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The manner in which Facebook has cited its own rules to defend its action against National Dastak amounts to unauthorized intervention on our Constitutional right to freedom of expression, and we condemn it. We would also like to know how many of Facebook’s employees in its India offices believe in Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar’s ideology

In and through their differences, and their undeniable similarities, Ambedkar and Periyar point to the Dalit and Shudra communities’ magnificent reckoning with modernity, which continues to inspire those drawn to their worldviews, particularly those who have been wounded by the caste order

It is unlikely that Dalit literature will be renamed. Tribal Literature will continue to be called so. Amid them, OBC Literature will emerge and enjoy universal acceptability. The philosophical unity of the three discourses will pave the way for the emergence of Bahujan Literature. This is what should all hope for. Read Sheel Bodhi’s analysis

Tanthai Periyar Dravida Kazhagam (TPDK) claims the party in power at the Centre is cutting off water supplies to the state, mobilizing support for an ill-conceived fracking project and imposing the NEET exam to bring the state down to its knees and make inroads into its politics. Cynthia Stephen reports

Since we Bahujans continue to swell the ranks of Hindu religion, no, we have not annihilated caste. Rather, we seem to have strengthened it. Certainly, many have left Hinduism to embrace other religions but even there they have taken shelter under the very blind devotion and irrational ritualism that Babasaheb and Buddha thundered against. Read Nijam Gara’s analysis of the sorry state of affairs

The State’s focus on Dalits may have created the rift between the two potential social allies against Brahmanism. But political parties espousing social justice have failed in addressing the question of development among the backward and Dalit castes. This has left most of these castes desperately looking for growth opportunities, and the right wing has smelt opportunity to draw these castes to itself

In this third part of their interview, S.V. Rajadurai & V. Geetha tell Vidyabhushan Rawat that Periyar was insistently critical of the political sphere, which to him, was inexorably given to instrumental reasoning and limited goals. He felt that being active in this sphere could prove corrupting

In this second part of the interview with S.V. Rajadurai and V. Geetha, Vidyabhusan Rawat discovers that “during 1925-1931, Periyar and his Self-Respect Movement espoused a radical atheism, and strong commitment to ending untouchability; to the cause of civil rights, of Dalits, to access public spaces, including temples”

In this first part of an email interview, S.V. Rajadurai & V. Geetha tell Vidyabhushan Rawat that Periyar’s more fundamental critique of faith, and the angry denunciation of caste that was implicit in his denunciation of Brahmanical Hinduism were not always taken in and internalized

The party activists who were arrested for burning the effigies of Rama, Lakshmana and Sita walked free to a hero’s welcome. Their defiance continued when they organized a well-attended function on Naraka Chaturdasi