Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 26.07.15
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Threats post marriage force Dalit youth, wife to go into hiding - The Hindu
Two years on, ex-gratia for 23 victims of Bholath yet to be disbursed - The Tribune
Dalit veteran leader RS Gavai no more; CM Devendra Fadnavis calls him 'ajat shatru' - DNA
How Land Continues To Be A Tool For Dalit Oppression: The Case Of Pathapally -Youth Ki Awaz
http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2015/07/land-rights-for-dalits/
Kancha Ilaiah: 'Neither the Sangh Parivar nor the Telangana government can arrest my pen' - Scroll
From fields to skies: Dalit youth's dreams take wings - The Times Of India
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National Convention Of Scavenger Community on Education - 01
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The Hindu
Threats post marriage force Dalit youth, wife to go into hiding
Inter-caste marriage costs man lucrative job in Singapore
An inter-caste marriage has not only cost Dalit youth M. Sivaramakrishnan his lucrative job in Singapore, but also forced him to go into hiding with his wife Vijayalakshmi, a caste Hindu.
"I resigned my job since the situation here became very serious and I had already exhausted my leave. My wife's relatives even kidnapped my brother-in-law and demanded that he hand her over to them. My family lives under constant fear," Mr. Sivaramakrishnan, who worked as a safety promoter in Singapore, told The Hindu over phone.
Immediately after his arrival from Singapore on July 22, he, along with his wife and members of the All India Democratic Women Association (AIDWA), met the Additional Director-General of Police and sought protection.
CPI(M) State secretary G. Ramakrishnan also wrote to Chief Minister Jayalalithaa seeking steps to ensure the couple lives in peace as in recent times inter-caste marriage couples had been killed by casteist elements.
Mr. Sivaramakrishnan and Ms. Vijayalakshmi fell in love when they lived in Neyveli township. Ms. Vijayalakshmi, an MCA degree holder, also worked for a private organisation. "I tried to get a job for her in Singapore. But it did not materialise," said Mr. Sivaramakrishnan, who specialises in fire safety methods.
What is striking in the case of Mr. Sivaramakrishnan and Ms. Vijayalakshmi is that they registered their marriage in 2013. They had a formal wedding on March 2, 2015 at a temple in Chennai, after efforts made by CPI(M) MLA K. Balakrishnan failed to convince the family of Ms. Vijayalakshmi. After the wedding, the couple started living in Chennai till Mr. Sivaramakrishnan left for Singapore.
But all along, the family and relatives of Ms. Vijayalakshmi were searching for the couple.
Mr. Balakrishnan said, "They met me and wanted me to handover the couple. But I told them clearly that I did not know the whereabouts of the couple. Their life is in danger. Even three days after meeting the ADGP, the situation has not improved."
Mr. Sivaramakrishnan said though in the beginning Ms. Vijayalakshmi's father resigned himself to the reality, pressure from the community and relatives changed his mind about the marriage.
AIDWA general secretary Suganthy said she received abusive calls from the family members of Ms. Vijayalakshmi. "A few callers threatened to kill me. We lodged a complaint with the police and also organised a protest against the threat," Ms. Suganthy said.
"My wife's relatives even kidnapped my brother-in-law and demanded him to hand her over to them"
The Tribune
Two years on, ex-gratia for 23 victims of Bholath yet to be disbursed
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, July 25
Congress spokesperson Sukhpal Khaira today questioned Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal of any guarantee of honouring an announcement of ex-gratia made by him for those killed in a road accident at Manikaran, especially since the Dalit families of 23 victims from Fatehpur and Bajaj village of Bholath were still awaiting any such aid for the past nearly two years. This was stated by him in an open letter to the CM.
