21.07.2026.News Untouchable.(Voice of Sc.STs,Buddhists,Ambedkar ites,Anti SC.ST atrocity news,Employement news)by Sivaji Ayyayiram.9444917060.asivaji1962@gmail.com.FB.sivaji yoga Tiruvannamalai.x.shivajia479023
CM Yogi meets Lalita Gautam’s family, announces financial and other assistance
During his meeting with the victim’s family in Ghaziabad, CM Yogi assured financial assistance and a house each for the deceased’s father and uncle under the Chief Minister’s Housing Scheme.
He also directed the family to receive priority benefits under the Ayushman Bharat Scheme, ration cards, and other eligible welfare schemes. The Chief Minister also assured the family of strictest legal action against the culprits.
Ghaziabad. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath met with the family of Lalita Gautam, a Dalit student from Meerut, at the PWD Guest House in Ghaziabad on Saturday, expressing his condolences and offering condolences. The Chief Minister announced immediate financial assistance of ₹5 lakh from the Chief Minister’s Discretionary Fund.
During his meeting with the victim’s family in Ghaziabad, CM Yogi assured financial assistance and a house each for the deceased’s father and uncle under the Chief Minister’s Housing Scheme. CM Yogi has also directed that the family be given priority access to the benefits of the Ayushman Bharat Scheme, ration cards, and other eligible welfare schemes. Furthermore, the Chief Minister has assured the family of strict legal action against the culprits.
After meeting the Chief Minister, the deceased’s father, Ved Prakash, and brother, Prashant, expressed confidence in receiving justice. They said that the Chief Minister listened to their plight with utmost patience and affection and assured them that not a single culprit involved in this heinous crime will be spared. They said that the meeting with the Chief Minister further strengthened the family’s confidence in receiving justice. Senior administrative and police officials, including Social Welfare Minister and Meerut District In-charge Minister Asim Arun, were present on the occasion.
After the victims met with the Chief Minister and received financial and other support, the Samajwadi Party has now backtracked on this issue. The SP had been raising the issue repeatedly, and Akhilesh Yadav even met with the victim’s family in Lucknow. However, after CM Yogi’s meeting with the victim’s family and the family’s expression of satisfaction, there is hope that the politicizing of this matter will end.
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CasteWhy Should Readers Across the World Care About Dalit Literature?
This article is a lightly edited version of the introduction to Touchable/Untouchable: Dalit Literature from India in Translation, edited by K. Satyanarayana and S. Shankar. Touchable/Untouchable is a special issue of the journal Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, and also a standalone volume published by University of Hawai`i Press. The volume can be accessed on Project Muse here and ordered here. The journal can be subscribed to here.
Why should readers across the world care about Dalit literature? For one thing, contemporary Dalit literature is among the most interesting, the most vibrant, of literary enterprises currently underway in India. Contemporary Dalit literature has borne gripping witness to the centuries-old atrocious institution of exclusion and oppression known as caste – at the bottom of which Dalits are located as the most excluded – and broken invigorating new literary ground. For these reasons alone, the value of reading Dalit literature should be evident. Dalit literature deserves a global audience, which it has begun to receive in recent years.
What does it mean to say Dalit works constitute a literature of witnessing? Not surprisingly – and here one might draw comparisons to slave narratives in the African American tradition – many early works of the contemporary boom in Dalit literature are testimonies, autobiographies and memoirs. These works can certainly be read as testifying to the oppressive conditions under which Dalits and other “lower castes” live. As Omprakash Valmiki, celebrated Dalit author of the Hindi-language Joothan, declared in the preface to his autobiography: “After a long period of procrastination, I started to write. Once again, I had to relive all those miseries, torments, neglects, admonitions. I suffered a deep mental anguish while writing this book. How terribly painful was this unraveling of my self, layer upon layer”. Excerpts from Tulsiram’s Hindi autobiography Murdaihya as well as Pradnya Daya Pawar’s poem, a kind of biography-in-verse of a famous Dalit folk singer, both of which appear in Touchable/Untouchable, provide fine examples of this kind of witnessing.
