Tag Archives: Ambedkar Bhavan

Culture, Debates, Democracy, Education, Government

In New India, No Ambedkar Readings ?

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How a Central university is being allowed to humiliate/ stigmatise Ambedkar and a conspiracy of silence still pervades it.

Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha, Maharashtra is again in the news for wrong reasons. It has been more than around four months that a unique initiative of doing readings from Ambedkar has been forcibly stopped, show-cause notices being issued and even punitive action being taken against Dalit teachers, but there is no murmur of protest about it and despite being in the know of these developments, the top bosses of the UGC or University Grants Commission are silent over it.

Stop readings on Ambedkar in open in University Campus, it could endanger the “safety and health of (participating) students and reputation of the university‘

The news of this unbelievable diktat by an educational institution remained dormant for a day.

Expectedly, the tremendous nationwide uproar about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election speech in Banswara, which is considered his most ‘divisive’ in last 30 years, overshadowed other similar urgent issues.

The institution under scanner for this diktat to teachers is Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha, Maharashtra, a Central university. You would recall that some time ago, this institution had similarly attracted eyeballs when a team of Hindi research scholars from China had visited it. A visit that was followed by this team’s meeting with RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) leaders at their headquarters in Nagpur.

What is rather troubling to note is that it has been more than four months that this unique experiment of doing readings from Ambedkar, in open, which was an initiative undertaken by the Dalit teachers of the vishwidyalaya, under the informal group called Ambedkar Study Circle India, stands forcibly stopped, show-cause notices being issued to teachers involved and even punitive action taken against three of them, but a conspiracy of silence has pervaded it.

What must have prompted this action by the University administration against the teachers, who were were just following the UGC recommended Code of Professional Ethics?  ( Please read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/new-india-no-ambedkar-readings)

Bad ideas, Debates, Government, Right watch

Towards a ‘Suitable’ Ambedkar

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Is tweaking of Babasaheb’s iconic slogan — Educate, Organise, Agitate — by the Gujarat government part of a pan-India phenomenon in the saffron camp?

Towards a ‘Suitable’ Ambedkar

Does anyone still remember the ‘re-editing’ of Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi during National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-I period when demands were raised that it should to be scrapped and the original collected works should to be reinstated so that readers/scholars are made available the ‘most authentic version of writings and utterances of Gandhi’. Noted Gandhians had underlined then how the revised Collected Works and adjoining CDs (compact discs) issued during 2001 had ‘five hundred entries missing’ from the original one.

Thanks to the exit of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA government in 2004, the original Collected Works could be restored and even published online so that henceforth no government — deliberately or inadvertently — is able to make any changes in the works.

Well, while the project to ‘re-edit’ Gandhi was undertaken in a big way, which could be exposed in time, what one observes that surreptitiously or not so surreptitiously, the project to edit other icons of the anti-colonial or social emancipation movement is on in very many ways. It has been quite a long time since both Gandhi as well as Ambedkar — who were once anathema to the Hindutva project — have been included as ‘Pratahsmaraniya‘ (worth remembering in the morning) in the RSS shakhas. The emphasis seems to be on to present a more sanitised image of them which is more acceptable to the ruling dispensation.

A recent example of this has come from Gujarat.

(Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/index.php/Towards-Suitable-Ambedkar)

Bad ideas, Debates, Everyday Life, Government, Identities, Movements, Politics

Dalit Uprising and After …

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Why Hindutva Would Not Be The Same Again ?

Image result for una struggle

(Photo Courtesy : newsclick.in)

When I was born I was not a child
I was a dream, a dream of revolt
that my mother, oppressed for thousands of years ,
dreamt.
Still it is untouched in my eyes
Covered with wrinkles of thousand years, her face
her eyes, two lakes overflowing with tears
have watered my body…..

– Sahil Parmar*

Well known Gujarati poet Sahil Parmar’s poem ‘When I Was Born’ perhaps reverberates these days in Gujarat when we are witnessing a Dalit Upsurge- a first of its kind at least in that regions history. It will be a talk of folklore for times to come how flogging of dalits in a village in Saurashtra by Hindutva fanatics suddenly erupted into a mass movement of dalits which could catch imagination of the people cutting across different sections of society. An attempt is being made here to understand the dynamics of the movement and its likely impact on the future trajectory of Hindutva.

Continue reading Dalit Uprising and After … →

Bad ideas, Government, Identities, Movements, Politics, Religion, Right watch

Cow Vigilantism as Terror : New Socialist Initiative

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Guest Post by  New Socialist Initiative

Can the Saffron Establishment ever wash its hands of the growing menace?

(For Hindi version, click the link http://nsi-delhi.blogspot.in/2016/07/blog-post_26.html)

( Courtesy : Cartoonist Satish Acharya, https://www.facebook.com/cartoonistsatishacharya/)

Cow vigilantism which has received tremendous boost since the ascendance of BJP at the centre got its first fitting reply in Gujarat recently. The way in which a self-proclaimed Gau Rakshak Dal – owing allegiance to Shiv Sena – attacked a group of Dalits in Una (11 th July 2016) who were skinning a dead cow, publicly flogged them, led them to the police station charging them with cow slaughter and even circulated a video of the whole incident on social media to spread further terror, has caused tremendous uproar. Continue reading Cow Vigilantism as Terror : New Socialist Initiative →