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43 police constables move Gujarat HC, seek copy of final order over cancellation of caste certificates
Updated: Nov 8th, 2025
Forty-three police constables have approached the Gujarat High Court seeking a copy of the final order regarding the cancellation of their caste certificates, which remain pending with the Divisional Scrutiny Committee in Gandhinagar. The petitioners claim that they belong to the Rabari community of specified forest nesses who’s ST caste certificate was under scrutiny by the state government.
The petitioners apprehend that the Divisional Scrutiny Committee may first notify the employer or relevant authority about the caste certificate cancellation order to initiate termination proceedings, and only afterward—either through the department or after significant delay—does the committee send the order to the affected individuals. The petitioners fear job loss due to the prolonged delay in receiving the order regarding cancellation of caste certificate from divisional scrutiny committee, claims the petition
The petitioners claimed that the state's actions are arbitrary, illegal, mala fide, and in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law. They also claim the process breaches principles of natural justice.
The petitioners assert their eligibility for ST caste certificate status, citing the Ministry of Home Affairs' notification dated October 29, 1956—"The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Lists (Modification) Order, 1956"—by which it was notified that Nesses area within the forests of Gir, Barda and Alech, communities such as Bharwad, Charan and Rabari were declared as Scheduled Tribe. It is submitted that petitioners belongs to Rabari Community which is covered under Scheduled Tribe category
Petitioners state that Mamlatdars in their respective areas issued ST caste certificates after thorough verification and inquiry.
Earlier in 2021, the candidates had applied before Lokrakshak Recruitment Board-2018 but were orally denied appointments amid state-level scrutiny of their caste certificate claims.
Following a high court directive that year, petitioners received provisional appointments as Class-3 police constables, subject to the scrutiny committee's verdict. The court had clarified that if caste certificates were deemed invalid, provisional service would not confer any benefits. The petitioners have been serving since December 2022. The matter is likely to be heard on November 13.
BJP renaming Ambedkar schools to CM Shri institutes, claims AAP
The AAP on Friday claimed that the BJP government in the Capital is renaming Dr BR Ambedkar Schools of Specialised Excellence to CM Shri Schools, calling it an “insult to Babasaheb Ambedkar and the Dalit community”. Addressing a press conference, AAP Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj accused the BJP of attempting to erase Ambedkar’s legacy.
“When the BJP came to power, they removed Ambedkar’s portraits from government offices. Now, they are erasing his name from schools. This exposes their anti-Ambedkar mindset,” he said. “The AAP government had decided that the offices of the Chief Minister, ministers, Sub-Divisional Magistrates (SDMs), District Magistrates (DMs), Secretaries, Directors and school Principals would display portraits of ‘Babasaheb’ Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and ‘Shaheed-e-Azam’ Bhagat Singh, so that their photos appeared in every official image and video. But in any photograph of CM Rekha Gupta now, Babasaheb’s portrait is nowhere to be seen and only Prime Minister Modi’s picture is visible. This clearly shows their hatred towards Babasaheb Ambedkar and the Dalit community.”
AAP Kondli MLA Kuldeep Kumar, who recently visited a Khichripur school, claimed that new signboards had been put up, but the AAP removed these and restored the original boards with Dr Ambedkar’s name. “The BJP has done no real work in nine months. It has only renamed schemes: mohalla buses as Devi Buses, clinics as Aarogya Mandirs, and now Ambedkar Schools, ” he said.
