaishali News: Regarding the incident, it was told that a Dalit family of Nawada works as a laborer at the brick kiln of Mithilesh Rai, husband of Lavapur Narayan Panchayat head Savitri Devi. When Mithilesh Rai had an evil eye on the minor girl of this family, he wanted to make her a victim of his lust.
Even under the NDA government in Bihar, the morale of criminals seems to have increased. The latest case has come to light from Vaishali district. Here the bullies tried to rape a Dalit girl and when her father protested, they tied him up and beat him badly. This case pertains to Lavapur Narayan Panchayat of Mahanar police station area. Here a case of attempted rape of a minor girl working in a brick kiln has come to light. Regarding the incident, the husband of the head of Lavapur Narayan Panchayat has been accused of rape. After receiving information about the incident, the district’s SP and SDPO etc. reached the spot and investigated the entire incident in detail. The victim girl has been sent to Sadar Hospital Hajipur for medical examination.
Regarding the incident, it was told that a Dalit family of Nawada works as a laborer at the brick kiln of Mithilesh Rai, husband of Lavapur Narayan Panchayat head Savitri Devi. When Mithilesh Rai had an evil eye on the minor girl of this family, he wanted to make her a victim of his lust. The kiln operator is accused of abducting the girl from her house, locking her in a room and trying to force herself on her. The girl told that when she was sleeping in the house with her aunt. Meanwhile, Mithilesh Rai came and forcibly picked him up and locked him in the office of the brick kiln chimney. During this time he was also abused and abused.
The victim alleged that the people who came to save her were also beaten up. After the incident, the girl somehow ran away from the spot and reached Mahnar police station with her colleagues and informed the police about the entire incident. After which the police of the station became active. Mahnar SDPO Pritish Kumar immediately reached the spot with the police force and sealed the brick kiln office etc. After receiving information about the incident, FSL and DIO teams also reached the spot and investigated the incident. The DIO team collected forensic evidence from the spot.
After receiving information about the incident, District SSP Harikishore Rai also reached Mahnar police station. The SP directed the SDPO and the station head to take immediate action in this matter and said that the accused should be arrested immediately. It was told that the victim girl along with her relatives and father works at the brick kiln chimney to make bricks. It is being said that when the girl ran away from the brick kiln office, the accused kept her father missing for two days. However, the police conducted a swift raid and recovered the girl’s father.
MADHYA PRADESH.
Painful news again from Kot: Minor commits suicide…The student had gone to MP to make her future.
The continuous suicide cases in Shikshanagari Kota are showing no sign of stopping. Meanwhile, a painful news has come to light. Where an eighth class student committed suicide. The minor was originally from Madhya Pradesh.
quota. Kota district of Rajasthan is known as Education City in the entire country. But the continuous suicide cases here are not showing any signs of stopping. Meanwhile, a painful news has come to light. Another suicide took place in Education City Kota. This suicide is not of a student preparing for medical or engineering but of a minor girl studying in eighth class.
The student was from Madhya Pradesh
Who is only 14 years old and was studying at her maternal uncle’s house for the last 10 years. The minor is originally from Madhya Pradesh. Who had locked his room. Despite the family members ringing the gate several times, he did not open the gate. In such a situation, the family members did not suspect any untoward incident. After this, the police were called on the spot and when they looked through the window, the minor was found hanging. After which his body was brought out of the room.
After all, what is the reason for the suicide of a minor girl?
No suicide note has been found from the spot so that it can be known what was the reason behind the suicide. At present, the police has started the process of getting the body post-mortem done. The parents of the minor have also been informed. At present, the police is busy investigating the entire matter to find out what was the reason for the suicide of the minor girl. Let us tell you that every year about a dozen students commit suicide in Kota.
Books on Dalits, Women Drawing High in Demand at Lucknow Book Fair
The uptick sale of Ambedkarite literature indicates the beginning of rebels against any culture and society that degrades human beings.
Pratikshit Singh
Lucknow: On the lines of the World Book Fair, which is organised every year at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi, Lucknow Book Fair is underway at Ravindralaya lawns in Charbagh — attracting book lovers in droves. It is attracting people not only from the city, but also from the areas around the Uttar Pradesh capital.
What is noticeable here is the readers’ interest in books on women, Dalits and social science. The Bahujan Sahitya (Stall no 32) is buzzing with the visitors, making it difficult for the stall manager, Sunil Kumar Gautam, to spare time for speaking to visitors.
