Review: Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s ‘Harappa: God’s City of Civilisation’
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s first foray into fiction is a courageous declaration that the oppressed, too, have the right to imagine, narrate and reclaim their own civilizational inheritance, writes Satya Sagar
The rush to delete the digital archive of resistance
When fact checkers reconstructed the events of July 20 Chalo Sansad march they relied on hundreds of user-generated videos with different timestamps and vantage...
The Dalits of Dangawas after the court judgment
Sonki Devi, the wife of Paancharam, had never ever ventured into her village without her face covered and head down. Little did she know...
Why BJP has now turned to Sant Ravidas
As the Uttar Pradesh and Punjab assembly polls draw closer, the BJP is making a concerted effort to woo a chunk of the Dalit...
‘Satluj’ and the politics of film censorship
The most important question raised by ‘Satluj’ is whether democratic societies possess the confidence to face uncomfortable stories without seeking to silence them. If...
Ram Temple embezzlement: How the Dalitbahujan see it
‘Had the offerings been small, there would have been no problem. All the staff would have made merry and no one would have noticed....
‘Dhamaal 4’ and the problem with laughing at the margins
Indian comedy is capable of laughter-filled entertainment that does not depend, like in ‘Dhamaal 4’, on body-shaming, misogyny or the caricaturing of labouring and...
Who owns a woman’s story? Rumours, reputation and resistance in ‘Maa Behen’
Maa Behen (Mother-Sister) are everyday North Indian words that serve a double function – the most sacred of kin relations and simultaneously the category...
When Jotirao Phule came to Dayanand Saraswati’s rescue
Inviting Dayanand to Pune and helping him expand his footprint in Maharashtra was a pragmatic move on the part of Ranade and other Brahmin...
Vijay Varma plays his part in Nagraj Manjule’s realistic portrait of 1960s-70s Bombay
‘Matka King’ is a confident, character-first swing by a director in the process of expanding his range. It celebrates the intoxicating dream of upward...
Bastar’s aspirational Adivasi schoolchildren have few viable futures
This contradiction lies beneath the language of ‘mainstreaming’. State institutions encourage young people to become disciplined, aspirational, and future-oriented, even while the opportunities available...
Review: Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s ‘Harappa: God’s City of Civilisation’
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s first foray into fiction is a courageous declaration that the oppressed, too, have the right to imagine, narrate and reclaim their...
Why Meera was forced to say that no one understood her anguish
With her husband no more and remarriage appearing impossible, the woman in Meera became articulate. Before considering any other aspects of her, Meera should...
Revisiting Meera and Raidas: Who was Girdhar Nagar?
Meera shedding social inhibitions was not about quitting royal life and embracing a spartan existence; it was about a widow being drawn to a...
Virendra Yadav’s struggles in the ‘progressive’ camp
Virendra Yadav’s heart was riddled with barbs hurled by his ‘own’ people. But he kept fighting for secular-progressive ideas. He could have easily immersed...
Virendra Yadav was an incisive intellectual with a vision for social justice
Virendra Yadav’s biggest contribution is the inculcation of a sense of moral-social accountability in Hindi criticism. Through his writings, he tried to establish that...
Mangu Ram Mugowalia, Ad Dharm movement and the rise of the Ravidass Panth
Although Guru Ravidass was already a revered figure among the Untouchable community of Punjab, it was the Ad Dharm movement that used images of...
Shabbir Ahmed Ansari: Harbinger of Pasmanda consciousness
Shabbir Ahmed Ansari’s life shows that social reform is not only about sloganeering. It is also about making use of constitutional and legal provisions...
Phule’s Sarvajanik Satyadharma in times of religious hatred
What is surprising is that references to how Phule saw Islam and Christianity are totally missing from the discourse even as communalism in general...
Discovering Babasaheb’s lost speeches in the West
At the time of the Round Table Conferences, Dr Ambedkar had become a sought-after speaker in the UK, the US and Canada, as a...
Jotirao Phule’s ideology and literature
Phule challenged the traditional concept of literature. For him, literature was not only about aesthetics. It was a tool for ushering in social justice....