Khaira was here along with Jagir Singh of Fatehpur village, who had lost 14 members of his extended family in the accident, today said that the next of the kin were yet to get a single penny since the tragic incident that occurred at Manguwal barrier near Hoshiarpur wherein a tempo had fallen into a gorge on way back from pilgrimage to Chintpurni. Jagir Singh had come alongwith his seven-year-old physically and mentally challenged granddaughter Jashanpreet, who got orphaned after the mishap.
Jagir Singh, an ex-serviceman, rued that with no aid, no work and no women left in the house, it was extremely difficult to take care of his paralysed granddaughter. "The accident has made our lives nightmarish and with no aid coming, our condition has become all the more pathetic", he even complained of indifference on the part of area legislator Bibi Jagir Kaur. "She has not supported us so for but we know that whenever this aid comes, it will be disbursed through her so that she gets the mileage," he ridiculed her.
Bholath ex-MLA said the CM had been only making announcements for relief while he had been doling out ex-gratia selectively as and when it suited him. "You have been showering crores and lakhs of rupees as ex-gratia grants selectively at the cost of public exchequer. To quote a few examples, Rs 1 crore and a class I job has been given to the family of Sarabjit Singh killed in a Pakistan jail. Similarly, your government paid Rs 29 lakh and Rs 22.5 lakh as ex-gratia compensation to the families of those killed by your Orbit Transport Company, at Moga and Ropar recently," Khaira pointed out.
He lambasted the CM saying, "In order to reap political dividends over the death of poor people in a similar road accident at Manikaran, you have once again today made an announcement of Rs 1 lakh ex-gratia grant to the families of those killed. What is the guarantee that you will honour the commitment of Rs 1 lakh ex-gratia grant made to the families of those killed in the Manikaran bus accident, if you have not honoured your commitment to pay ex-gratia grant to the poor Dalits killed two years back? It only shows the apathy, callous and insensitive attitude of your government towards the sufferings of the poor people of Punjab."
DNA
Dalit veteran leader RS Gavai no more; CM Devendra Fadnavis calls him 'ajat shatru'
Sunday, 26 July 2015 - 7:50am IST | Agency: dna | From the print edition
Veteran Dalit leader and former chairman of Maharashtra Legislative Council RS Gavai died on Saturday in at a private hospital in Nagpur after a prolonged illness. Ramkrishna Suryabhan Gavaiwas 86 and is survived by wife Kamal and two sons.
His elder son Justice Bhushan Gavai is a Bombay High Court judge of Nagpur Bench and younger son Dr Rajendra is a leader of Republican Party of India (Gavai faction).
The body was taken to Justice Gavai's residence in Nagpur and later kept at Deekshabhoomi, the place where Dr BR Ambedkar embraced Buddhism in 1956, for the public to pay the last respects.
The funeral will take place at his native village in Daryapur in Amravati district on Sunday with state honours. He had also represented Daryapur in the 12th Loksabha.
Born on October 30, 1929, Gavai was an MLC from 1964 to 1994 and served as deputy chairman of the Council 1968 to 1978, and as chairman for next six years. He was also the Leader of Opposition in the Council from 1986 to 1988.
Gavai was appointed as the Governor of Bihar in 2006 and shifted to Kerala in 2008, where he served till August 2011.
His nod to the CBI to prosecute CPM leader Pinarayi Vijayan in a graft case had spakred a controversy and his decision had drawn flak from the Left, even as Congress-led alliance hailed it.
He was the Chairman of Babasaheb Ambedkar Smarak Samiti, which manages the Deekshabhoomi. He held the post till his end.
A strong votary of Dalit unity, Gavai had headed the presidium of RPI when other factions of the party offered to come together and installed him as the president. However, the unity did not last long and various factions led by Prakash Ambedkar, Ramdas Athawale, N M Kamble and others parted ways.
Paying rich tribute to the departed leader, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the state had lost an "ajat shatru" (a person with no enemies).
"It is also a great loss to the Ambedkar movement since Gavai was a father figure for the community who successfully managed the affairs of Deekshabhoomi since the past five decades," he said.
