Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 13.09.13
Dalit leaders booked for violating orders- The Times Of India
Thol Thirumavalavan, VCP activists arrested- The New Indian Express
Report highlights dismal implementation SC, ST Act- The Hindu
Cabinet defers decision on changes in SC , ST Act- Jagran Post
http://post.jagran.com/cabinet-defers-decision-on-changes-in-sc-st-act-1379053402
Lower-castes still face difficulties- China Post
Get serious- The Hindu
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/get-serious/article5120916.ece
Dalits of Ragimaruru to get houses- The Hindu
Government to pay insurance premium for SC,ST members- The Hindu
Reading beyond the lines- The Hindu
http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/reading-beyond-the-lines/article5120336.ece
Note : Please find attachment for HINDI DMW ( PDF)
The Times Of India
Dalit leaders booked for violating orders
MADURAI: The rural police have registered cases against dalit leaders for not complying with the orders issued by the police department on the occasion of Immanuel Sekaran's Memorial Day which was held in Paramakudi on Wednesday.
Madurai district police registered two cases against John Pandian, president of Thamizhaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam, a party floated by All India Devendra Kula Velalar Sangam. As many as 20 supporters of John Pandian have also been booked by Vadipatti police on Wednesday. Another dalit leader, Dr Krishnaswamy, founder president ofPuthiya Thamilagam party has also been booked for violating the police orders enforced on the day for the smooth passage of the even. The case against Dr Krishnaswamy was registered by Silaiman policewhile he along with his supporters was on the way to Paramakudi. They were booked while they passed Madurai district police limits.
Both the leaders have been booked under Sections IPC 143-unlawful assembly and IPC 188 - disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant. Police said that John Pandian and his supporters were travelling to Paramakudi via Madurai from Dindigul and they protested when the police conducted a vehicular check-up as per the orders from the district administration and police officials. Tnn
Briefing about the cases V Balakrishnan, superintendent of police, Madurai district, said that cases against John Pandian and his supporters have been booked at Vadipatti station as they did not cooperate with the police during the vehicular check-up.
Dr Krishnaswamy too has been booked as he violated police orders of not using more three cars in a convoy.
The New Indian Express
Thol Thirumavalavan, VCP activists arrested
Dalit-based outfit Viduthalai Chiruthaaigal Katchi leader Thol Thirumavalavan, MP, and around 200 party supporters were arrested Thursday for trying to stage a protest pressing for various demands including retrieval of Katchatheevu.
They were arrested since permission had not been granted for the protest, police said.
Thirumavalavan insisted that India should boycott the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka in November since the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime was "accused of human rights violations against civilian Tamils in the final phase of the Eelam War."
Katchatheevu is in the news with Chief Minister Jayalalithaa moving the Supreme court seeking to declare as unconstitutional the agreement under which it was ceded to Sri Lanka in 1974.
In response to the plea, the Centre in its recent affidavit in the Supreme Court has said no territory belonging to the country was ceded nor sovereignty relinquished.
The Hindu
Report highlights dismal implementation SC, ST Act
A fact-finding report compiled by the Karnataka Dalit Mahila Vedike has found that in 2011 and 2012, one Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe person was murdered every week and one was raped in the same period.
The report, which was released on Wednesday in the presence of senior functionaries of the government, highlights the dismal implementation of the SC and ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. It shows that the conviction rate in cases registered under the special Act remains only 4.8 per cent for SCs and 3.1 per cent for STs.
"Much of the problem lies with the poor legal defence provided by public prosecutors hired by the State," said Yoshodha, a member of the vedike.
Another significant point that the report makes is that the quarterly district-level meetings as well as the half-yearly State-level meetings that are supposed to be held to monitor the implementation of the Act are not being held properly. At the State level, the last such meeting was held in 2010 and once in 2006. At the district level, many deputy commissioners have not conducted the quarterly meetings in three years. Yet, no action has been taken against officers who have displayed indifference, the report states.
Law Minister T.B. Jaychandra, who attended the programme, assured the activists that the government would convene a meeting soon to address pending issues pertaining to the welfare of SCs and STs.
Jagran Post
Cabinet defers decision on changes in SC , ST Act
http://post.jagran.com/cabinet-defers-decision-on-changes-in-sc-st-act-1379053402
New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Thursday deferred a decision on amendments moved by the Ministry of Social Justice for making harsher the provisions of SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The ministry in its amendments had also sought to bring more crimes under the Act's purview but sources said the Cabinet deferred a decision on them.