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» Southern States » Telangana Potter Community Ostracised for Helping Dalits in Jangaon Telangana Puli Sharath Kumar 8 November 2025 8:43 PM Tensions between OC and SC community members in the village had been simmering Representational Image. (Source:DC) Advertisement
WARANGAL: In a severe case of social boycott, families belonging to the Kummari (potter) community were ostracised in Obukkeshavapuram village of Jangaon district. The boycott was reportedly enforced by leaders from the OC (Other Caste) and BC (Backward Class) communities after the Kummari families supplied pots to SC (Scheduled Caste/Dalit) families for a wedding and the Bonalu festival. Tensions between OC and SC community members in the village had been simmering. Earlier, SC elders had decided to stop providing services such as drumming at funerals for other castes. In retaliation, OC and BC leaders instructed their communities to avoid all interaction with SC families. Also Read - Adivasis Plan Major Rally in Utnoor on Nov 23 Advertisement When the Kummari families defied this informal ban by providing pots to SC families, they were punished for violating a village resolution. Villagers were told to stop purchasing pottery from the Kummari families and to buy from Jangaon town instead. Those supporting or trading with the boycotted families were also threatened with similar exclusion. Deputy Commissioner of Police Raja Mahendra Naik took immediate action after receiving a complaint and directed inspector P. Satyanarayana Reddy to visit the village. The inspector met both groups and warned them of the serious legal consequences of enforcing a social boycott. However, despite police intervention, Kummari community member K. Chandraiah said that OC and BC leaders refused to lift the boycott, asserting that supporting SC families was unacceptable. The inspector issued a 48-hour deadline for the groups to resolve the issue, warning that police would initiate formal action against those perpetuating social exclusion. Source : Deccan Chronicle
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/southern-states/telangana/potter-community-ostracised-for-helping-dalits-in-jangaon-1915688
Dalit Mythology: The Durga of Dalit Narrative
Because this retelling comes from a Dalit scholar, any challenge to it is immediately painted as casteist.
In recent years, there has been a growing clash between ‘Sanatani mythology’ and ‘Dalit mythology’. During the festival season last month, a well-known Dalit activist argued that the worship of Durga is nothing but the celebration of an Aryan invasion of Dravidian lands. In his retelling, Mahishasur, the buffalo demon, represents dark-skinned Dravidians while Durga represents fair-skinned Aryans.
Because this retelling comes from a Dalit scholar, any challenge to it is immediately painted as casteist. But the Dalit retellers are following the toolkit long used by Sanatani activists who brand their critics as anti-national or communist. This is how ideological battles are fought today. Labels need to be weaponised. Myths need to be reimagined.
Political groups across the spectrum have always bent old stories to fit new narratives. In his 1873 book Gulamgiri (Slavery), Jyotiba Phule reimagined the Devas-Asuras wars as colonisation of ancient Dravidian lands by Aryan infiltrators. Great Asura kings like Prahalad,
Virochana, and Bali were seen as demons. By turning ‘gods’ into colonisers and ‘demons’ into heroes, Phule gave Bahujan communities a counter-history. If Brahmins could use mythology to establish their supremacy, surely Dalits could use the same for social justice.
Sanatanis have long tried to debunk the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), arguing it was simply colonial propaganda. Some even propose the Out of India Theory (OIT) that claims Brahmins gave civilisation to the world. Ironically, it was Balgangadhar Tilak, the founding father of the Sanatani political ideology, who first decoded astronomy-based Vedic hymns to show that the Aryan homeland may have been north of the Himalayas, near the Arctic, probably. The Vedic ‘Usha’ hymns spoke of a land where there were dawns without any visible sun.
In the 20th century, Babasaheb Ambedkar rejected AIT as it was a racial theory aimed at establishing Brahmin-European-Aryan superiority.
He argued caste was a social, economic, and political problem, not a racial one. But now, in the 21st century, we have a new source of evidence – genetics! DNA studies clearly show migration of Steppe pastoralists and horses into India took place over 3,000 years ago.
Aryans did come to India. But not as invaders who destroyed the Harappan cities. They came to trade Central Asian horses for Indian iron, 500 years after Harappan cities had ceased to exist.
Both Sanatani and Dalit activists rarely bother with art or ritual history. The image of Durga with many arms, killing the buffalo, first appeared around 2,000 years ago in Kushan art (100 AD). It was first carved in stone during the Gupta period (400 AD). The Sanskrit story of Durga being created by the gods and restoring paradise to Indra appears much later in the Markandeya Purana (600 AD).
Across India, especially in the Deccan, there are folk traditions where worship of the goddess involves a ritual slaughter of a buffalo. These orally transmitted tales are fragmentary and layered. The young, virile priest who performs the ritual is called Pota Raju, the Buffalo King.