Congress leaders Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil and Manikrao Thakre will attend Gavai's funeral on Sunday.
Rich tribute
A man of the masses, Shri Gavai had grasp over the problems of the people. He had friends cutting across the political spectrum. Gavai ji left a distinct imprint of his own on every position that he held in his long political career. --Vidyasagar Rao, Governor
The country has lost a guide. In the prevailing circumstances, the country needed the guidance of a progressive and secular leader like him. -- Prithviraj Chavan, ex-CM
He always highlighted progressive thoughts and issues of the downtrodden. Gavai left a mark in social and administrative fields. In his death, Maharashtra has lost an able administrator and leader- Sharad Pawar, NCP chief.
Youth Ki Awaz
How Land Continues To Be A Tool For Dalit Oppression: The Case Of Pathapally
http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2015/07/land-rights-for-dalits/
Jul 23, 2015 By Abhishek Jha:
Sometime around the second week of May, 45 Madiga families in Pathapally village of Telangana were driven out of the land that had been allotted to them by the government, by members of the Boya (upper caste) community. This was allegedly a reaction to an earlier incident, where Raghuram, a Dalit, had tried to access the village temple. After driving the Dalit families out, "members of the Boya community then proceeded to bury their dead in this land to ensure that the displaced families cannot return," The Hindu reported. The report also says that the Revenue Divisional Officer and the DSP pulled down the huts and a shop owned by Dalits, alleging that they are encroachment, although they have documents to prove otherwise. They have also been denied water from a reservoir.
Land is often recognised as a tool of socio-economic empowerment. In a publication titled 'Strategies Towards Combating Dalit Marginalisation', which documents the proceedings of a national symposium held on 11th and 12th July, 2014 in Hyderabad, a number of strategies are listed. One such suggestions says, "The distribution of land to Dalit and other marginalised communities remains largely unfulfilled agenda. Special effort should be made to provide land to Dalit households." Another asks for "special assistance to Dalit women" in terms of "provision of land, housing and credit."
That land plays an important part in empowerment of Dalits and that the symposium's strategies were founded in reason is seconded by a report published by NIDR in 2013 that studies land distribution and land purchase programmes of Andhra Pradesh. Mahabubnagar district (now in Telangana), in which Pathapally is located, comes first under land purchase programme of APSCCFC (Andhra Pradesh Scheduled Castes Cooperative Finance Corporation) and second under land purchase programme of SERP (Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty). "Five out of 27 beneficiaries (18.5 per cent) have started sending their children to private schools nearby the village (Table 16). The change in percentage towards education was 85… There is an increase in expenditure towards health also…a change was observed in expenditure towards food items like milk, eggs, vegetables and non-vegetarian dishes (72 per cent)," the report states citing the change in socio-economic status of the beneficiaries of APSCCFC who got land because of the programme.
What The Disputes And Violence Over Land Says
The attack on the Madiga families and their land then not only exposes casteist hatred present within the dominant caste but also speaks of a structured manner in which caste hierarchy is maintained. In an inversion of the case of Pathapally, in 2006, Surekha Bhotmange and three of her family members from Khairlanji village of Maharashtra were murdered because they resisted gradual occupation of their land by members of the upper caste. The aforementioned Symposium concurs with this observation. It says that, "In early 1990s, the National Commission on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes identified factors such as land disputes and nonpayment of minimum wages to be the main cause of atrocities" on Dalits.
The structure of this violence can be understood from the observations stated above. Once Dalits own land, they become financially independent and are able to educate themselves. Clearly these factors make them more likely to ask for their rights, resist the upper-caste oppression, and so on. This landlessness forced by violence pushes them back again into the position of dependence on the upper-castes and subsequent oppression by them. A. Ramaiah, professor at TISS, wrote a paper using NCRB data on crimes against Dalits, where he cites the following reason too for Dalits not being able to use the The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act: "most of the Dalits are landless and depend on the very castes that violate their rights and dignity to earn their living. So, though there are laws to their support, they would not dare using them to protect their source of living." It is no surprise to know then that Surekha Bhotmange, who was an educated Dalit woman, had to be eliminated by upper-caste men. It also tells us that the problems that the Dalits of Pathapally are facing is part of a larger problem. It needs systemic changes.