He was hoping to extricate himself on the second last day of the fair, but the public holiday (Second Saturday) on March 9 contributed to further swelling of the crowd.
“The bestselling book at the stall is ‘Gulamgiri’ by Jyotiba Phule followed by the hindi edition of the ‘Biography of Dr Ambedkar’ by Dhananjay Keer. In English, ‘Waiting for a Visa’ — an autobiographical document written by Dr Ambedkar — is also among the most popular books at the stall,” Gautam, who also runs a shop named the Bahujan Sahitya Kendra at Lucknow’s Matiyari Chauraha, told The Mooknayak.
A visitor of the book fair, Saroj, who works with the UPPCL (Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited), had just bought a copy of the ‘Waiting for Visa’.
“Despite the advent of devices such as the Kindle (which enable users to browse, buy, download and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking), hard copies are still the best medium to read books,” she said.
She, however, rued that most of the people have the habit of collecting books, but they don’t take out time to go through them.
The stall also has merchandise related to the Ambedkarite ideology, be it a replica of the Ashoka Pillar or key rings with Ashoka Chakra and Ambedkar’s images. These items, Gautam said, are now completely sold out. “People these days proudly carry these items, showcasing the image of Ambedkar and slogan of Jai Bhim, to proudly assert their identity,” he said.
Ravi Kant, another visitor from Hapur in western Uttar Pradesh who has recently joined the UP Secretariat in the city as a review officer, said the holiday let him visit the fair. “I purchased a book titled ‘Jati ka Beejnash’ as I have heard a lot about it,” he said.
It’s Hindi translation of the ‘Annihilation of Caste’ by Dr Ambedkar. Released in 1936, it was the best selling book of its times, a great feat when the literacy rate in the country was not even 10%, as per the 1931 Census, and English was a far lesser known language.
Publishers are conspicuous by the absence in the book stalls as most of the counters have been set up by book stores from Lucknow, Delhi, etc.
The Publication Division of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has also set up a stall there, but it did not have any Ambedkarite literature to offer to its visitors.
When asked about the same, the employees, who are incharge of the stall, began confirming from each other if they have Ambedkar. “There were some copies devoted to him under the ‘Builders of Modern India’ series, but they have been sold out,” one of them told The Mooknayak.
A book with Ambedkar at its cover draws one’s attention at the stall of the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language.
The book titled ‘Dastoor e Hind Ka Memar’ has been authored by Khwaja Abdul Muntaqueem — an academician and a writer.
The book fair, which began from March 2, will come to a close on March 10.
Analysing the reader’s taste, Amod Maheshwari, executive director of the Rajkamal Prakashan, a leading publisher of Hindi as well as English literature, said that there has been a rise in the sales of books related to the issues of women, Dalits and social science etc.
Courtesy : The Mooknayak
Land Jihad on Dalit crematorium in ki Saharanpur, illegal occupation of land to build Muslim colony
A case of land jihad has come to light from Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Here Bobby Ansari and Shahnawaz have been accused of illegally occupying the cremation ground of people of Dalit community. When they protested, the victims were not only subjected to caste based abuses but also an attempt was made to kill them. During this period, bullets were also fired by the accused. The victims have appealed to the administration for their safety. On Saturday (9 March 2024), the police registered an FIR and started investigation. Both the accused have been taken into custody by the police.
This incident took place in Janakpuri police station area of Saharanpur. Sanjay Kumar of the Scheduled Caste (SC) category, living in the village Sadak Dudhli here, has lodged a complaint with the police on Saturday. In the complaint, he has told that Abdul of his village had sold his 5 bigha land to a woman named Shaheen of Khan Alampur one and a half years ago. Bobby Ansari and Shahnawaz were illegally building a colony on this land. Bobby Ansari’s other name is Kamrujama, who lives in the same village as Shaheen.
In the complaint, the victim further said that there is a cremation ground next to the place where Bobby Ansari is building an illegal colony. Here the last rites of the victim’s family and surrounding dead are performed. It is alleged that Bobby Ansari and Shahnawaz used JCB machine to take over the cremation ground illegally. Due to this action many mausoleums built there were uprooted. The trees in the cremation ground were also uprooted by the accused. It is said that the intention of Bobby Ansari and Shahnawaz is to find a way through the middle of the crematorium.
