How to live without fear and worry ?

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*_⁉️Why and How, We are Losing Self-Control?🔅_*

✨👇✨🍂Let us explore why and how we lose self-control. We know about pollutants in the air, but there is another subtle and crucial component that we cannot see but absorb. That is the aspect of human consciousness that is formed by our intentions, thoughts, emotions, and attitudes that we radiate and create the Collective Consciousness of our family, workplace, city, country, and the world.

*✨👇👇Analyzing the influence of Air Pollution, we can categorize people into 3 sets:*

𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝟭: 🌹A significant number of people are responsible for polluting the air.

𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝟮: 🌹Includes everyone, because everyone breathes the polluted air.

𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝟯: 🌹A few people who are physically weak and they fall ill due to breathing the polluted air.

*✨👇Let’s observe a similar categorization of Emotional Pollution:*

𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝟭: 💐A significant number of people have lust, anger, greed, attachment, and ego in their minds. What is in their mind radiates into the atmosphere. So all these negative emotions are in the air.

𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝟮: 💐Includes everyone, because everyone gets influenced by the vibrations around them.

𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝟯: 💐A few people who are emotionally weak at a particular time because of any crisis in life or a mental or physical illness or any other reason. Emotional weakness makes them more vulnerable and they get affected by the vibrations in the environment more than the others around them.

✨🍂What happens to people in Set 3 is important to understand. If a person affected by air pollution is asked to climb a flight of stairs, they get breathless and they are not their normal self. Similarly, when someone in an emotionally depleted state, affected by the environmental vibrations has to face a slightly difficult situation, they lose control over themselves. They react in a manner that is not normal for them. Road rage, physical assault, or any other form of unplanned acts of crime happen when people momentarily lose control over their normal way of being. Moments after the act they realize, regret, and go into pain and guilt. But it is those few moments which can affect many destinies.

🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂

🌋While we read about people in Set 3 and criticize what they have done, it’s time to introspect am I a part of what has happened? Am I part of Set 1 which creates lust, anger, or any form of violence in the mind which affects some people to such an extent that they bring it out into action? If we want to create peace, respect, and harmony in the world, let us remember that it begins in our minds. If we want everyone to be emotionally healthy, we will need to stop the pollution we are creating and radiate only positive energy and vibrations. We the people in Set 1 will need to change so that there is no one in Set 3. I am a part of the Collective Consciousness. Let me Be the Change, Radiate the Change, and become a part of the World Change.

➔sivaji.a

🌁🛤️🌁🛤️🌁🛤️🌁🛤️🌁

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UTTAR PRADESH

UP cops use e-surveillance, nab 3 for killing Dalit woman in Ayodhya

Posted On February 5, 2025

AYODHYA: Three days after the murder of a 22-year-old Dalit woman, police arrested three accused – identified as Hari Ram Kori (35), Vijay Sahu (28), and Digvijay Singh alias Durvijay alias Baba (40), all residents of Ayodhya – on Monday.

Senior superintendent of police (SSP) Raj Karan Nayyar said that the arrests were made based on electronic surveillance and intelligence inputs. During interrogation, the accused confessed to have murdered the victim and disposing of her body in a drain.”Based on their confessions, we have recovered the victim’s clothing, jackets worn by the accused at the time of the crime, and ash and buttons from a burnt jacket belonging to Digvijay Singh, which was destroyed after the crime,” said Nayyar.

Preliminary investigations suggest that the three accused were under the influence of drugs at the time of the crime. However, police have found no links between the accused and any political group or organisation yet. According to police sources, Digvijay frequently visited the victim’s house. Two months ago, the victim’s brother beat him up, leading to a grudge.

On January 30, Digvijay, along with his friends Hariram Kori and Vijay Sahu, was consuming drugs near the site of a Satsang. As the woman was returning home after attending that Satsang, the trio noticed her walking alone. They forcibly dragged her, killed and dumped her body in a dry canal 300 metres away before fleeing the scene. Since the Satsang was ongoing nearby, her screams went unheard.

A post-mortem examination confirmed that the woman died due to shock and haemorrhage. Forensic teams have collected swab samples to determine whether she was sexually assaulted.

The victim went missing on Thursday night after leaving home at 10 pm. Her family searched for her through the night but failed to find her. The next morning, her brother-in-law discovered her body in a canal, approximately 500 metres from the village. A missing person report was filed at the Ayodhya police station on Friday.

To ensure a swift and thorough investigation, four special teams were formed under the supervision of the SP (City) and the circle officer. SSP Nayyar confirmed that the missing person case has now been converted into a murder case. He assured that the case would be prosecuted in a fast-track court to ensure swift justice.

Courtesy: Times Of India

GIRL DALIT NEWS NEWS

Four held for attack on Dalits in Dindigul

Posted On February 5, 2025

DINDIGUL: Four persons belonging to a dominant community were arrested on Tuesday over an alleged attack on five SC members at Reddiarchatram in Dindigul. It is learnt that the victims were attacked for allegedly dropping coconut husks on a common pathway.

The accused, identified as Sushila, Suresh Kumar, Karthik Kumar and Ramesh, were booked under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Murugeshwari and her family, are daily wagers in Mangarai village.

S Tirupathi, a relative, said, “On January 31, Murugeshwari dropped some coconut husks, collected from the trees inside her compound, on a common pathway near her house.

However, Sushila (58), a dominant community member-cum-financier in the locality, objected to the act and hurled casteist slurs. She informed her son-in-law Suresh Kumar, who along with 15 others barged into Murugeshwari’s house wielding deadly weapons and attacked the family. Murugeshwari, her sister Chitra, brothers Marimuthu, Pandiyan and Balan were admitted to Dindigul MCH with severe injuries.”

Courtesy: New Indian Express

NEWS DELHI Election NEWS POLITICS STATE

Delhi Polls: The Battle to Appropriate Ambedkar as Dalit Votes Become Key in AAP-BJP Showdown

Posted On February 5, 2025

Despite the AAP’s broad welfare agenda and ambitious policy, and the BJP’s tall promises, little has changed for the Dalits in Delhi.

New Delhi: Nothing delights a politician’s heart more than watching their arch rival eating a hot potato before the polls. For Arvind Kejriwal, this moment of fortune came at the heels of his Delhi election campaign last month. The trigger? A controversial eleven-second clip from Amit Shah’s speech on the occasion celebrating 75 years of the constitution went viral.

Employing his aggressive oratory, Shah had said in Hindi, “It has become a fashion these days to say Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar. If they had mentioned God’s name so many times, they would get a place in heaven for the next seven lives.”

For the Dalits, who have perpetually been at the bottom of the social ladder in India and were historically ostracised as untouchables, indeed Bhimrao Ambedkar is no less than God.

Ambedkar – or their Babasaheb, as they endearingly call him – is the man who liberated them from the shackles of caste slavery. They regard him as their hero who fought tooth and nail for their emancipation. Many Dalit families proudly put up his portrait in their homes. There are temples dedicated to Ambedkar and his statues occupy prominent public spaces in most cities across the country.

Ambedkar is also regarded as the chief architect of the Indian constitution and had served as India’s first law minister. Commenting on the relevance of Ambedkar in Indian politics currently, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor wrote in his column, “Every political party — from the Congress he opposed, to the Hindutva warriors who denounced him — feels obliged to express their admiration for him… Ambedkar today is larger than life, and nearly seven decades after his death, he keeps on growing.” It was but natural for Shah’s clip to spread like wildfire and the BJP to face the heat for it.

A swift wave of fury ensued. “For the oppressed and Dalits,” wrote the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati, “worshipping Ambedkar is akin to worshipping God,” adding, “Amit Shah has hurt their hearts.”

The leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi changed to a solid blue – the hue that shines on the flag of Dalit politics – from his trademark white t-shirt, and protested Shah’s comments. Confrontation between the two parties turned physical with the BJP accusing Gandhi of assaulting their MPs and the Congress accusing the BJP of pushing their president, Mallikarjun Kharge. Meanwhile, angry Dalit-Bahujan activists and student groups burned Shah’s effigies across India.

As the outrage gained steam, the BJP had to hastily issue a strong clarification, since this was not a stray remark from one of their MPs, or a “fringe” spokesperson who they could argue had gone rogue. Shah had to bite the bullet himself and quickly pursue damage control at a press conference. Prime Minister Modi also wrote a long thread on X to defend his right-hand man. “If the Congress and its rotten ecosystem think,” Modi wrote, “their malicious lies can hide… their insult towards Dr. Ambedkar, they are gravely mistaken.” Although the prime minister’s retaliation was focused on the Congress, the party that actually caused him more trouble this time was the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

While the Congress and the BJP wrestled to lay their claim over Ambedkar and prove each other as anti-constitution and thereby anti-Dalit, the AAP stole the spotlight with an AI generated viral video of Ambedkar offering Kejriwal his blessings and support. “Give me power Babasaheb,” says Kejriwal requesting Ambedkar’s avatar in the AI video, “to fight those who disrespect your constitution.”