On the other hand, literary critics have wondered whether the view of Dalit works as a literature of witnessing diminishes their aesthetic value. These critics have called their colleagues to account for having a unidimensional approach to Dalit literature – for essentially shoehorning Dalit works into a “witnessing” function. Because of the dangers of such shoehorning, it is important to recognise the many ways in which the literature produced by Dalits in the last 50 years challenges established literary conventions. For example, many Dalit writers eschew a high literary style, deliberately adopting in its place a vernacular/spoken one. The veteran Tamil writer Bama, an influence on the poet Sukirtharani, included in Touchable/Untouchable, is a case in point. Translator Lakshmi Holmstrom notes of her: “Bama is doing something completely new in using the demotic and the colloquial regularly…. She uses a Dalit style of language which overturns the decorum and aesthetics of received upper-class, upper-caste Tamil”. Linguistically as well as formally, Dalit writers challenge contemporary Indian literature, as Baburao Bagul’s essay in Touchable/Untouchable ruminating on the aesthetics of Dalit literature suggests.
In the end, both when it bears witness and when it innovates, Dalit literature presents a human story of struggle as well as triumph in startlingly powerful ways. This struggle is vividly brought out in the excerpts included in Touchable/Untouchable from Bojja Tharakam’s Telugu novel narrating the lives of a family of Dalit bonded labourers across generations. Of course, the same human story of struggle is found in different ways in all the pieces included. These human stories are also deeply Indian, as much Indian as the more celebrated Indian writing in English, largely “upper caste,” well known to global readers. The picture of India in Dalit literature may very well be familiar to readers in some respects. In others, to readers not familiar with Dalit literature, it will certainly be startling, evocative, shocking, moving, and more.
Origins of the term
The term “Dalit literature” was coined in the first Dalit Literary Conference held in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1958. Marathi Dalit writers created history by publishing several collections of poetry, short stories and autobiographical narratives and critical essays in the 1960s and 1970s. Poisoned Bread, a classic anthology of these writings in English translation, was published in 1992. Marathi Dalit literature was widely translated into several Indian languages and served as an inspiration to Dalit writers in other Indian languages. Contemporary Dalit literature emerged as a powerful literary movement in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam from the 1970s to the 1990s (see No Alphabet in Sight and Steel Nibs, co-edited by K. Satyanarayana). It became a pan Indian phenomenon with the rise of Dalit literatures in Hindi, Bengali and other Indian languages after the 1990s. Dalit literature in English translation acquired national and global visibility with the publication of autobiographies, novels, poetry and essays by mainstream publishers.
Dalit literature is not simply a literary trend but a literary movement for social change. It describes and analyses Dalit life worlds and struggles based on first-hand lived experience. The distinctive term “Dalit” (literally “crushed down” or “broken”) is both identity and perspective. The Dalit Panthers, a group of insurgent intellectuals, popularized “Dalit” as a term to claim a dignified identity for “untouchables,” while rejecting demeaning caste/jati names. They used the term to broadly refer to “untouchable” caste groups, Adivasis (aka “tribals”), and other minorities. In the course of history, “Dalit” became synonymous with the “untouchable” (also known as “scheduled caste”) groups. Dalit critics theorised “Dalit” as a collective identity based on self-respect and human dignity. Dalit is a revolutionary term born out of anti-caste struggles and has shaped a Dalit perspective. In this sense, Dalit literature invents a canon and a normative Dalit character, and inaugurates a shift from the old understanding of caste as a feudal relic to a contemporary form of power. It contests the view that untouchability is a cultural practice based on religious notions of “purity” and “impurity” and suggests that untouchability is a practice of social exclusion of Dalits from the public sphere.
Ambedkar as a pioneer of Dalit literature
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar is a crucial pioneer of Dalit literature. Ambedkar was trained in the West and experienced caste discrimination. He developed critical concepts, such as the view of caste as “graded inequality,” to analyse how inequality and discrimination were institutionalised by the sacred tradition. Ambedkar criticised the varna order (the idea of a social order of four varnas based on classical texts) because it is founded on inherited social status. Bagul and other Dalit critics were inspired by Ambedkar’s language of equality and human worth and declared “we too are human.” Contemporary Dalit literature documents and examines descriptions of Dalit life in all its complexity and interprets caste as an undemocratic system based on graded inequality, divine retribution and violence. It shares Ambedkar’s view that caste is sanctified by Hindu feudalism.
Ambedkar is a critical figure for Dalit writers as he formulated a critique of Indian literary history. He marked anti-colonial nationalism as Gandhian nationalism, which set up a binary opposition of the coloniser and the colonised. He shared the strategic view of colonialism as a structural break in Indian history that offered certain normative values to the oppressed.