Scroll
Kancha Ilaiah: 'Neither the Sangh Parivar nor the Telangana government can arrest my pen'
There is great fear among intellectuals after the BJP came to power, says the Dalit political scientist, against whom the police has filed an FIR for a newspaper article he wrote.
Ajaz Ashraf · Today · 09:15 am
Renowned social scientist Kancha Ilaiah speaks to Scroll.in about why the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Hyderabad police are harassing him, and about his disappointment with left-liberal scholars for not supporting him in his battle for free expression.
Why did the VHP file a complaint against you, on the basis of which the Hyderabad police registered an FIR? The police have now served a notice on you. Is it aimed at harassing you?
They were angered because of the newspaper article I wrote titled 'Is God a democrat'? In it, I compared Hindu gods, particularly Vaishnava gods, with Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad. They say their gods are gods and I have compared them with human beings, and that I have compared Hinduism with foreign religions, namely, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. That's the nub of their complaint.
Now, Buddha is considered god by the eastern world. Jesus is considered god and prophet of the Christian world. Prophet Muhammad is considered to be the messenger of god, but for many he is a divine force. They [the VHP] think their own mythological gods are gods, but not the prophets whom the world worships. I think they are wrong, spiritually wrong.
What does the notice that the police have served on you say?
The notice says that there is a case against me under Section 153 (a) and Section 295 (a) of the Indian Penal Code [which empower the authorities to act against people who commit deliberate and malicious acts aiming at outraging religious sentiment and spreading enmity between groups], that whenever required, I should cooperate with and assist the police and the court. I am a law-abiding citizen, and if there is such a need, I will certainly do what is asked of me.
Is it just the VHP that is harassing you or do you think the police is tacitly encouraging its leaders?
The VHP wants to harass me so that I don't write what I have been writing till now. But there is more to it. This case is in the state of Telangana. The FIR says that the article has been written to trigger a fight between lower and upper castes. But there is no reference to caste in the article. It only talks about religions and divine forces.
If the article is deemed to be triggering clashes between two classes of people, then I must point out that similar complaints and cases were filed against Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, who was accused of creating a conflict between the Andhra and Telangana people during the agitation for a separate state. Such complaints were also filed against some of his ministers. Did the police serve on them the notice it has on me? The police are bound by the procedure of law.
What I wrote was published in a Telugu daily. It is there in black and white. Similarly, the chief minister and his colleagues made public statements. There are video recordings of it. Why haven't the police served notice on them? Obviously, the Telangana government thinks I should be fixed.
But why would the Telangana government want to fix you?
I wrote several articles saying that the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh would harm the Telangana region itself. My main argument was that a state was being created without a sea coast. It is a dry region and therefore its economy wouldn't be sustainable. I also wrote saying the Naxalites came here, and flourished, because the region is dominated by a feudal system.
The KCR [the chief minister's] family comes from an Uttara Telangana feudal background. They, therefore, think I should not write articles [critical of the feudal system.] I think it is the grudge KCR bears against me.
Do you think your writings can be provocative?
I am a social scientist by training and an academician by profession. I have to raise questions that are important for our times. Just because the VHP and the Telangana government don't want me to write, I am not going to keep quiet. Neither the BJP at the centre, the RSS-VHP, nor the Telangana government can arrest my pen. I believe in raising questions and building indigenous social science knowledge.
But the Sangh accuses Indian social scientists of not creating indigenous knowledge, of being influenced by western thinkers, particularly those who subscribe to Marxism.