Then, Kejriwal demanded Shah’s resignation and an apology from the BJP. He also wrote to the Bihar and Andhra Pradesh chief ministers, Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu, respectively – two of the BJP’s biggest allies – to withdraw support from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

The next day, Kejriwal visited the Valmiki temple at Delhi’s Mandir Marg and gave a message to the local Dalit community to reject the BJP: “Jinhe Babasaheb se hai pyaar, wo kare BJP ko inkaar (Those who love Dr Ambedkar should reject the BJP).”

On December 21 2024, AAP launched Ambedkar Samman Scholarship promising to bear the cost of stay and travel for Delhi’s Dalit students pursuing a foreign education at top international universities. “You abuse Babasaheb, we will honour him,” he said.

But beyond the immediate electoral bluster, does such political grandstanding help the Dalits? A similar scholarship scheme was announced and widely advertised by the AAP government in 2019. Headlines claimed that Kejriwal’s AAP government would send 100 Dalit students to study abroad. The scheme failed terribly with just four students reportedly receiving limited financial aid from the Delhi government.

Rajendra Pal Gautam, a prominent Dalit leader formerly with the AAP, was overseeing this scheme. He told this author that the budget for the scheme was abysmally low and despite his insistence it was never revised. “The announcement of the old scheme with a new name,” he said, “is just an election gimmick.”

As per a report in the The Indian Express, in the last 15 years, over 75 people in Delhi have died due to manual scavenging, an illegal practice of sewage cleaning that predominantly exploits Dalit cleaners, resulting in just one conviction. The compensation has been equally bad. In one such case, when a Delhi court ordered the AAP-run state government to pay Rs 30 lakh to the victim’s family, the government had argued that it would set a bad precedent and may open up a pandora’s box.

In 2019, the AAP government introduced mobile cleaning machines for cleaning sewage. Though it was a noble idea yet there were some fundamental flaws. The act of cleaning is often associated with caste in India. Here, the policy gave priority to the kin of the deceased sanitation workers and people from the Dalit community to procure these machines, which only adds insult to the injury.

Additionally, a report in Caravan magazine pointed out that the scheme doesn’t give these machines for free but rather through bidding and offering Rs 40-lakh loan to the beneficiaries. At the time when the scheme was announced, it was advertised as a revolutionary move.

Similarly, in 2019, Modi had washed the feet of Dalit cleaners and termed them as Karmyogis (selfless seers who work to serve the society). Terms like the Karmyogis or Mahatma Gandhi’s Harijan (children of God) have been condemned by Dalit intellectuals as condescending. But at the time, Modi’s gesture was praised by many.

Fast forward five years, there has been little change in the lives of those cleaners whose feet Modi had washed. According to a report in The Print, they have been running from pillar to post to get a house under the prime minister’s housing scheme. However, this is a systemic problem that affects Dalits in most cities in India.

The idea that urbanisation can undo communal segregation doesn’t seem to apply to most Indian cities. Various academic studies have pointed out the housing discrimination and ghettoisation of marginalised communities in Indian cities.

A 2015 study by S.K. Thorat showed that Delhi NCR is still very segregated on religious and caste lines. It highlighted that the chances of Muslims and Dalit tenants being denied accommodation were much higher than the upper caste Hindus.

Despite the AAP’s broad welfare agenda, the situation for Dalits hasn’t changed much on the ground in the capital city of Delhi. Dalits in Delhi are forced to live in the most underdeveloped neighbourhoods with little access to even basic material resources.

What do the voters say?

At the Khanpur Harijan camp in Delhi where mostly people from the Dalit community live, sewage carelessly flows in uncovered drains. The dirty water from these drains, residents complain, often collects upto the knee on the worn-out streets and enters their homes in the monsoons.

Ninty-year-old Pooran Lal had migrated to Delhi from Mathura in 1990. He has lived in the camp for over three decades. He barely makes it past the bricks put up on the roads for crossing the sewage strewn narrow lane. “Nothing has changed here,” he said, quickly recalling the different political eras he has lived through. In the face of municipal apathy, residents have raised small walls outside their homes to stop the entry of dirty water. There are, however, other basic civic issues that they can’t solve by themselves.

Decent supply of clean piped water, amongst other things, still remains a luxury. For every 15 to 20 houses, there’s just one tap which is functional for two to three hours but is often submerged in sewage. “We boil this water and filter it with a cloth. But, when the pipe gets damaged, this is what we drink,” said Lal. There are just 20 washrooms for the entire colony with hundreds of shoebox-sized homes – many with unplastered walls. “This is still the cleanest one in Asia,” 24-year-old Bobby told this author, as he pointed to the other side of the road where lies a more dilapidated Dalit basti. “In other places [jhuggis]”, he claimed, “you won’t be able to step inside if you take a peek.”

Though Pooran Lal was quite visibly unhappy with the situation, he’s still wary of the BJP and Modi, who, he has allegedly heard will end the various welfare schemes of the AAP government. The rumour on the ground is that if Kejriwal doesn’t get reelected, all these welfare schemes – free electricity and water –will cease

In a post on X, BJP president, J.P. Nadda, had clarified that “the welfare schemes will go on.” But these clarifications haven’t reached Lal who also has some other issues with the BJP. “Under Modi,” he said, “the price rise is extreme.” “40 for a kg of substandard wheat flour. 180 for cooking oil…onions… tomatoes…,” he went on with his elaborate list of now unaffordable daily essentials.

Once a loyal Congress voter, Lal recalled voting for the oxen, cow and calf, and the more familiar palm (the different Congress symbol over the decades). He now supports the AAP and is willing to overlook the glaring civic inconveniences. “Kejriwal has reduced electricity prices and given benefits to the poor,” he said.

For 31-year-old Manoj Meena, Kejriwal is the man who thinks about his people. These days, politicians frequently visit the area. On the road at the backside of the camp, e-rickshaws with banners of different parties whizz pass every half an hour reminding the people to go out and vote for them on February 5. “This broad road on the opposite side of the camp,” Meena told this author, “has been recently repaired because of the elections,” adding that at least something has been done.

But the young Bobby, who works as a cleaner, was less charitable. He is unhappy with getting the bare minimum and is determined to vote for a change this time. Like many others in the camp, he had little issue with Kejriwal but disliked the local representatives of the party. As he began to talk about change, his friend Amit interrupted and began to root for Kejriwal.

A similar debate ensued at the intersection of the lane outside Lal’s home, which is one of the few spots in the neighbourhood with a decent supply of sunshine and space to lay a charpai. A group of women had occupied the spot for the afternoon. They were furiously debating who to vote for this time. While many had sympathetic words for Kejriwal, the moods are mixed this time.

Twenty-nine-year-old Kavita is going to vote against the AAP. Others told her how much Kejriwal has given them – free electricity and free bus rides for women. One woman commented that the local AAP representative, who they have voted for a decade is unreachable. Another replied, “But what about the ward councillor”. The ward councillor in the area belonged to the BJP.

Surprisingly, an old woman, a self-decleared Modi supporter, sitting next to them stopped her knitting and mentioned how the free 200 units electricity and the free bus rides for women have helped them. The free bus rides have also been helpful for 54 year-old Urmila who lives in a rented home in Sangam Vihar. Urmila, who until recently worked as a house help but had to quit because of growing list of health issues told this author that because of the free bus rides for women she could “travel to the posh colonies of Saket for work and make more money”.

The scenes at the nearby Sanjay camp were no different. Many houses use water pumps and long white personal pipes to draw water. The thicker black pipe installed by the government, they say, is often blocked. It’s very difficult even for a single person to pass through some of these dark lanes which they say often get clogged with sewage. “You cannot bring a fridge or any furniture here…what goes inside stays there,” said Moolchand Dhobi, pointing towards the absolute narrowness of the streets on either side. For such a neglected neighbourhood, the lanes were relatively quite clean.

Sonwati, almost of the same age, stood next to Moolchand and was initially worried to find this author outside her home. She mentioned how the residents of the colony have received many demolition threats over the years. One reason why the residents of these slums are wary of outsiders – media and political surveyors – is the rise of bulldozer threats.