It, however, passed the ministry's proposal to enhance the authorized share capital of Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation from existing Rs 700 crore to Rs 1500 crore.
In the amendments proposed in the Act, the ministry had sought to bring obstructing use of common property, allegations of witchcraft, preventing entry in place of worship, social and economic boycott and promoting enmity among other offences under it.
Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Kumar Selja had stressed on the need for amendments in the Act, saying crimes against the SC and ST remain rampant.
The ministry also wants various others crimes, including rape and kidnapping, to attract the provision of the Act
China Post
Lower-castes still face difficulties
Neema looks to be in her 30s and is in love with a Muslim boy whose name she is too shy to reveal. She works in Delhi and suffers under two apparent disadvantages. She is a Dalit woman, the lowest in India's caste pyramid, and she walks with a pronounced limp.
When she was in her early teens her grandmother, a housemaid in the neighborhood, handed her over to my family for safekeeping and grooming. But, sooner than expected, Neema declared she was getting married to a boy from her community, in her village in Partapgarh.
The marriage broke up in no time. She was beaten and abused by the man who she said was a vagabond and a drunkard.
Neema walked out of the marriage but now there is this Muslim boy from Allahabad who likes her and with whom she has a chat on the phone every day. They met in our ancestral village in Rae Bareli where Neema would routinely travel with my mother who loved her like her own child.
After my mother's recent passing, Neema has been distraught. She has lost her most enduring anchor and her own family would not allow her to marry a Muslim boy.
If she defies them, she would be thrown out of her village and the community would disown her. She would be an outcast, which is not without its own irony.
A Dalit girl battered by a man of her community to be declared an outcast if she was to marry a Muslim.
Two facts are evident here. Large swathes of Muslims are becoming the new untouchables in India, deemed lower in the social hierarchy than the Dalits. Their social marginalization in Gujarat, for example, appears more or less complete.
The other point evident from Neema's story is that Dalits, who under Bhim Rao Ambedkar strove for a separate identity from their caste Hindu tormentors, are being insidiously wooed or driven to "become" Hindus. In fact, the shuddhi karan or purification has been a keystone for religious revivalism now afflicting India on a large scale.
The campaign is seen as a foil to the Dalits' traditional turn to Islam, Christianity or Buddhism where they were at least offered the illusion of being less shunned.
A greater challenge to Hindu revivalism comes in the endeavors of Christian missionaries whose successful social work among India's sizeable tribespeople is the envy of the Hindu right-wing.
The brutal murder of an Australian missionary and his two sons, who were burnt in their jeep by a mob of Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists in the forests of Orissa in 1998, is a case in point.
Murderous anti-Christian violence in the Kandhamal district of Orissa subsequently bears witness to this jostling for inflating numbers, part of India's tryst with universal adult enfranchisement.
Neema's story, of course, offers only part of the explanation for communal clashes in India.
From Shakespeare to Waris Shah, the syndrome which sees communal rivalries as a deterrent to love is all too familiar. That it has been cleverly harnessed to the potent mix of Hindu revivalism is something of a paradox in a society that officially flaunts its trajectory as modern and inclusive.
All communal violence need not be necessarily linked to the social mixing of Hindu and Muslim boys and girls. Similar transgressions can and do occur across caste divides and are punished mercilessly by the village panchayat — village level government — that is not averse to lynching the guilty as a widely accepted form of retribution.
The ongoing communal violence in Muzaffarnagar is complex. The region in western Uttar Pradesh sits on a vote-rich caste arithmetic, and often taps into the communal chance it offers with a high presence of Muslims. A Dalit-Muslim communal clash there is a just as high yield as a Dalit-Jat caste clash.
In this chaos, the situation Neema is facing occurs all too easily. Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders have spoken of a conspiracy to "expand Muslim population, using Hindu girls as machines."
It may seem outlandish but it seems to work well for the rumor-mills that drive riots. "Love Jihad" is the new technique, says Chandra Mohan Sharma, the bespectacled joint general-secretary of the Meerut division of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an adjunct of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The so-called Love Jihad is a "difficult art," picked up only after "madressah-conducted training," Sharma told The Hindu in comments published on Wednesday.