An alternative approach
Canonical Indian literary texts portrayed an abstract Indian and excluded a vast section of Indians in order to obscure internal divisions based on caste, class, gender and religion. This exclusion of Dalit and “lower” caste life from Indian literature cannot be viewed separately from the historical process of the formation of the canon of Indian/Gandhian literature. The Gandhian ideological hold is clear in the early Indian novels where we find pitiable and submissive “lower” caste characters. For the first time, Dalit writers depicted autonomous and assertive Dalit characters in the 1960s. The Ambedkarite hero, to use Bagul’s phrase, is a product of Ambedkarite thinking and the normative principles of equality and colonial modernity.
Touchable/Untouchable emerges out of this complex literary history. It takes a different approach to the presentation of Dalit literature to English-reading audiences than other recent efforts. Since anthologies presenting one or two works by a large number of writers already exist, we have chosen to present substantial work in translation from five celebrated contemporary Dalit writers: 25 poems in Tamil by Sukirtharani, translated by Anushiya Ramaswamy; two excerpts capable of standing by themselves from Panchatantram, a novel in Telugu by Bojja Tharakam, translated by Shirisha Amme; a creative/critical address on Dalit literature by the legendary writer Bagul, translated from Marathi by Maya Pandit; a long Marathi poem by Pradnya Daya Pawar, also translated by Maya Pandit; and an excerpt from Murdahiya, an autobiography in Hindi by Tulsiram, translated by Joel Lee.
Our intention is to allow readers to dwell for a prolonged period of time in the imaginative spaces conjured up by these writers and their translators. This intention is ably aided by the introductions to writers/works written by the translators. Hopefully, when readers listen in a sustained way to these literary voices with the help of the translator’s introductions, they will begin to get a sense of the nuances of Dalit literature—its powerful witnessing, the freshness and boldness of its literary reimagining, and the productive ways in which the witnessing and the reimagining can be in tension with each other.
K.Satyanarayana is Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at EFL University, Hyderabad. He has coedited No Alphabet in Sight, Steel Nibs Are Sprouting, Dalit Studies, Dalit Text, and Concealing Caste.
Shankar is the author of the forthcoming book The Price of Living: The Stories We Tell About the Poor (Duke University Press, February 2027). He is Professor of English at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa and editor of the journal Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.
Satyanarayana S. Shankar
This article went live on July twentieth, two thousand twenty six, at fifty-one minutes past three in the afternoon.
Courtesy : The Wire
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Woman who went to worship at temple accused of assault: Case filed under various sections including SC/ST Act
A Dalit woman who went to worship at a temple in Harchandpur village, under the Subeha police station area of Barabanki district, has accused some villagers of assaulting her and using casteist slurs. The woman’s son was also allegedly assaulted. Based on the victim’s complaint, police have registered a case under various sections including the SC/ST Act and have begun an investigation.
Harchandpur resident Sant Dulari Rawat, wife of Raj Bahadur Rawat, stated in her complaint to the police that the incident occurred on July 19, 2026, at around 9 a.m. She had gone to worship at a temple near her home.
It is alleged that Raghav Ram Mishra, Rajit Ram Mishra, Avadharam Mishra, Sahaj Ram Mishra (sons of Ram Shankar Mishra), and Mansha Devi Mishra, daughter of Ram Shankar Mishra, arrived at the scene and attempted to remove Sant Dulari’s worship materials kept near the temple.
According to the victim, when she protested, the accused abused her, used casteist slurs, and began assaulting her. Hearing the commotion, her son, Diwakar, rushed to her rescue, but the accused assaulted him as well. Both the woman and her son are reported to have sustained injuries in the incident.
The woman also stated that during the assault, her mangalsutra, weighing approximately two tolas, fell somewhere and was not found despite extensive searching.
Based on the victim’s complaint, the police have registered a case under the SC/ST Act and other relevant sections. Inspector-in-Charge Bechu Singh stated that a case has been registered and the matter is being investigated. Further legal action will be taken based on the facts that emerge from the investigation.
Idrish | Haidergarh
Courtesy: Hindi News
Kerala Crime Branch Arrests Absconding Dental College Professor From Karnataka In Student’s Death Case
Police said the accused avoided using mobile phones and frequently changed locations across different states before he was finally tracked down in Kodagu.
Kannur: The Kerala Crime Branch has arrested the absconding prime accused in the death case of first-year BDS student R L Nithinraj of Anjarakandy Dental College in Kannur district in Kerala.