In the case of Delhi, many slums have a snake-mongoose relationship with the BJP-run Delhi Development Authority (DDA). The Jahan Jhuggi wahin makaan slogan – a vow to redevelop slums and rehabilitate people in the same place – gathers little confidence.

The AAP, Congress, and the Left parties have opposed such bulldozer demolitions for years. Leaders of the other parties have accused the BJP with the charges of targeted bulldozer demolitions in recent times. While the mainstream media has often celebrated these actions when directed towards the Muslims as a solid response to Land Jihad (a far-right conspiracy theory that Muslims are capturing land), these arbitrary actions disproportionately affect the poor and marginalised from all communities, especially Muslims and Dalit.

Sometimes, these fears are exploited by different political parties. Before elections, this kind of messaging skyrockets. “If you vote for X party or not vote for Y candidate then your jhuggi will be taken away,” is the warning that goes around. But elections don’t just bring threats. These days Sanjay camp is receiving regular water supply and the street is being cleaned more often.

Suddenly, the situation seems to have improved and apathetic officials have turned kind. “The interest in this place would last as long as the elections. After that, even one-eyed birds won’t land here,” Moolchand said.

In the next lane near Moolchand’s home, there was a beeline of over a dozen pairs of tiny shoes and flip-flops outside a 80-square-feet home. The two-story house belongs to 25-year-old Manju who runs Maths, Science, Hindi, and English tuition class for around Rs 240 per month. Most of her students are either Dalits or Muslims.

“Why would people with resources live here?” Manju pointed out. She aspires to be a teacher one day and has cracked the required government test to go forward with her dream. She is now pursuing her Bachelor’s in Education. She supports Kejriwal and thinks that he has worked for the people. But when asked about the work that needs to be done to improve the condition of the camp, “cleaning the trash and improving safety” she said would be a good start.

A couple of hundred metres from the two ramshackle camps is a public park with a giant statue of Ambedkar. It has been fenced and is cleaned on a regular basis.

On the use of Ambedkar’s iconography by different political parties, sociologist Vivek Kumar pointed out that Ambedkar was strongly opposed to such tokenism. “Iconography is fine, but you are trying to create a false consciousness, which goes against the very philosophy of Ambedkar and his guru, Buddha,” he said. He stressed that political parties run from the most important question of representation – the real development for Dalits would come only through effective representation.

“How many Dalits has the AAP sent to the Rajya Sabha?” he questioned. From the judiciary to the media, and parliament – if right people from the marginalisaed communities occupy these spaces of power, they would automatically become more developed.

“The rise of populist schemes, especially in Delhi,” Kumar argued, “is reducing people to dependent subjects.”

“It’s a new form of feudalism, especially for Dalits and minority communities, who remain at the mercy of political parties – the new landlords. They are being reduced to a state where they cannot think beyond bijli-paani (electricity and water) or the basic question of securing two meals a day. This is killing creativity.”

He argues that mobilisation through fear mongering about opposing sides creates a symbiotic relationship that benefits both the saviours and the creators of fear. This forces people to engage without addressing the fundamental issue of representation.

The duel for Dalit votes in Delhi

Kejriwal, who’s gunning for his fourth term as the chief minister of Delhi, is up against an existential challenge. Many senior AAP leaders, including Kejriwal and his trusted deputy, Manish Sisodia, face charges of corruption in a liquor scam, and had to spend months in prison. While the AAP has described these arrests as witch hunts, it has taken a hit on their image as anti-corruption crusaders.

To fight the corruption charges, Kejriwal resigned after being released from prison and handed over the chief minister’s seat to Atishi.

“This is Kejriwal’s drama to get sympathy before elections,” said Ashok Kumar who may press a new symbol on the EVM this time. Would it be Chandrashekhar Azad’s kettle or the Paswan’s helicopter, he’s not sure yet.

This is why the AAP is fighting hard to not let the Dalit support slip away. Due to unwavering support from the poor, the middle class, and marginalised groups like Dalits and the Muslims, Kejriwal has run Delhi for the past decade with little electoral challenge from his Opposition.

In the 2015 and 2020 Assembly polls, the AAP won all the 12 seats reserved for the SCs. Even in its debut in 2013, it had managed to win nine of these 12 reserved seats. Apart from these 12 seats there are at least 18 other seats with over 17% Dalit population. Before the AAP’s rise, Dalits predominantly voted for the Congress. Kejriwal is banking his hope on his populist welfare schemes and his new found love for Ambedkar to maintain his grip on the Dalit votes. He has also demanded OBC (other backward classes) reservations for the Jaat community. He has announced a Dhobi (a Dalit community) welfare board if he’s voted to power.

On many occasions, however, the AAP’s critics say, that the party has engaged in both politics of appeasement and fear.

For instance, AAP leaders have advocated for putting up pictures of Laxmi (the Hindu goddess of wealth) on currency notes, engaged in anti-Rohingya dog-whistling, and demonisation of the Jamaat during COVID 19.

In Delhi government offices they have installed portraits of Ambedkar, while in Gujarat, where the BJP’s Hindu nationalism dominates every political ideology, they quickly distanced themselves from their own Dalit leader for literally quoting Ambedkar. In 2022, AAP leader Rajendra Gautam had to quit the party after he reiterated the 22 vows of Ambedkar. Gautam was present at a Buddhist conversion event with Ambedkar’s great grandson when these vows were reiterated.

The BJP and its supporters had called it hate speech and attacked Kejriwal in the same way he’s attacking them right now for Shah’s comments on Ambedkar. “After the event, Kejriwal approached me through Sisodia,” Gautam told this author. “I was given two options by Kejriwal – to pursue my Ambedkarite mission or to continue with the AAP.” Gautam resigned. He is now with the Congress and has turned into a critic of Kejriwal.

Ironically, this time around the BJP has also fielded a former AAP leader from the Dalit community who had supported the burning of the Manusmriti. This move incensed many pro-BJP influencers who’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with the Hindu nationalist party’s appropriation of Ambedkar.

Despite its best efforts to appropriate Ambedkar in their fold, the BJP has struggled with some of his ideas, especially his strong criticism of Hindu nationalism and his scathing writings about texts like the Manusmriti. Many in the BJP, including some of their top leaders, have also quite openly advocated for turning India into a Hindu nation. Ambedkar had openly rejected this idea while he was alive. “If Hindu Raj does become a fact,” he wrote, “it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.”

But it’s not just the AAP that’s trying to prove the BJP as anti-Dalit. Last week, a statue of Ambedkar was vandalised in the AAP-ruled Punjab prompting the BJP to label Kejriwal as “anti-Dalit.”

Old video clips of Kejriwal speaking against cast-based reservation quotas have been made viral too. Old anti-caste based reservation tweets of his close aides like chief minister Atishi have also been pulled out from the unforgiving vaults of the internet and are being widely shared. These are views that the AAP leaders wouldn’t express on any public platform today. At this point, all parties want to prove their opponent as anti-constitution but that is relatively harder for the BJP.

Historically, the Dalits of Delhi have never been close to the BJP electorally and the consciousness of Ambedkarite politics and culture is strong in Delhi.

On its part, the BJP has increased its outreach programmes in the Dalit community. They have fielded 14 Dalit candidates, two more than the AAP, which gave tickets to Dalits only on the reserved seats. Learning from its upset in the 2024 general elections, the BJP has been somewhat successful in toning down the impact of the Samvidhan Bachao campaign in the subsequent state assembly polls, and winning back some Dalit support.

The BJP is eager to reach out to Dalits and tell them about the various works they have done to honour Ambedkar, and promote schemes like their Vishwas policy that offer easy loans to the community entrepreneurs. In Delhi, they have promised Rs 1000 monthly stipend for Dalit students pursuing technical courses.

It remains to be seen how many of these promises turn out to be true and if there is actually a meaningful change in terms of effective representation or development for the community. But what both sides may continue to offer to the Dalits regardless of their fate on February 8 when the results will be announced, is respect and reverence to their icons, especially Ambedkar.

Courtesy: The Wire

DELHI Election NEWS POLITICS STATE

Delhi Polls: The Battle to Appropriate Ambedkar as Dalit Votes Become Key in AAP-BJP Showdown

Posted On February 5, 2025

Despite the AAP’s broad welfare agenda and ambitious policy, and the BJP’s tall promises, little has changed for the Dalits in Delhi.

For the Dalits, who have perpetually been at the bottom of the social ladder in India and were historically ostracised as untouchables, indeed Bhimrao Ambedkar is no less than God.

What do the voters say?