Victim Dalit Sanjay Kumar told that his sentiments have been hurt by this action of Bobby Ansari and Shahnawaz. As soon as the information was received about bulldozing on the crematorium, Sanjay along with Premchand, Jitendra, Brijendra and Mukesh and many others went to Bobby Ansari requesting him not to do so. It is alleged that Bobby then called the victims Bhimta, Ch**r and many other caste based words. Both the accused also opened fire on the victims. Somehow the victims returned from there after saving their lives.
Additional SP of Saharanpur said that as soon as the information about the incident was received, the police immediately reached the spot and both the accused have been taken into custody. Apart from both of them, a case has also been registered against some other unknown people, who are being searched. Action has been taken against all under sections 297, 307, 323, 504 and 506 of the IPC and also the SC/ST Act. OpIndia has the FIR copy.
OpIndia spoke to victim Sanjay Kumar. He told that the road Dudhli village is Muslim dominated, where the population of Dalit community is around 40%. The illegal colony being built was named ‘Shah Colony’. He told that due to JCB movement, some new dead bodies had come out, whose flesh was being scratched and eaten by dogs. The victim has declared himself satisfied with the police action.
What is land jihad?
Land Jihad has emerged as a big problem at present, due to which incidents like communal tension have occurred many times. The recent Haldwani violence is a worse example of this. In this, the Muslim side is accused of illegal occupation of government or other communities’ lands. Many times this possession also happens through places of worship etc., in which tombs and dargahs etc. are prominent. A similar type of land jihad was exposed by OpIndia on the Nepal border.
Courtesy : Connexionblog
Q&A: Yashica Dutt on her life as part of an oppressed caste in ‘Coming Out As Dalit’
As a young girl growing up in Ajmer, a small town in the Western Indian state of Rajasthan, journalist and author, Yashica Dutt, 38, says that she was painfully aware of the many sacrifices her mother Sashi made. Her father, a government officer, earned a modest income, much of which he spent on alcohol, but her mother insisted on enrolling Dutt in the best of schools, even though it was a struggle to pay the fees and buy textbooks and uniforms.
By Kamala Thiagarajan
To make ends meet, especially after her younger sister and brother were born, Dutt knew that her mother had hawked all her jewelry, sought the help of her father-in-law, took on tedious sewing jobs, and did everything she could to keep up the appearance that the family was well-off — including a pair of shoes for Dutt that lit up as she walked.
Dutt knew they weren’t just pretending to be rich to show off. They were aiming pretending to have an “upper caste aura” so no one would guess who they really were — Dalits.
In India’s rigid caste system — a system of social division that ranks the status of individuals based on the kind of jobs they do, Dalits are among the most oppressed of castes.
She tells her story in Coming Out As Dalit: A Memoir of Surviving India’s Caste System, which was published in India in 2019 (and won a literary award). The book has now been released for the first time in the U.S., on February 6.
Dutt was always a top student in school but says she felt pressured by her mother’s sacrifice and often humiliated by her begging the school administration for more time to pay her fees — even though she recognized that a good education would be her best defense against caste discrimination.
Dutt spoke to NPR about of the trauma of living with caste oppression and of her decision to speak out by writing of this book. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The word Dalit refers to someone belonging to an oppressed caste. Could you tell us about your caste specifically and the kind of discrimination the caste members face.
All Dalits are formerly [known as] “untouchables” — people who were outcasts, forced into the most dehumanizing professions.
I am from the manual scavenging Bhangis community — the actual name of my caste. My family’s caste profession is to clean toilets. It’s a degrading profession, because the work that we do becomes who we are. It becomes our identity.
And to give you some context, the very name of my caste is considered a slur by the Indian constitution — the worst insult you can hurl at someone.
The only way to survive these social structures is to hide.
Your way of hiding was to pass as an upper caste person?
Yes, racial passing has existed in the United States. We see similar practices throughout the world. For thousands of years, Dalits have been abused, mistreated, discriminated against and killed because of their lower caste. No wonder many of us hide our Dalit identity now.
Dalits in India have been passing as upper-caste Hindus by adopting elaborate lifestyle changes — changing their last names [that are linked caste identities], moving to cities, turning vegetarian, even embracing [the Hindu] religion — to appear more like upper-caste Hindus.