Let them look at my writings. In my first book, Why I am not a Hindu, which is now considered a classic, there isn't a single reference to any western scholar. That book is entirely based on the knowledge of tribals, Dalits, backward classes, and the women of India. As far as I know, from the time the Hindu Mahasabha was formed, to the earlier writings of Hindutva personalities like Savarkar and Golwalkar, to even now, there is no thinker in the RSS school of thought who has written about the philosophy, psychology, life and relations of productive masses of India. I have done that.
In another of my book, Post-Hindu India, I have looked at the contribution of tribals to our food culture, of Dalits to our leather technology, of OBCs to our engineering technology, and of shepherds to our milk and meat economy.
Are you saying the Sangh wants to control the production of knowledge, that is, to determine the type of knowledge scholars create?
The Sangh wants people to have only the knowledge of worshipping idols, rituals and the Hindu scriptures, such as the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. This is the reason the BJP government appointed Y Sudershan Rao as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research. I know Rao from his Kakatiya University days.
Rao has done research only on the dates of the Ramayana. Now, that is not history. The history of people's food culture, their creativity, their architecture, the relationships between communities, that history is more important than the Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Vedas.
Do you think Rao as historian isn't really up there in the top bracket?
He was a professor of history who produced no knowledge about the history of people. He has done some work around the Ramayana.
My point in writing an article comparing spiritual figures was to show how political ideology and philosophy emerged. The theory of democracy is based on comparison. But the VHP says I shouldn't compare Hinduism with Islam or Buddhism, that I shouldn't compare Hindu Gods with Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad.
But democracy as a system came in comparison with monarchy, in comparison with dictatorships and oligarchies. Political science is methodologically a science of comparison. If the Sangh Parivar is interested in building social science knowledge, it should contest me in writing, not file cases against me and think of sending me to jail. Let them know, even if I go to jail, I will keep writing. Gandhi, too, wrote from jail. So why can't I then?
Are you suggesting the Sangh Parivar is opposed to social sciences?
There is something deeper here. I am the only person who has been writing on food rights. If you go to the debate on beef, the most democratic of social scientists hasn't written in defence of beef food.
For example, I have a lot of respect for Romila Thapar. She wrote this famous article [titled] 'To question or not to question' [in the Economic and Political Weekly, basically saying that after the BJP's rise to power, no one is questioning it at all.
But here I am, a person who comes from the margins of society, from a marginal university, who is questioning the Sangh-BJP's ethical values and its social science standards. Why aren't academicians coming to my defence? After all, social science doesn't just live in Delhi, Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard. It lives among the people of India who produce; it lives in the civilisation of this country.
So you feel left-liberal academicians haven't been forthcoming in their support of you as they should have?
So far they haven't said anything, even though Scroll.in wrote a piece on my case. Other websites too carried the Scroll piece. But they haven't come out opposing the VHP's tactics of filing a complaint against me.
Why would that be the case, given that left-liberal social scientists too are facing enormous heat from the Sangh Parivar?
As Romila Thapar put it, fear has crept into social scientists after the BJP came to power. If the Left and Dalit-Bahujan Samaj forces are reeling under the fear the Sangh is generating, I think what Thapar has said will become a reality.
There is already some sort of fear psychosis. Tamil writer Perumal Murugan, not wanting to face the Sangh forces, tweeted that he was withdrawing from writing. Then Penguin withdrew the book of Wendy Doniger. That should not be the course we should take today. We should face them head on.
The problem is, I am known as a buffalo nationalist scholar. Now the cow nationalist…
Why are you called a buffalo nationalist?
I wrote a book on buffalo nationalism, in which I said the buffalo is the original milk-producing animal, that it is indigenous to the country, that on its milk much of the nation survives. On the other hand, the cow came with the Aryans. While the buffalo feeds the nation with milk, it is being killed in Maharashtra and Gujarat for food – the two states that have banned cow slaughter. In other words, the Sangh wants to protect the cow because of its association with the Aryans.