A couple of hundred metres from the two ramshackle camps is a public park with a giant statue of Ambedkar. It has been fenced and is cleaned on a regular basis.

“The rise of populist schemes, especially in Delhi,” Kumar argued, “is reducing people to dependent subjects.”

The duel for Dalit votes in Delhi

To fight the corruption charges, Kejriwal resigned after being released from prison and handed over the chief minister’s seat to Atishi.

On many occasions, however, the AAP’s critics say, that the party has engaged in both politics of appeasement and fear.

Historically, the Dalits of Delhi have never been close to the BJP electorally and the consciousness of Ambedkarite politics and culture is strong in Delhi.

Courtesy: The Wire

DALIT NEWS

Caste of Dignity: Ambiguity & Emotional Emancipation

Posted On February 5, 2025

The deliberate sagacity to subordinate the inferior non-dignified castes in the socially hierarchical rigid structure governing the dynamic politics became reportedly visible when the government appointed upper caste seven-term MP Bhartuhari Mahatab by snubbing the eight-time Dalit MP Kodikunil Suresh as the Pro-term Speaker in newly constituted 18th Lok Sabha by following principles of Westminster model.

SUMIT KUMAR BHARTI

New Delhi- Does dignity have any caste? What are the emotional and cognitive impact of the constitutional principles of positive affirmative actions on the young generation of students, after their first point of contact with the practicalities of reservation, in the milieu of ferociously savage competition for admission or state employment, without making them familiar with the philosophies and essentialities of equal protection of law in hierarchically stratified society?

The relegated Dalits have from the centuries ingrained the depraved debasement of caste degradation and humiliations to the extent of relegating them to a perpetual web of exploitation and subordination. The dehumanisation of their human existence due to astutely constructed lower strata in social construct has become a sense of common sense for their whole gamut of perseverance of life philosophy leading them into the crisis of contemplations. How does this feeling of generational low esteem self, guide the destiny of dignity of young girls and boys in a closed caste circumference with simultaneous existence of high caste pride and dignity of genealogy reflected in the egoism of excellence of imperiousness of substantial success?

The Derrida notion of deconstruction advocates that the human language is not yet developed to convey the real senses of human expressions, however, this paper contends to deconstruct the notion of dignity and cringworthiness related to caste and reservation on the opposite end of spectrums, focusing on the contemplation of young women, without getting into legal discourses.

Diwas Raja Kc, in his visual archive ‘Dalit- A Quest for Dignity’ elucidated that the “Dalit is not a caste that one inherits but rather an identity that one constructs”, as an empty, passive, voiceless mass of poor. India @75 still struggling to find the answer to why all the manual scavengers and menial workers are from the lower castes who are grabbed of dignity and why the maximum Judges of the higher judiciary, top secretaries of states and Union government and corporate houses are from the higher social strata, apart from the stereotyped trivial mention of existential castes. The two small instances bring two distinctive experiences of contemplation from two young women of Delhi University, taking their final semester exams to gain a degree in political science honours.

The first one claimed that she has superior genes of the Rajput clan so she is capable of fighting and winning against every odd. The second one asked the question of why no government post-independence had done anything for the welfare of the ‘general category men’ despite they being the good vote bank and still suffering in the absence of any welfare measures for them. One of the oddly occurring incidents during my lectures at college for women, was when I was having ‘deceit of duty’ of teaching and instead tried to learn new things from my students by engaging them in informal talks usually provoking them to narrate their journey and experiences.

The common complaint of many young ladies in that college was that they wished to pursue their degree from some highly reputed colleges of North Campus like Mirinda House or The Hindu College, but since they belong to the general category, so despite having good marks in CUET they have landed here. The student sitting next somewhere regrettably however courageously proclaimed that she wanted to join Delhi University colleges for a degree and since she had reservation, so she got admission easily. No rational mind can compartmentalise these statements into black and white, neither can prove these two young students completely wrong, however, the difficulty lies in proving their assertions utterly right. These three are not the exceptional insistence of self-esteem but the simplistic assertion of the narrative paradigm of the larger gamut of common sense of ‘general-upper category sense of dignity’ and insincerely enforced ‘reserved-lower caste sense of regret’.

Suman Lata Pathak in her study of ‘self-images of Scheduled Castes girl’s students of Chandigarh’ in the book titled “Struggle for Status” published in 1985, empirically noted that the “The Scheduled Castes, because of constant subjection to humiliation and having been given inferior status are bound to have a low self-image”. Without any astonishment, an Uber cab driver driving an air conditioner vehicle on the streets of the national capital often complains that he is doing this because all the ‘good education and government employment’ has been taken by scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SCs/STs), while contradictory to this a three-wheeler E-Rickshaw driver belonging to deprived castes crush his destiny and poverty with special mention of lack of education and any employment due to inaccessibility and unaffordability.

Let us first try to address why reservations for women. The first girl school by Savitri Bai Phule in Poona was ‘an upper room with the doors shut’ to avoid the persecution from the lawmakers in society those has privileged the Dwij castes men the monopoly over education and established the Gurukuls since the Vedic ages for proliferation of exclusivist education, that’s why we now have a women reservation Act from Parliament to Panchayats, and not the men reservation Act, to uplift the former to narrow the gap with the latter.

Alec Fyfe in his work of 2005, ‘Compulsory Education and Child Labour’ designates India as the country having the largest population of child-labours. Fyfe also analysed the effect of caste and sex matrixes on the phenomenon of these ‘nowhere children’ employed in child labour and concluded that “a boy from a non-poor upper caste family has a 75% chance of attaining the eighth grade while a girl from a poor scheduled-caste family has virtually no chance of reaching the fifth grade”. The situation has not transformed even after two decades and poor women from all sections of society and men from the SCs/STs are prime targets of negative discrimination.

For instance, as per the World Bank estimates, 80 per cent of all employment losers due to COVID-19 were women and 62 per cent of them are above the age of 30 years with insignificant future prospects of returning to the workforce. There is no proper study to ascertain the social background of migrant labourers who suffered the blot of lockdown, however, given the socio-economic correlations in India, it is not difficult to assume that most of them were from the deprived social castes.

Carol Hanisch’s ‘Personal is political’ reverberates in the daily lives of women, where access to political power remains obstructed or delusionary as in the case of proxies of women at panchayats- Sarpanch Patis holding the real power, the dynamism at the top level are not radically different. The 17th Lok Sabha just have 14.4% of women members and the upper house encompasses even lower (10.71%) women members. The newly constituted 18th Lok Sabha will have 73 women members, one lower than the 17th Lok Sabha despite the passage of the Women Reservation Act- the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (yet to be implemented) and many State parties offering tickets to women constantans are per their own prescribe percentages.

Mudit Kapoor and Shamika Ravi in their study of 2013 titled ‘Women Voters in India Democracy: A silent revolution’ question the charisma of India’s representative democracy when “65 million women around 20% of eligible voters are missing from the India’s electorate’s”. The economic disparity, unfortunately, as per the International Labour Organisation report -2019, is starker than the socio-political outlook.

The Gender wage gap in India is the highest in the world where women are paid 34% less than their women counterparts. The scenario in rural India is more pathetic, where women despite comprising around 42% of the agriculture labour force, as per the India Human Development Survey, own less than merely 2% of farmland. The rural realities of Dalit women, specifically are as inevitably present in today’s society as reflected by Sharan Kumar Limbale in his Akkarmashi- the autobiographical account published in 1978.

The stratified urban landscape of progressive modernisation also compelled Dalit women to hide their castes to get an equitable workspace, as reflected in Yashica Dutt’s memoir ‘Coming Out As A Dalit’.

Two quotations by George Orwell, the renowned English Novelist need simultaneous reading, quotes that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows” and another being that “if liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. In India, we historically have a direct parallel association between the low economic status and lower caste social paradigm, failing the economic determinism of Karl Marx, as here caste determines both economic and political credentials, which has also engulfed the other religious denominations other than the Hindus. This is the reason why caste, and not class was chosen as the basis of reservation in the original constitutional scheme of things.

However, the social forces of caste hierarchies are so significantly potent that the original schemes of quotas- the word which has acquired a derogatory connotation in majoritarian discourses of orthodoxy by calling reserved category candidates as Quota’s candidates or ‘Quota’s children’ have been firstly extended to OBCs and later to EWSs by subsequent constitutional amendments. The societal intellectual hierocracy can be ascertained by the fact that the introduction of OBC quotas has generated widespread opposition and agitations, while the implementation of EWS quotas generated no heat and was readily accepted by the forces which are traditionally opposed the quota system. The logical and valid argument for the EWS reservation was that it did not alter the quotas already allocated to SC/ST and OBCs.

