Tag Archives: Wikipedia

माँ, तुझे सलाम! कविता कृष्णन

अतिथि पोस्ट : कविता कृष्णन

“Scout,” said Atticus, “nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don’t mean anything—like snot-nose. It’s hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It’s slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.”

“You aren’t really a nigger-lover, then, are you?”

“I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody… I’m hard put, sometimes—baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.” (To Kill A Mockingbird, Chapter 11)

‘Now, there is a long and honourable tradition in the gay community and it has stood us in good stead for a very long time. When somebody calls you a name – you take it. And you own it.’ (Pride, 2014)

‘टू किल अ मॉकिंगबर्ड’ उपन्यास 1950 के दशक के अमेरिका के दक्षिणी राज्यों में नस्लवाद की कहानी है. उसमें एक वकील जिनका नाम एटिकस है, एक काले नस्ल के आदमी की पैरवी करते हैं जिस पर बलात्कार का गलत आरोप लगाया गया है. एटिकस की 8 साल की बेटी स्कौट कहती है की गाँव के लोग कह रहे हैं कि मेरे पिताजी ‘हब्शी-प्रेमी’ है. वह पूछती है कि इसका क्या अर्थ है, सुनकर लगता है कोई गाली है, जैसे किसी ने मुझे ‘बन्दर’ कहा हो, पर इसका क्या मतलब है?

Continue reading माँ, तुझे सलाम! कविता कृष्णन

Wikipedia, Bhanwari Devi and the need for an alert feminist public: Urvashi Sarkar

Guest Post by URVASHI SARKAR

Until June 20th 2014, if you visited the Wikipedia entry on Bhanwari Devi — a women’s rights Dalit activist who was raped for taking on child marriage in an upper caste community in her Rajasthan village— you would have been in for a nasty surprise.

The following lines from the biography section of the article would have stood out starkly:

“Bhanwari, the young, illiterate potter woman…strutting about the village giving gratuitous, unctuous advice to her social superiors made attempts to persuade the family against carrying out their wedding plans. Standing unveiled in the street outside the house of the brides-to-be she loudly berated the elderly patriarch… flaunted her government appointment…and threatening them that she would stop at nothing to ensure their public disgrace by stopping the planned marriage.”

The citation for this paragraph was provided as ‘Bhateri Rape Case: Backlash and Protest’ by Kanchan Mathur published in the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW).

Not a single sentence from that paragraph features in the EPW article; but a preceding paragraph in the Wikipedia entry, which describes Bhanwari Devi’s work as a sathin or grassroots worker with the Women’s Development Project of the Rajasthan Government, is correctly attributed to the EPW piece. Continue reading Wikipedia, Bhanwari Devi and the need for an alert feminist public: Urvashi Sarkar