Odisha: Mob violence is not simply a law-and-order problem
The challenge before Odisha is not merely administrative but moral. Law and order or economic growth alone cannot sustain democracy. A republic survives because citizens internalize democratic values long before they encounter courts or police stations, writes Ganesh Gaigouria
Odisha: Mob violence is not simply a law-and-order problem
The challenge before Odisha is not merely administrative but moral. Law and order or economic growth alone cannot sustain democracy. A republic survives because...
A classroom for those left behind
Educational spaces can often reproduce social hierarchies through uneven access to resources, linguistic barriers, and fear of being judged based on one’s background. Against...
Assam: Uniform Civil Code and Muslim women of the ‘Char’ areas
A combination of equal opportunities and fair legislation can help overcome the structural and geographical barriers that isolate Assam’s riverine Char communities from the...
Why NDA governments have steered clear of annual Dr Ambedkar awards
Awards encourage. Do the holders of political power believe that those working for Dalits don’t need encouragement? Or do they want to blunt the...
‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’: Resistance in remembrance
To ‘move on’ from caste history in the way the film urges us to remain faithful to Partition memory would mean abandoning a record...
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...
Sarhul: Reverence for nature informs this Adivasi farming festival
At a time when the world is obsessed with “Paris Accord” and “carbon footprint”, the philosophy underlying Sarhul offers a simple yet infallible solution...
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...
Seminal role of Dalit-OBCs in development of language and literature
Scripts were invented by painters and sculptors, and not scholars. Not only in India but in civilizations the world over, paintings and sculptures predated...
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....