Let’s take a simple mathematics to understand the representative democratic logic of ‘who’s participation, so much her share’:

Let us suppose there are 100 seats for a particular admission or employment, 50 seats are reserved for the already reserved categories, and the remaining 50 seats are unreserved- popularly known as general seats or seats for the higher castes. Now the EWs reservation simply allocates the 10 seats to the relatively deprived and improvised among those 50 general seats. This means 10 seats will go to the poorer among the general category and the remaining 40 to the non-poor unreserved candidates, without disturbing the former 50 reserved seats and this was unanimously welcomed by all the holders of power as the most essential measure towards an egalitarian and advanced society.

The same constitutional logic applies to the reserved quota seats, where they contend on the proportionality low numbers of seats reserved for them based on their proportion of the population, without disturbing the non-reserved seats. After all, democracy follows the authoritative allocations of values of education and employment and these are public goods, not the private property of any specific group of society, to be allocated on the principles as enshrined in the constitution of India. Thus, if any person from the reserved category has been allocated a government seat after the due competition in her domain, it’s not by the mercy of the state or sympathy of general castes, but because she is entitled to the same being a foundational member of society and state.

Professor N. Sukumar in his seminal work “Caste Discrimination and Exclusion in Indian Universities: A Critical Reflection” surveyed 600 Dalit respondents across Indian Universities to re-establish the concept of ‘Cultural Capital’ of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu defines it as “non-material resources which may be passed on from generation to generation to preserve power and privileges, that may include non-material goods like educational credentials, type of knowledge and expertise, verbal skills and aesthetic preferences”, leading to, in Professor Sukumar terms, ‘accumulated caste privileges’, thus perpetuating inequalities at the subconscious cellular level.

Sumeet Mhaskar while reviewing the “Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India” by Ajantha Subramanian, has noted the violent history of this perpetual process of caste accumulation in Indian Society where the upper caste religiously guarded the domain of education to systematically exclude the lower castes and women from gaining any access to education, thus deploring them to eternal darkness of ages.

Professor Sukumar explains the quotas syndrome in today’s educational setup by taking the evidence from the Ambedkar journey of school education through his concept of ‘Caste Habitus’, the influence of caste on students/ Individuals cultural, social and economic outlook guiding their attitudes and performance, for instance barring few exceptions, non-Dalits by default have their internal groupings during schools and colleges, segregating and outperforming the Dalit students.

However, paradoxically if a daughter of a reserved category officer becomes an I.A.S., she is disgracefully demeaned and questioned why she has taken the benefit of reservation when she has all the facilities at her disposal, the case of UPSC CSE-2015 topper Tina Dabi is a strafing reminder of the certified casteist mindset of the society, even when she was continuously proving her metal from being ‘student of the year’ in her prestigious Lady Sriram college to topping her training batch at LBSNAA. The same society, however, takes pride if a daughter of a high caste doctor becomes a doctor or a son of a temple priest takes his job eruditely reserved for him for centuries.

I have conducted a silent study of the academic behaviour of class students in 1ST Semester Political Science (H) at Kamala Nehru College for women by observing the phone calls and WhatsApp texts. About 90 per cent of phone calls and texts regarding academic or co-curricular work were from the general category students. These were also the same students who remained active participants during class discussions and never hesitated to approach their teacher (rightly so) for any confusion or doubts and often outperformed others in visible excellence.

This subconscious excellence is credited to their determined hard work but also added by their cultural capital. However, the semester-end examination, where you have to work hard at your place and put your brilliance of mind on paper at the examination hall, could not show any noteworthy difference between the performance of reserved and non-reserved students. The satisfying thing about women students is that they have diminishing contempt for fellow Dalit students, nevertheless, they retain and often acclaim their higher social status whenever required or desired supported or even sponsored by a few caste-minded academic intellectuals.

The controversial-seminal work of French sociologist Louis Dumont ‘Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications’ categorically established the fact that the caste is not only a system of social stratification or division of labour but a closed ideological system based on the civilisational proclaimed notion of pollution and purity, in stark contradiction to progressive ethos of the democratic egalitarian constitution of post-colonial India.

The constitution has provided progressive affirmative policies of positive discrimination in terms of reservation in government educational institutions and the employment domain, which is obviously visible. The contradiction is, however, visibly hidden socio-political and economic realities prompting the negative discrimination towards the poor, marginalised and deprived subaltern sections hardly become the subject matter of mainstream discourses and deliberations. The annual NCRB report- 2022, quantifies this negative discrimination in increasing rate of crimes against women, Children and SC/STs.

The political power and offices of authority drive not only the destiny of society but minutely influence the flow of individual life and livelihoods. The minuteness of caste dynamics at the larger socio-political canvas can be effortlessly ascertained by the fact that the maximum members of the constituent assembly were from the dignified castes, that till no prime minister of the Indian republic belonged to SC/ST and only a handful of Chief-ministers were from the purported Dalits, and till now there is no Dalit head of RSS or VHP, the most potent Hindu organisations.

Shikha Mukerjee in her paper titled ‘Politics of deep divides, prejudices & reservation’ alleged this as a deep divide in “social prejudices, justice and a dynamic interpretation of equality”. Dr Ambedkar called Villages a den of ignorance; however, it is an astonishing fact to reconsider that staking 41.14%MPs in the 17th Lok Sabha and 33% in the 18th Lok Sabha are from the profession of agriculture. The understandable factor is the largest demographic coverage and the maximum number of electorates in rural India; however, the collaborative coalition of Bullock Capitalism and Caste domination remains the open secret behind such an algorithm of hegemonic domination of higher castes having a monopoly over ‘dignity’.

The Economic inequalities preserve the prevalence of ancient socio-economic realities in 21st-century modern India denying constitutional justice and its principles of prudence. Amit Thorat & Omkar Joshi in their 2015 paper ‘The Continuing Practices of Untouchability in India: Pattern and Mitigation Influences’ defines the Indian Caste system as one of the “Longest survival system of stratification in the world”.

A recent paper by Jyoti Thakur and Prabir Kumar Gosh titled ‘The Shadow of Caste’ examined the consumption patterns within the social groups of SC, ST, OBC and general category using Periodic Labour Force data from 2017-18 to 2022-23. As per their findings in 2022-23, the STs which constitute 9 % of the population have a consumption share of only 7%, the SCs accounted for 20% part of the demography have a consumption share of 16%, the OBCs which constitute 43% part of population shares 41% of consumption and the leftover general category which constitutes 28% of the population commands a notably higher consumption share of 36%.

The Oxfam International Inequality Report -2019 concluded that in India upper-caste households earned 47% more than the national average household income. This disproportionate consumption pattern gets transformed into the concentration of wealth both social and economic among high-caste elites, which shapes the Hierarchical-Intellectual Hegemony of the current generation.

As per many studies like ‘Inequality in Contemporary India: Does Caste Still Matters?’, more than 60% of SCs and 70% of STs are engaged in daily wage agriculture labour in rural India and unskilled or low-paid semi-skilled occupations in the informal sector.

The constitution as curated by the Dr Ambedkar envisioned the caste-based reservation for ten years to bring parity in the graded society. This temporary provision of affirmative action of caste-based reservation has been eternalised further by class-based and gender-based reservations. The original notion of reservation which was intended to remove social distinction, however, consolidated in perpetuity, the compartmentalisation of the society on the lines of Quotas.

The emergence of Dalit-Brahmins or Dalit-elites who have sidelined the maximum benefits of reservation leaving their fellows as impoverished and deprived as they were historically, has led to the demand for the categorization and subsequently exclusion of the creamy layer from SCs/STs reservation, so that the indented advantage can percolate the bottom layer of the society.

Reservation as a political apparatus towards egalitarianism, with political leaders banking their political imminent on the politicization of their caste, without the parallel social construct of equality will only create fissures in an already divided society. The critical analysis of Japan’s experience of the abolition of untouchability against Burakumins (pollution abundant) under the Emancipation Act of 1871 following the banning of feudalism, where despite the legal prohibition without the much-needed social stimulation, the Burakumins or Eta’s (full of filth) are yet to be completely assimilated in their modern society, offer a case study to India’s Scio-political establishments.

The struggle for survival and prosperity is an internal part of the Indian way of life, the difference is only of degree and nature on the gamut of caste lines, not of the substance. The subconscious feeling of dignity of high caste and beggarly contemptibility contrarily associated with the caste and reservation should be eliminated to promote the sense of egalitarianism and esteem, what Ambedkar calls for an ascending sense of reverence and descending sense of contempt.