So keeping your dalit identity a secret was a protective mechanism. It must have been exhausting.
Absolutely.
Your daily life is a struggle to fit in. There’s a high sense of hypervigilance — you’re constantly monitoring your behavior. You can never be truly comfortable.
You have a sense of inferiority because you lack the caste privilege to belong in a certain group. You spend your entire life trying to overcome that lower status that has been foisted upon you. What I didn’t understand at the time is that there’s nothing I can do that can undo that. You cannot move out of your lower caste. You can obscure it but cannot escape it.
Is it possible to escape caste discrimination when your monetary status changes — for instance, when you land a well-paying job?
If there’s anything we understand about systems of oppression, whether we think of race or caste, they don’t go away with resources — or access to wealth. When I moved to the U.S. in September 2014, I was [studying art and journalism] at Columbia, which has a very robust South Asian and Indian American population. One of the things I heard people talking about [after she revealed her identity], was “How did that Dalit girl get into Columbia?”
You point out in your memoir that the attitude toward affirmative action — reserving a place in schools and colleges for people from oppressed castes — is often viewed by many as doing them a favor when clearly it is to correct a historical wrong. Can you elaborate?
When he was a kid, my great grandfather wasn’t allowed to touch books.
He couldn’t access classrooms and he couldn’t use a slate [blackboard] because his touch would be considered “polluting” it. He had to sit outside and scrawl the alphabet in the mud with a stick.
After being barred from education for generations, now when we try to make up for it, we enter schools and colleges, only to face enormous discrimination. There’s a culture of resentment — as if we’re being given an unfair handout.
After hiding your caste identity for years, what made you expose it all with this book?
For me, the biggest understanding of my caste identity happened after I moved to the United States. It’s not specifically to do with the U.S., just that I put an objective distance between myself and India. That hypervigilance eased a bit. For the first time, I felt that I had a reprieve from thinking about my caste.
One of the reasons that many Dalit people don’t talk about caste in India is because they’re certain that in these societies where upper castes are dominant, they would be mocked. But here, it was different.
In your book, you write about Rohith Vemula, a student and aspiring scholar from the Dalit caste who killed himself in 2016 at age 26, leaving a letter that said he was bullied at his institution and that “my birth is my fatal accident.” You mention how deeply this letter affected you.
That came as a clarion call for Dalit rights in India. It enraged many of us. It made us question our own caste identities. I decided then I could use my voice for good to educate many people about caste. And that’s what I did with this book.
Does caste present itself differently in the U.S.?
Here, we have to convince people it’s not something that existed centuries ago.
Dalit people in Indian American communities in the U.S. have talked about discrimination in their own communities. We had a bill passed in Seattle, Washington, in 2023 — it became the first state in the country to outlaw caste discrimination.
Navigating a male-dominated society is challenging for many Indian women. You mention in your memoir how much more of a challenge it is for Dalit women.
Dalit women are doubly affected both by their gender and by patriarchal [discriminatory] structures that can be particularly contentious. Dominant caste men will think of Dalit women as untouchable and impure, but often objectify a Dalit woman at the same time. That leads to sexual violence in spite of calling them untouchable.
How do you rise above this kind of discrimination?
It can’t be done overnight. This is a daily and constant struggle.
If you are constantly told that you are untouchable and unworthy … to overcome that takes a lifetime of work and effort. You can’t put your mind to it and overcome it, that’s not how it works.
So some of us are lucky and have the chance to reject this. My grandmother didn’t have that choice.
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, Southern India. She reports on global health, science and development and has been published in The New York Times, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and other outlets. You can find her on X @kamal_t
Courtesy : NPR
Caste-murder bid: In-laws among six held for bid to kill Dalit youth in Tamil Nadu
The girl’s parents were arrested from Nilgiris on Thursday.
ERODE : Erode police on Friday arrested four people in connection with the ‘honour killing’ attempt on a Dalit youth near Bhavanisagar. The girl’s parents were arrested from Nilgiris on Thursday. The accused were identified as G Chandran, 57, and his wife Chitra, 41, who are the in-laws of the youth; and their relatives M Ammasakutti, 45, S Jagadeesh, 35, S Vadivel, 45, and S Karthi, 32, of Sathyamangalam. They were produced before the principal district court and remanded.