Dr M K Ram, a faculty member of the college, was taken into custody from a hideout in Kodagu, Karnataka, after being on the run for several months.
The accused was apprehended late on Sunday and brought to Kannur on Monday, where he is being interrogated by the Crime Branch.
Dr Ram’s anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the Supreme Court on July 13.
Earlier, the Kerala High Court had also dismissed his bail application on June 19. Following the high court order, the Crime Branch had attempted to arrest him in Andhra Pradesh, but he allegedly managed to evade the police before approaching the apex court.
After the Supreme Court refused him anticipatory bail, a special team led by Crime Branch Inspector Sreejith Koderi intensified the search. Investigators said the accused avoided using mobile phones and frequently changed locations across different states before he was finally tracked down in Kodagu.
Reacting to the arrest, Nithinraj’s father Y Rajan, a daily wager, said the family welcomed the development but maintained that complete justice would be achieved only after all those allegedly responsible were brought to book.
“We will get justice only when every accused in the case is arrested and punished,” Rajan told reporters.
Nithinraj, a resident of Aryanad in Thiruvananthapuram district, died by suicide after jumping from the medical college building on April 10.
His family alleged that the Dalit student had been subjected to sustained harassment by faculty members over his caste and skin colour. Fellow students also alleged that he faced repeated body shaming and mental harassment.
Based on the complaint, police registered a case against Dr Ram and others under charges including abetment of suicide and provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Following protests by students, the college management dismissed Dr Ram from service.
The investigation is now being conducted by a special Crime Branch team under the supervision of State Crime Branch SP K V Venugopal.
While Crime Branch DySP Sudheer Kallan is probing the circumstances leading to Nithinraj’s death, DySP Jeevan George is investigating another angle involving alleged harassment by online loan recovery agents.
According to investigators, Nithinraj had borrowed money through a loan app to meet educational expenses and fund his mother’s medical treatment. When he defaulted on repayments, recovery agents allegedly threatened him and contacted his teachers and others, causing severe mental distress.
The case was initially investigated by the local police before being transferred to a special investigation team headed by the City Police Commissioner. Following objections raised by the family over the probe, the investigation was later handed over to the Crime Branch.
Officials said the custodial interrogation of Dr Ram is expected to provide further clarity on the circumstances that led to the student’s death.
Courtesy : ETV Bharat
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Dalit Christian teacher buried after 3-day standoff over cemetery rights
Trichy: The body of an 89-year-old retired Dalit Christian teacher was laid to rest in a common cemetery near Thuraiyur on Sunday, three days after his death, after officials brokered a settlement between rival groups locked in a dispute over burial rights.
A Raju, a retired government schoolteacher from Kottapalayam village, died of age-related ailments on July 17. His family sought to bury him in the common cemetery attached to St Mary Magdalene Church, but members of other Christian communities objected, claiming that dalit Christians should use a separate cemetery affiliated with St Sebastian’s Church.
The dispute is rooted in a long-standing row over burial rights. In 2014, Raju and four others moved the Thuraiyur civil court seeking equal access to the common cemetery for Scheduled Caste Christians. In 2024, the court ruled that the St Mary Magdalene Church cemetery is open to all Christians, irrespective of caste.
Despite the court order, opposition from non-dalit Christian groups delayed the burial, forcing Raju’s family to keep his body at home for three days. The standoff heightened tensions in the village, prompting police deployment.
Sub-collector Sushree Suvangi Khuntia, additional superintendent of police R Dhanarasu and DSP N Muthumar held marathon talks with representatives of both sides. After nearly nine hours of negotiations at the Musiri sub-collector‘s office, an agreement was reached late on ஓ Sunday, following which Raju’s body was buried in the common cemetery around 1am on Monday.
Courtesy : TOI
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Andhra Pradesh High Court invokes Ambedkar, restores SC/ST seniority in promotions
The Andhra Pradesh High Court was hearing two writ petitions challenging a CAT order that denied consequential seniority to SC/ST South Central Railway employees promoted under the reservation policy.