India being an ancient land of civilisation provides ample opportunity for several groups and social arrangements to develop and flourish, resulting in every single caste having a grand legacy to take pride in, a research domain for subaltern historians, fast proliferating into the phenomenon of ‘rediscovering dignity’, where every caste now celebrating the tales of their heroes and Virangnas (women warrior’s) like Jhalkaribai.

The developed India@ 47 shall be free from the reincarnated notion of pride in caste, for that society and state need to dismantle the falsehood prevalent concerning reservation by igniting constructive debates on the discourses of the reservation to make it compatible with contemporary socio-political realities.

In India Ambedkar called for the Annihilation of Caste along with other progressive Hindu reformers advocating unity within the society on equality of an individual with individuals, and Constitution abolishing the untouchability, however, the caste system has shown uninterrupted resilience because it provides not only the material privileges to the elites but the spiritual and psychological containment with emotional emancipation.

Precisely this is why youngster from deprived social identity make counter-currents to establish their self-esteem by invoking ancestorial heritage and asserting it through songs, social media and public display, many a time producing friction and social skirmishes. Thus, the dismantling of the mindset of caste-based emotions of pride, the virtue of worthiness and the cognitive superior self is imperative to have evocative deliberations on the reservation, not only to find out answers to questions of young minds but to offer a considerable resolution.

The imperative is to make our young generation in our schools and colleges inculcate the constitutional philosophies and virtues of freedom fighters, to imbibe the spirit of comradeship and fraternity, to ensure that they can associate ‘Dignity’ with determined-destined actions free from what Sigmund Freud called ‘obsessive-compulsive disorder’, of castes, class or gender.

-The author is a Senior Research Fellow and adjunct faculty, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.

Courtesy : The Mooknayak

TE TELANGANA

‘Telangana caste survey essential, govt’s handling of data to be seen’: Sujatha Surepally

Posted On February 4, 202

Academic and activist Sujatha Surepally welcomed the impending introduction of the Telangana caste census in the Assembly, while noting that some caste groups are wary of the legitimacy of the data.

A black and white photograph of Sujatha Surepally wearing a striped collared shirt and a dupatta draped over her shoulder. She has long, dark hair, a small bindi on her forehead, a nose piercing, and earrings. She is smiling softly, and the background is blurred with lights and architectural elements visible.

Welcoming the Telangana government’s move to release its caste survey report, academic and activist Sujatha Surepally noted that there are reasonable concerns over potential shortcomings in the data, and the feasibility of increasing reservations for Backward Classes (BC) in the upcoming local body elections without legal hurdles.

Sujatha, who is the Head of the Department (HOD) of Sociology at Telangana’s Satavahana University, said, “BC reservations and Scheduled Castes sub-categorisation both depend on this survey. Both sections are eagerly awaiting the survey results.”

On February 2, Telangana Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy shared the preliminary findings of the Socio, Economic, Educational, Employment, Political, and Caste Survey carried out by the state government in November and December 2024. BCs (excluding Muslims) form 46.25% of Telangana’s population, the survey found.

Telangana caste survey: BCs comprise 56% of the state’s population

The report is set to be tabled in the Assembly during a special session convened on February 4. On the same day, a single-member Judicial Commission of retired High Court judge Justice Shameem Akhtar will also submit its report on the sub-classification of SCs to the Telangana Cabinet sub-committee. The sub-committee was formed to implement the Supreme Court order of August 2024, which affirmed states’ right to sub-categorise SCs listed in the Presidential List to provide some of them with greater preferential treatment in public employment and education.

The survey also recorded details of sub-castes, land and property ownership, income, education, migration, debt, and inter-caste marriages. So far, only the broader caste-wise composition of the population (SCs, BCs, Scheduled Tribes, Open Category, as well as Muslims) has been revealed by the government.

“There are groups who say that only the nationwide decadal census [carried out under the Census Act] is authentic and reliable. Those advocating for SC sub-categorisation have said that the survey has not reached all households,” Sujatha said.

MRPS announces cultural demonstration on Feb 7 seeking reservations

In the initial days of the survey, which was launched on November 6, there were reports of several residents being reluctant to share their details, and doubts were raised on the quality of the data. A few BC associations have demanded that the government conduct local body elections with increased reservation only after covering the remaining households, particularly in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and other urban areas.

Officials said that most people in rural and semi-urban areas eventually ended up participating in the survey, with the Greater Hyderabad region seeing the least participation. According to Uttam Kumar Reddy, the survey has covered 96.9% of the state’s population.

Sujatha recalled the Samagra Kutumba Survey (Intensive Household Survey) carried out in one day by the previous K Chandrasekhar Rao-led government in 2014, which also gathered caste data from individuals after declaring a holiday to facilitate the data gathering. However, the findings were never released.

“When KCR did the Samagra Kutumba Survey, there was resistance from some sections who said that this was not a legally binding, authentic census. That data was never used for policy making,” Sujatha noted.

“We are all in an unequal, caste-ridden society. Caste data is crucial for all reservations and social welfare schemes. All research statistics and empirical data are difficult to measure in India, since we have a huge population with several groups.There’s always a limitation,” she said.

However, she commended the Revanth Reddy government for completing and releasing the caste census as promised during its poll campaign. “At least some government has come forward to conduct a survey. In the absence of any data, if some numbers are out, it is a welcome step. They may not have covered all households, but they might have adequate representative sampling … we will get to know more once the survey is released,” Sujatha said.

Before launching the recent survey, Telangana government officials visited Bihar and Karnataka, where caste surveys have been completed in the recent past. The Bihar government’s report showed that 63% of the state’s population were OBCs and EBCs (Extremely Backward Classes). Based on this, the state Assembly passed legislation to increase reservations for EBC, OBC, SC, and ST communities from 50% to 65% in educational institutions and government jobs, in November 2023.

However, the Patna High Court declared the 65% reservation unconstitutional, a verdict later upheld by the Supreme Court, on grounds that the report couldn’t demonstrate any exceptional circumstances for breaching the 50% cap on reservations.

Telangana caste census begins: Why an end to 50% quota cap needs to follow

Before sweeping to power in Telangana in 2023, Congress had promised to increase BC reservations in local bodies from 23% to 42%, and to implement 42% BC reservation in government civil construction and maintenance contracts. The upcoming local body polls are expected to be held only after implementing the increased BC reservation.

BC leaders demand 42% reservation in Telangana local body elections

“Legal hurdles are likely, as there is often opposition from dominant castes against reservations for marginalised groups. That is the challenging part for the government — what stand it takes and how it justifies its data and decisions,” Sujatha said.

She called on the government to use the comprehensive data collected in the caste survey, combined with all the extensive citizen data available with various departments, to provide better, targeted opportunities to marginalised groups.

“Governments claim to be technologically advanced, and say they use technology for good governance. But they don’t seem to converge all of these segregated data, from ration cards, Aadhar, NREGS, labour department, Anganwadis, etc. for targeted interventions. We cannot always wait for the decadal census,” Sujatha said.

She also called on the government to look at the gender component of the caste data while designing policies, stressing that benefits must reach women as well.

Courtesy: The News Minute

TAMILNADU

Dalit residents demand martyr status for 1978 Villupuram violence victims

Posted On February 4, 2025

Their demand comes in the wake of the recent inauguration of a memorial for martyrs who died in police firing in 1987 Vanniyar reservation protest in the district.

Krithika Srinivasan

VILLUPURAM: In a demand for justice and recognition, dalit residents of Valudareddy, GRP street and other parts of dalit residential areas in Villupuram have called upon the Tamil Nadu government to officially declare the 12 victims of the 1978 Villupuram caste violence as martyrs.

Their demand comes in the wake of the recent inauguration of a memorial for martyrs who died in police firing in 1987 Vanniyar reservation protest in the district. VCK General Secretary and Villupuram MP D Ravikumar has publicly urged the government to validate the agency of dalits in the history of this land.

The caste violence in Villupuram, which occurred on July 25, 1978, was allegedly a brutal and premeditated attack by caste Hindus on the dalit community, that killed 12 people from the Schedule Caste community who were mainly hawkers and labourers.

The people who were killed were identified as Mani Kundu, Selvaraj, Mannangatti, Veerappan, Thirumal, Kathavarayan, Ramasamy, Arumugam, Sakthi, Rangasamy, Sekar, and Irusammal. A memorial stone is laid at the entrance of GRP street for them.