He, typically, hails from a ‘low’ caste. He calls himself the servant and son of the goddess. He leads the procession to the temple. The goddess is pleased by rituals involving violence (fire-walking, hook-swinging, blood sacrifice). Every year, a young male buffalo (reda, in the local language) is chosen to be slaughtered the following year, a ritual mimicry of the renewal of earth’s fertility. This suggests that the festival originally had little to do with grand cosmic battles between gods and demons. It was an agricultural ritual, deeply tied to cycles of sowing and harvesting. This story has nothing to do with the Vedic world.
Brahmins, who rarely participate in such boisterous village rituals, insist the goddess of the village was once a Brahmin girl. She was tricked into marrying a beef-eating man. When she discovered this, she killed him, and that event is remembered each year. They argue this is why many goddess temples are now vegetarian – the Chamunda temple in Mysuru, the Ambabai temple in Kolhapur. In fact, many Sanatanis think Bengalis need to stop offering meat and fish to Durga during their annual Pujo. Dalit myth-makers are using this very same story to make the outraged Brahmin’s daughter the symbol of Aryan oppression and her beef-eating husband the embodiment of the oppressed.
Today, young Dalit activists are raising foundational questions: who makes the rules of Hinduism? Do those categorised as ST/SC have any say in the matter? Who classified those who eat cow meat as impure and those who drink cow urine as pure? It could not have been the goddess or the buffalo.
The writer works with gods and demons who churn nectar from the ocean of Indian, Chinese, Islamic, Christian, even secular mythologies.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
Devdutt Pattanaik
Courtesy : DH
— ✍️ Mohit Nirmender
India loves to call itself a democracy of a billion voices. But when it comes to who controls the microphone, the story is very different. According to Oxfam–Newslaundry Report 2022, nearly 90% of key editorial and executive positions across major English and Hindi media outlets are held by upper-caste individuals, highlighting deep structural inequality. This isn’t just imbalance; it’s exclusion disguised as merit.
The media doesn’t merely reflect society, it manufactures it. Newsrooms decide what counts as violence, whose pain is exceptional, and whose is routine. When upper-caste men commit crimes, headlines describe them as Bahubali, Chhote Sarkar, or local strongmen. But when a Dalit or someone from a marginalized community is involved in crime, the same channels label it as hooliganism, 'lawlessness', or 'chaos'. The meaning of the same event changes depending on who is involved. This does not in any way imply that anyone has a license to commit crimes, or that violence of any kind is acceptable. What it highlights is the narrative-building itself, exposing the media's clear double standard.
In his essay "Who Speaks for Whom?", Avichal Warke captures this crisis perfectly. He writes that the problem isn’t only who is represented in the media but who gets to define representation itself. Dalits appear in news, but almost never in the newsroom. They are rarely allowed to report. While much of media coverage falls into this pattern, there are occasional outlets and journalists attempting to challenge this monopoly. Yet, these remain exceptions rather than the rule.
The Mirchpur violence of 2010 shows how this monopoly works. After a Dalit boy and his disabled father were burned alive by upper-caste attackers in Haryana, most channels described it as a clash. No major prime-time debates, no major editorial campaigns and sustained coverage. The story vanished after a few days. What should have been a national reckoning became just another "incident." This is what Stuart Hall meant when he said media doesn’t reflect reality, it constructs it.
This silence is not neutral; it is political. Indian media, like Indian society, runs on what Antonio Gramsci called Hegemony (the ability to make inequality appear normal and natural). When every anchor, editor, and owner comes from the same social background, caste power becomes common sense. The public stops noticing that the truth is being told from one side only.
Behind this cultural bias lies a harder fact: money. Indian media - whether English, Hindi, or regional, relies primarily on advertising rather than subscriptions. The people and corporations who pay for ads are largely from the same privileged castes that dominate newsrooms. A channel that questions caste hierarchy also risks questioning its sponsors. So the bias is not just ideological; it is financially built in. What looks like professionalism often hides the economics of caste comfort.
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