According to sources, J Subash, a Dalit resident from Guruvayurappan Nagar in Bhavanisagar was in love with Manju, a caste Hindu girl living in Gandhi Nagar in Sathyamangalam. But her parents Chandran and Chitra did not approve of the relationship.
On October 7, Subash married Manju. Chandran, who had been looking for his daughter, came to know about the marriage a week ago and was upset. On Wednesday, when Subash was taking his sister Harini, 16, on a bike to school, a truck knocked them down from behind. Harini died and Subhash is still in hospital.
Courtesy : TNIE
- Social justice to development: Tracing shift in Dalit politics
Social justice to development: Tracing shift in Dalit politics
A new volume edited by three leading scholars of India — Dalits in the New Millennium — examines these changes, interrogates their impacts on Dalit lives.
Over the last several decades, there have been monumental changes in the social, economic, and political lives of Dalits, who have historically been one of the most oppressed groups in all of South Asia. A new volume edited by three leading scholars of India—Dalits in the New Millennium—examines these changes, interrogates their impacts on Dalit lives, and traces the shift in Dalit politics from a focus on social justice to a focus on development and socio-economic mobility.
One of the co-editors of this volume, D. Shyam Babu, expanded on this subject on last week’s episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Shyam Babu, who along with Sudhai Pai and Rahul Verma, is one of the co-editors of this new book also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. For years, he has researched the political, social, and economic realities of Dalits across India, collaborating with well-known India scholar Devesh Kapur and Dalit writer-activist Chandra Bhan Prasad.
On the show, Shyam Babu told host Milan Vaishnav that a reexamination of Dalit lives was needed in light of the dramatic rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and what looks like the terminal decline of Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party .
On the BJP’s growing appeal among Dalits, Shyam Babu said it was always incorrect to think of Dalit politics as antithetical to Hindutva politics. “A predominant number of Dalits still remain as Hindus. So, when you appeal to the Hindu religion, [Dalits] find some resonance there,” he explained. “Dalits tend to identify with not only the Hindu religion and co-religionists, but they also tend to see Muslims as the ‘other.’ It’s a sad fact, but it’s a fact. So, the idea that Dalit politics was somehow not in tune with Hindutva politics, I would say it is completely misplaced. That’s what we’re seeing now.”
On the question of how the BJP has navigated a large and diverse Dalit community, Shyam Babu emphasized the party’s efforts to exploit internal divisions among Dalits. Among many caste groups, including Other Backward Classes (OBCs), he said that numerically significant subcastes are not big supporters of the BJP. “Take Andhra Pradesh, the Reddys and Kammas—they have their own political parties. Ditto in Tamil Nadu. In Karnataka, it’s a bipolar order, [dominant castes] play the BJP to their own advantage. Take Uttar Pradesh, Yadavs, Kurmis, Jats—all of these larger castes are not 100% with the BJP,” he explained. According to him, the BJP’s success has been in reaching out numerically very insignificant castes across a range of states. “It’s like a chit fund,” he said. “[The BJP] gathers votes here and there and makes it work.”
Asked about the critique that the BJP has branded itself as the party of Dalits and yet Dalits are not adequately represented in the party leadership, the veteran scholar said this is nothing new. “That was true of Congress also. In 1977, after Babu Jagjivan Ram left the party, the party never had a Dalit face. There were ministers of course, you get some kind of quota system there. But they were all insignificant.”
Bowing in Buddhism is a sign of respect and gratitude. We frequently bow three times, to the Three Treasures, or nine times, to all three in past, present, and future. Bowing 108 times for remembering all of the entrances of delusionis less common. We bow to Buddha Nature, not to selves, starting by respecting ourselves.
Bowing in Chinese culture is a sign of submission of the inferior to the superior. Thus the official Qing dynasty history says that the first British ambassador to China, George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney, bowed to the Qianlong Emperor with his head on the floor (kowtow), and the official British Imperial history says he didn’t. This is about self, and thus is nothing to do with Buddhism.
As long as bowing continues, Buddhism will last.
Dogen Zenji
Buddha recognizes Buddha; Buddha bows to Buddha
Jukai Ceremony
At some monasteries we lead the lay people taking the precepts at Jukai onto the altar, and all of the monks bow to them as baby Buddhas. I’m sorry I don’t have any photos of this version of the ceremony, but we do have this.
The Power of Prostration
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