The then Chief Minister M G Ramachandran-led state government dismissed the violence as an “anti-social act” rather than a caste-based atrocity. The District Collector of South Arcot, P S Pandian submitted a report on July 31, 1978, downplaying the massacre, and the government accepted the report.

Speaking to TNIE, professor of journalism at Madurai Kamaraj University, J Balasubramaniam said, “Even an inquiry commission, led by R Sadasivam, which later documented the systematic nature of the attacks, failed to bring justice for the victims. Findings from the Sadasivam Commission revealed that the massacre was planned in advance.”

According to a report by D David in his book ‘Villupuram Padukolai 1978’ – on July 24, 1978, a caste Hindu shop owner had closed his shop in preparation for a bandh the following day. Violence broke out soon after a clash between a few people over alleged harassment against a dalit woman, in the market.

By July 25 and 26, violent mobs had torched Dalit homes, looted their belongings, and brutally attacked residents. As many as 12 individuals were hacked to death, some were burned together, and others were thrown onto railway tracks and into the Marudur Lake.

Decades later, the continued lack of a memorial for the 12 dalit victims stands in stark contrast to the government’s recent move to commemorate other historical events. Many residents in the district, along with various social justice activists, argued that the selective recognition of historical tragedies exposes the deep-rooted caste bias in the state’s approach to justice.

Dalit scholar Chandru Mayavan argued, “The government’s willingness to recognise some victims of violence while ignoring others sends a troubling message about whose lives are deemed valuable. Victims of Melavalavu violence, Thamirabarani firing, Keezhvenmani massacre, never had the chance of being called ‘martyrs.’ But the government will build memorials to please the intermediate caste people, and pay tribute to their caste leaders every year.”

A Gunanidhi, a 35 years-old resident of GRP street said, “The state is supposed to protect the lives of all people but somehow always dalit deaths are clearly ignored. Police firing is one form of state violence while caste is also a long, densely practised violence that the state has not controlled and let many dalit people lose their lives for it.” Agreeing with the demand, Vikravandi MLA Anniyur A Siva told TNIE, “It is their right to demand and the state must take efforts to fulfil them.”

The violence has left scars till date and dalit traders in the Old Market area continue to face severe discrimination, with caste Hindus systematically denying them fair opportunities to conduct business.

Vasugi Bhaskar of Neelam Publications told TNIE, “News reports indicate that Dalit vendors are frequently harassed, prevented from setting up stalls, and denied access to resources available to other traders. We are still unable to see a dalit business owner in the market area because of the dark effects of the 1978 violence, before which many dalits living in the adjacent GRP street area used to run shops.”

Meanwhile, Nather Shah, a member of the district Home Guard said, “The memories of dalits being killed and disposed of in the Marudhur lake still haunts the people living there. It has left a dark scar among the oppressed community and it is only today, after generations of education and employment that they are able to demand for a recognition of the victims which is a fair demand.”

Courtesy : TNIE

National Commission for Scheduled Castes seeks status report from State on construction of community halls for Adi Dravidar community

Updated - February 04, 2025 09:03 pm IST - MADURAI

The Hindu Bureau

The National Commission for Scheduled Castes, acting on a petition of Dalit Liberation Movement, has sought details from the Tamil Nadu Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department of developments in construction of community halls as announced in the State Assembly in 2021-22.

The petitioner, S. Bhimrao of Dalit Liberation Movement, through a reply under the Right to Information Act, has received details that the State government has allocated no fund for the construction of 20 Adi Dravidar community halls as informed in the department’s policy note in the year 2021-22.

Bihar, India banned alcohol nine years ago. It's failing just like American Prohibition

Banning booze in Bihar has empowered gangs and illicit markets in an echo of the 1920s. Here's what went wrong

By Niko Vorobyov

Published February 2, 2025 5:30AM (EST)