You were talking of being a buffalo nationalist…
If all my friends in the academic world think they shouldn't go to the rescue of the buffalo nationalist scholar, they would be committing a historical blunder. They ask the question: should democracy be debated around gods? They think democracy should be debated around capitalism, globalisation, liberalisation, but not about Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Buddhist texts, all of which are also in India. I think Indian democracy is not really stifled by capitalism or globalisation as much as it is by Hindutva forces.
Do you sense there is fear in the academia?
There is enormous fear. It is there in Delhi's higher educational institutions. They are all scared of being dubbed anti-Hindu. Recently, all newspapers carried a story quoting an RSS organ describing protesters at FTII and IIT, and the IIM director as anti-Hindu.
Since [some] communist friends come from the upper caste, they don't want to be dubbed as anti-Hindu. It creates a fear psychosis among them. It also creates a tremendous fear psychosis among Christian and Muslim intellectuals. The atmosphere in the academia is far more vitiated than it was during the Emergency.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
The Times Of India
From fields to skies: Dalit youth's dreams take wings
TNN | Jul 25, 2015, 04.17 PM IST
Aligarh: Jai Prakash, 21, gets up much earlier than most in his village. After back-breaking work in his father's field all through the morning, this father of a two-year-old girl quietly bicycles his way to Dhanipur block, a distance of 17 km, every day. That's where this Scheduled Caste man's ordinary life ends and his dreams take wing. After parking his bicycle outside a flying club here, Prakash gets into a Cessna 152 plane and flies it comfortably over the clouds.
"A Jatav farmer is flying aeroplane, isn't it an achievement?" asked his coach Captain Rajiv Bhalla who served in Air Force during the Kargil War.
Prakash is enrolled at DGCA-approved Ambition Aviation Academy in Aligarh under a fully-sponsored scholarship from social welfare department of the state government. He has to complete 200 hours of flying to become a commercial pilot, of which he has already completed the first 30.
"He is one of the very few candidates from the SC and ST background in the aviation sector — we have only two (of the total 32 enrolled at the academy). This is very surprising because there is reservation for them and also sponsorship to encourage such youths to take up commercial flying, but then something holds them back. There is, I guess, a mental block. Many of them think that they have no cars to drive, how can they fly planes? Some of them give in to pressure from the community members who misguide them and ask them to choose conventional careers instead. There is 50% reservation for them but those seats don't get filled up. On the other hand, there is a tough competition in general category," Bhalla said.
Prakash, who has a bachelor's degree in science, is also brushing up on his English language skills to better his chances of landing up a job after he completes the mandatory 200 hours of flying. He wants to work with Air India. "One of my relatives became a pilot three decades ago, perhaps the first SC from the region, if not state, to do so. His example inspired me to break from the routine choices and go for it," he said.
But the flight of his dreams has not made him lose touch with the ground. "While learning how to fly, I realized that there is nothing tougher than being a farmer. In a plane, you take off only after being sure of the weather; but a farmer can never be sure of the weather," he said.
If Prakash becomes a pilot, his success story would be an inspiration for hundreds of SC/ST youths in the region and elsewhere. The flying club where he is enrolled plans to use him as their mascot if he becomes a commercial pilot. "His story can inspire others. It is surprising that there was no SC/ST candidate applying for a flying course under the government scheme in 2015. This needs to change," Suraj Bhan Singh of the social welfare department said.
Additional district magistrate (city) Sanjay Chouhan said, "Apart from lack of awareness about the opportunities available in aviation, there is also not much interest among the SC/STs regarding these occupations. A very important factor is that many of them do not possess the right educational background. Many of them do not get good quality intermediate-level education."
Meanwhile, Prakash is doing his bit to inspire others. "Before leaving for the academy, I go to the fields, but I study till late night. I also encourage others in my community and village to take up a career in aviation."
News monitored by Girish Pant & AJEET
.Arun Khote
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")