- Written by: Vineet Upadhyay
- 6 min readNew Delhi
The Constitution envisioned by Dr B R Ambedkar does not stop at guaranteeing “mere formal equality” but seeks to achieve substantive equality by addressing the historical disadvantages and structural inequalities suffered by socially marginalised communities, the Andhra Pradesh High Court has said while upholding consequential seniority for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe employees promoted through reservation. The court held that once constitutional safeguards are satisfied, accelerated promotion granted under the reservation policy can legally carry consequential seniorit
Justices Battu Devanand and Subhendu Samanta were hearing two writ petitions filed by a group of South Central Railway employees and set aside an October 21, 2024 order of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Hyderabad Bench, which had directed the Railways to redraw seniority lists and deny consequential seniority to SC/ST employees in the Loco Pilot cadre.
“The Constitution of India, as envisioned by Dr B R Ambedkar and the framers of our constitutional framework, does not confine itself to the notion of mere formal equality. The constitutional philosophy seeks to secure substantive equality by addressing historical disadvantages and structural inequalities faced by socially marginalised sections of society,” the court said on July 17.
The dispute arose from a long-running battle over promotions among South Central Railway Loco Pilots and raised an important constitutional question that affects thousands of government employees across India, whether SC/ST employees promoted through reservation can continue to enjoy consequential seniority after Parliament amended the Constitution to expressly provide for it.
Justices Battu Devanand and Subhendu Samanta said that the Constitutional permits affirmative measures to ensure meaningful equality of opportunity. (Image enhanced using AI)Railway promotion dispute
The petitioners were SC/ST employees serving as Loco Pilots (Mail), while the private respondents belonged to the unreserved category and were working as Loco Pilots (Passenger).
The unreserved employees challenged these promotions before the CAT, Hyderabad Bench. On October 21, 2024, the tribunal ruled in their favour, quashed the seniority lists and promotion orders, and directed the Railway administration to redraw seniority without granting consequential seniority to the SC/ST employees. The affected employees then approached the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
Examining the Railway records, the high court concluded that the administration had indeed collected quantifiable data before implementing reservation in promotions.
The bench found that the Railways had assessed the representation of SC/ST employees in the relevant cadre, followed the post-based roster system and complied with the constitutional requirements laid down by the Supreme Court before granting reservation in promotions.
It therefore rejected the tribunal’s conclusion that consequential seniority had been granted without satisfying constitutional safeguards. The judges further held that Parliament had fundamentally changed the constitutional position through the 85th Constitutional Amendment.
By introducing the words “with consequential seniority” into Article 16(4A), Parliament removed the legal foundation of the judicially evolved “catch-up rule” laid down in Virpal Singh Chauhan and Ajit Singh, the bench observed.
Promotions upheld
The high court also rejected the argument that promotions to the post of Loco Pilot (Mail), where 23 vacancies were classified as unreserved, required a fresh application of reservation principles. According to the bench, the post formed part of a continuous promotional hierarchy beginning with Assistant Loco Pilot, followed by Loco Pilot (Goods), Loco Pilot (Passenger) and finally Loco Pilot (Mail).
Since the petitioners had already lawfully acquired seniority in the feeder cadre, they were entitled to be considered for promotion against unreserved vacancies purely on the basis of seniority and suitability, and not because they belonged to the reserved category.
Constitutional commitment for social justice
- Recognising that identical treatment among unequal may itself result in injustice, the constitutional scheme permits affirmative measures to ensure meaningful equality of opportunity, including provisions relating to reservation in public employment.
- The constitutional commitment towards social justice subsequently evolved through judicial interpretation and constitutional amendments, particularly in matters concerning representation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in public services.
- Reservation in promotion emerged as one of the instruments intended to remedy continuing under-representation and institutional barriers faced by historically disadvantaged communities.
- The constitutional amendments introducing Articles 16(4A) and 16(4B) signify the recognition by Parliament that equality of opportunity under Article 16 may, in appropriate circumstances, require protective measures extending beyond initial appointment and into promotional avenues.
- The present case, therefore, calls upon this court to examine the delicate balance between the constitutional guarantee of equality and the enabling provisions designed to achieve substantive justice, particularly in the context of reservation in promotions and consequential seniority.
Verdict
Allowing both writ petitions, the Andhra Pradesh High Court quashed the CAT’s October 21, 2024 order and restored the promotions and consequential seniority of the SC/ST railway employees.
Summarising its conclusions, the bench held that the 85th Constitutional Amendment rendered the earlier judicially evolved “catch-up rule” inoperative, reserved category candidates selected on their own merit cannot be counted against the reserved quota, and they cannot be denied consideration against unreserved vacancies merely because they belong to SC/ST communities.
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