A Man from Pasi community (a Dalit or untouchable community of India) serving toddy (Palm wine), a traditional alcoholic drink made from the sap of palm trees. (Pradeep Gaur/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Late last year, I was in Bodh Gaya in the northern Indian state of Bihar, the birthplace of Buddhism, on the first night of Diwali, the Hindu festival of light. Candles and colored lights radiated a warm glow over the walls of this riverside neighborhood. I purchased a firework intriguingly labelled “The Hulk” and set it down next to an abandoned one-story house, which was being occupied as a drinking and gambling den. The twenty-odd men inside were playing a game of cards, surrounded by plastic cups and green bottles filled with a liquid that was hardly lemonade.
However, I’d accidentally left the firework upside-down, and instead of exploding upwards it exploded sideways, engulfing me in a whirlwind of brightly-glowing stars. Cries of dismay sounded from the derelict house as the cloud of sparks flooded inside, interrupting the game and burning a small hole in one man’s shirt. The local children, at least, were amused. I was given a stern look and apologized. An hour or two later, more shouts emanated from the house. One of the players, who’d apparently been caught cheating, bolted through the side door, pursued by an angry, drunken mob.
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Why Thailand legalized marijuana — and then almost banned it again
It's scenes like this that led Bihar to ban booze in 2016. With a population of nearly 130 million – roughly the same as the entire country of Mexico – this single state in India now has the most people living under dry laws than anywhere else on the planet. The parallels with early 20th century Prohibition in America – gangsters, feminists, minorities, corruption, doctor’s notes, speakeasies and moonshine – are strikingly similar.
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“People will drink. Who can stop anybody from eating and drinking what they want to?” says Sudha Varghese, founder and director of Nari Gunjan, an NGO devoted to uplifting women in marginalised Bihari communities. “If they’re not producing [alcohol], then they are drinking happily in plenty. They forget whatever restrictions there were. You don’t go to a public place to buy, now it comes to your home.”
Indian drinking culture dates back to earliest recorded history. Toddy, for instance — a sweet, refreshing, vinegar-smelling drink made from the sap of palm trees in southern India — has been known since ancient times. And in the epic tale, the “Ramayana,” the hero Rama indulges in wine with his wife, Sita.
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Prohibition is intertwined with the birth of the modern Indian nation itself.
But while Western society is divided by class, race and gender, Hindu society is also divided by an elaborate caste system: there’s castes of merchants, cobblers, jugglers and acrobats, who’re not supposed to mingle or intermarry. On the top are Brahmins, the priestly class; while at the bottom are Dalits, a caste so lowly you’re not even supposed to shake hands with them. The caste you're born into determines the rest of your life, and lower-castes endure daily discrimination in terms of jobs, education and social standing. Over a third of lower-caste Indians are illiterate, compared to roughly a fifth on average. According to Hindu customs, warriors and kings may only imbibe on special occasions, while Brahmins must remain teetotal. The lower you climb down the caste ladder, the more people drink, and for Dalits there are few taboos at all.
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Bottles of country liquor being destroyed on March 31, 2016 on the outskirts of Patna, India. (AP Dube/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
Prohibition is intertwined with the birth of the modern Indian nation itself.
Drinking grew more popular under colonial rule, becoming a rallying point for the independence movement, who boycotted the British-owned liquor industry. Proponents of prohibition argued that drinking culture was alien to India – while that’s debatable, the colonials filled their coffers with the liquor tax and certainly encouraged it. Mahatma Gandhi, who was famously teetotal, saw it as another way for the Man to keep the Brown Brother down.
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“If I were appointed dictator for one hour for all India, the first thing I would do would be to close without compensation all the liquor shops [and] destroy all the toddy palms such as I know them,” he once said.
In 1947, India won its independence and Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic angry at his outreach to Muslims. In the new nation, prohibition seemed like a shortcut to fix all their social problems. Upper-caste Hindus considered drinking a scourge to be eradicated, and were undeterred by Prohibition’s abject failure in America, a land they considered beyond saving anyway. Dalits, Christians and Parsis (those who practice Zoroastrians, an ancient religion from Persia) argued that drinking was not anathema to them and in fact part of their customs. Furthermore, most who drank did so occasionally, while hardcore winos would switch to dangerous moonshine. But no one wanted to contradict Gandhi’s memory and so prohibition was enshrined into India’s new constitution, though in practice it was only implemented in a handful of states such as in the great city of Bombay, currently known as Mumbai.
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What the naysayers predicted is exactly what happened in the end. Just like the rise of the Mob during American Prohibition, Bombay’s booze ban led to the rise of the powerful Mumbai mafia, whose illicit distilleries in Dharavi, the swampland slum from “Slumdog Millionaire,” churned out hundreds of litres of hooch each night. Distillers threw rotten fruit and molasses waste in the gallon to brew with ammonium chloride to produce something called “snake juice,” which was collected by lepers and taken around the city.
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Lepers made ideal runners, as the cops didn’t wanna touch them, and if they ever did come close enough to slap on the handcuffs, the lepers were often missing fingerprints (as well as the fingers themselves.) The lepers carried the hooch to speakeasies known as “aunty bars”, often operated by families from Goa, an enclave colonized by the Portuguese and converted to Christianity. The Goans paid monthly protection fees to Bombay’s finest to be left alone and given advance warning of raids. But enforcement was lax anyway, not least because the police themselves liked a tipple.
Not everyone had to chug ghetto grog. Wealthier Indians could afford fancy scotch smuggled by sailors. Since alcohol withdrawal can be fatal, chronic drunkards could show a doctor’s note for a prescription. And the rules didn’t apply to gora (foreigners) either, of course. But in 1963, Bombay lifted prohibition to save “the people from ruining their health by drinking illicit liquor, which was in most cases worse than poison.”
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Bombay’s noble experiment was repeated, and repealed, in several other Indian states.
"Women cannot say that because of the ban there is no domestic abuse."
As was partly the case in America, the charge towards prohibition was led by women’s movements. Women throughout India have long called for liquor bans to reign in their drunken husbands, who squandered all their earnings drinking the toddy bar dry before stumbling home and assaulting them. India is a relatively sober place compared to the West (average alcohol consumption of 4.9 litres per capita, compared to 9.2 in Europe and 7.5 in the Americas), but those who drink tend to get absolutely hammered: according to the WHO, 93% of alcohol consumed in India comes in the form of hard spirits, and drinkers are overwhelmingly men.
Bihar’s anti-alcohol campaign began in the rural village of Konar in 2013 where a group of sixty or so angry women, outraged at seeing their children sipping leftovers which had been left lying around, demanded their local wine shop be closed, and when the owner refused, shut the door with a padlock. The protests spread to other villages, with female vigilantes smashing bottles of naughty water like a desi Carrie Nation.
Bihar is one of India’s poorest states but also has perhaps the greatest women’s participation in politics. The Jeevika organization, which connected women’s groups across the state, mobilized a quarter of Bihari women into calling for alcohol to be outlawed. Courting the female vote, the state’s Chief Minister Nitish Kumar made the dry law a bedrock of his re-election campaign and signed the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act in 2016.
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The policy appeared to have some initial success. Drinking dipped substantially – after three years, by 41% among men and nearly 70% for women – and families had more disposable income: in the first year of prohibition, the sale of saris surged 1,715%.
According to certain studies, domestic abuse and drunken brawls have become less common. But as we’ve seen, drinking persists.
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“Women cannot say that because of the ban there is no domestic abuse,” Sudha shook her head. “I don't see that as a big positive effect of the ban. Maybe one or other of the men who used to drink a lot, come and beat up their wives, [but] those women who were abused for various reasons, they are abused today also.”
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Part of the reason is Bihar is surrounded by “wet” states. Bootleggers simply stock up there and drive back, hawking their wares for two or three times the price. Bootlegging attracts youngsters seeking easy money, and the jails are overflowing with small-time bootleggers unable to afford bail, leaving their families behind without breadwinners. Just like the United States, where low income and Black people are disproportionately punished by the war on drugs, which was engineered with racist overtones, so in Bihar the lower-castes suffer more than two-thirds of prohibition arrests. The Dalit community in particular relied on the alcohol trade before the ban, and the lack of opportunities in one of India’s poorest states has left many resorting to bootlegging.
“Producing and selling [alcohol] is the livelihood for very poor people who are landless and assetless, and this is the only option they have to earn their daily food,” Sudha explained. “They are not living in luxury. And the administration, the excise department, they have to show results. Why are people drinking so much? So the department goes raiding and makes life miserable for these people. They beat them up, they will take anything they find in their houses and they collect money from them; extortion.”
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Arrests are also common — mostly men, but some women also. Female runners are particularly prized since they’re less likely to arouse suspicion, strapping bottles beneath their saris. Sudha says people need to be given alternative livelihoods independent of alcohol trafficking.
“But that is not a priority for the government. They have no skill to go into another livelihood, they have no capital to do that,” Sudha said. “They are helpless. You catch them, beat them, take them to jail. They are rotting there, nobody is there to help them with legal aid. So what about their human rights, their right to live with dignity? And who is benefiting from this ban on liquor? I think it is only the police benefiting from it.”
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Bootlegging is enabled by the overstretched police force and crooked cops taking payoffs from the booze racket. In November, Bihar’s prohibition was sharply criticized by a judge, who ruled it was little more than a racket for cops to shake down bootleggers at the expense of the poor, who languish in prison while kingpins watch the money roll in.
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Given the scale of corruption, opposition leaders and local conspiracy theorists have accused Chief Minister Kumar of deliberately passing the law to profit the booze barons – the classic bootleggers and Baptists scenario, in which both law-abiding moralists and amoral racketeers benefit from prohibition. During Kumar’s previous term he’d actually loosened restrictions in the state, doubling the number of liquor stores before suddenly closing them all when it became politically expedient. So what happened to all that demand, his critics ponder.
According to the latest survey from the Ministry of Health, roughly 17% of men continue to drink. That’s the portion willing to admit it, at least – the real number could be far higher. But there are similar levels of drinking in neighboring Uttar Pradesh, a wet state, throwing the necessity of prohibition into question.
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“There are two categories of people after the ban,” explained Dr Abhitesh Tripathi, who runs a clinic in northwest Bihar. “The rich people who can afford the high price of [imported] liquor that is available to them by some illegal means. And the second category are very marginalized and poor people who are drinking country liquor which is produced in the villages. The problem is that liquor is not regulated and the production is [substandard.] The original alcohol content is ethanol, but the country liquor contains methanol and the people who survive that may be left with lifelong blindness and other injury like liver damage.”
Country liquor, or moonshine, is made from mahua fruits fermented with sugar then occasionally mixed with cheap methyl alcohol. Brewers often check the quality by seeing if it catches fire – if it lights, it’s alright! Mass poisonings are not uncommon, and victims are so scared of arrest they don’t call for help.
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“Even though [prohibition] has not been very successful, they are not going to accept it and take it back because it’s become a matter of pride,” said Dr Tripathi.
Sounds familiar.
10

Telangana

Telangana Cabinet approves bills to enhance BC, SC reservations

The caste survey in Telangana revealed that Scheduled Castes make up 15.43% of the population, Scheduled Tribes 10.45%, Backward Classes 46.25%, and Muslim Backward Classes 10.08%, bringing the total BC population to 56.33%.
The Telangana Legislative Assembly(Photo | Wikimedia commons)
Express News Service
Updated on:
04 Feb 2025, 3:15 pm
HYDERABAD: The State Cabinet has approved two Bills, for enhancing the reservations to BCs and also to categorise SCs into A, B, C and D categories.
The special session of the Legislative Assembly commenced at 11 am was adjourned after two minutes for the conduct of the State Legislative Assembly. Both Assembly and the Council sessions resumed after 2 pm.
The Telangana Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation of Seats in Educational Institutions and Appointment of Posts in the service under the state and seats in Local bodies) Bill will be adopted by the Assembly today.
The Bill proposes increasing BC reservations to 42 per cent and SC reservations from 10 per cent to 17 per cent. It will be sent to the central government for the President’s assent.
In an informal chat with reporters after today's Cabinet meeting, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy said that the proposed Bill would resolve the problems of SCs, BCs and STs, who compromise over 73 per cent.He stated that Telangana set a record by completing a caste survey in 50 days, serving as a model for the country, and asserted that the survey was conducted perfectly.
The caste survey in Telangana revealed that Scheduled Castes make up 15.43% of the population, Scheduled Tribes 10.45%, Backward Classes 46.25%, and Muslim Backward Classes 10.08%, bringing the total BC population to 56.33%.

In Vijayapura district, Karnataka, miscreants vandalised portraits of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Tipu Sultan at a government school in Chabanur village. Authorities have registered a case, and an investigation is underway to identify the culprits.

UntouchableNews.

05.02.25...Untouchablity News.....अछूत समाचार.தீண்டாமை செய்திகள்.by Team சிவாஜி. शिवाजी .Shivaji.asivaji1962@gmail.com.9444917060.wa.

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Bihar, India banned alcohol nine years ago. It's failing just like American Prohibition

Banning booze in Bihar has empowered gangs and illicit markets in an echo of the 1920s. Here's what went wrong

By Niko Vorobyov

Published February 2, 2025 5:30AM (EST)

Telangana Cabinet approves bills to enhance BC, SC reservations

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