A challenge is mounted against the widespread assumption that Ambedkar was prejudiced against “tribe,” by revealing acts of academic carelessness that occur in the writings of some scholars through the cherry-picking of quotes and failure to historically contextualise the same. Some such popular (mis)quotes and Ambedkar’s writings on tribe over a period of time are investigated, taking into account both their immediate and larger historical context, to argue that there are better ways to make sense of Ambedkar’s stance on the subject.
Dynamics of Caste and Law: Dalits, Oppression and Constitutional Democracy in India by Dag-Erik Berg, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020; pp 243, ₹795.
Tribals and Dalits in Orissa: Towards a Social History of Exclusion, c 1800–1950 by Biswamoy Pati, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp 248, ₹945.
What remains behind the repetition of brazen violence is the continuous and calibrated deployment of different techniques of power that involve the recycling of violence in various forms and continuous yet ad hoc negotiations by the state and the mining company with the affected communities that seek to contain the communities and limit the forms of resistance available to them on a day-to-day basis.
The cinematic interventions of contemporary Dalit film-makers in India, Nagraj Manjule and Pa Ranjith, among others, represent modes of resistant historiography, employed by Dalits, against the aesthetic regime of stereotypical representation, through innovative techniques in visuals, sound, music, and cinematography. The paper attempts to evaluate and argue for an enabling anti-caste aesthetics articulated through an embodied sensibility in films. The paper argues that these film-makers not only disturb “the unconscious of caste” through an explicit anti-caste aesthetics but also produce affective, expressive archives. In other words, they bring into presence what was previously impossible through the processes of denunciation (of casteist images) and innovation (of anti-caste aesthetics).
Margaret Sanger’s feminism blurs the lines between the East and the West. It carries continuities and a resemblance to strands of feminism understood and promoted by contemporary liberal India and their dominant positioning vis-à-vis marginalised groups, such as Dalits, Muslims and the urban and rural poor.
Profits made by large tea corporations continue to increase at the expense of tea workers who are paid unfairly, and whose access to quality education, water, and other basic services is severely curtailed.