"First, good-looking Muslim men are identified. They are given neutral names like Sonu and Raju." These boys, Mr. Sharma told the paper, are then given jeans, T-shirts, mobiles, and bikes and taught to behave.
"They stand in front of schools and colleges and woo young Hindu girls. The first few times, our girls snub them." But then, he says resignedly, they fall for it.
"This jihad is about pyar se phasana entrapment through love."
Sharma cites alleged police records. "Out of 100 girls who elope, 95 are Hindus who go with Muslim men. It is rare that Hindu boys get Muslim girls."
This, the Hindutva leader says conclusively, is proof of a conspiracy to "expand the Muslim population, using Hindu girls as machines. We need to protect the honor of our daughters, bahu aur beti."
The Hindu report cautioned against taking Mr Sharma lightly. He was at the mahapanchayat on Saturday. The protection of "our women" was the common theme in many speeches, as video recordings of the event, shown to The Hindu, revealed. "There is now recognition that this event added to the agitational mood, added to the insecurity, and eventually led to clashes and violence," the report says.
"On Aug. 27, a Muslim boy teased a Hindu girl," Sharma claimed, "and that is the root of the tensions. Tell me, which brother can accept this?"
While this may now be a prevalent version of the trigger for the Muzaffarnagar violence, it is all too clear that ordinary lovers will continue to be ensnared in India's vicious trap of caste and religious prejudices. Neema must find a way out.
The Hindu
Get serious
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/get-serious/article5120916.ece
After long years of inaction, even a small step forward can appear as a lot. With Parliament passing the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, India appears to have at least acknowledged the continued existence of manual scavenging, including within government-run bodies. The law is a vast improvement on the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act of 1993, which saw no conviction in its 20-year history despite the widespread prevalence of the abominable practice. This time the focus is equally on rehabilitation of manual scavengers as on prohibition of the practice and punishment of the employers. Manual scavenging will continue so long as there are men and women poor and helpless enough to take it up. Without rehabilitation of those engaged in this dehumanising labour, manual scavenging will find ways to hide from the law, no matter how stringent the penal provisions for the employers. The new law recognises the problem as not just one of dry latrines, but as one of dealing with human waste. Irrespective of the nature of the latrines, manual scavengers have to work in extremely unhygienic conditions that put their health at serious risk.
Another improvement in the current legislation is the acknowledgment that local and railway authorities have been employers of manual scavengers. One reason the stringent provisions of the earlier law did not take effect was that the main violators of the law included government authorities. Local bodies trying to clear blocked sewer lines or the railways trying to clean soiled tracks at stations and toilets in trains have done little to introduce mechanisation. The current legislation sees protective gear and safety precautions for the workers as an alternative to mechanisation. For the purposes of the Act, those using protective gear and devices as may be notified by the Central government would not come under the definition of a "manual scavenger".
Verily, this is an escape clause for local and railway authorities to continue to deploy workers in manual scavenging. Even the present legislation would not have come about without the intervention of the judiciary.
The Supreme Court has now asked the Centre and the States to provide a detailed list of manual scavengers who have been rehabilitated so far. Actually, funds allotted for their rehabilitation have been mostly unspent. The determination of the Centre and the States to rid India of manual scavenging can be gauged only from the results achieved on the ground, and not from the nature of the laws passed in Parliament.
The Hindu
Dalits of Ragimaruru to get houses
There is some relief to Dalits of Ragimaruru village in Araklgud taluk, many of whom used to work as bonded labourers for landlords until recently.
The Hassan district administration has responded to their problems and will provide them benefits in the form of houses, toilets, roads, water supply and drainage system, apart from ensuring that 21 of their children, who had discontinued studies owing to financial problems, will continue their education.
On August 15, The Hindu had reported about human bondage system prevailing in the village. Around 40 Dalits of the village had been working as bonded labourers for many years to clear loans taken from landlords. Following the news report, Deputy Commissioner and other senior officers of the district visited the village and took stock of the conditions that forced Dalits to work as bonded labourers.
Staff of the Social Welfare Department conducted a door-to-door survey in the village to identify school dropouts. They found that 21 children had discontinued studies two–three years ago. Now, they have been admitted to government schools and colleges and also provided accommodation in hostels run by the Social Welfare Department.
"Among the 21, eight are pre-matric students, 11 are PU students, one is a B.A. student and another ITI student. All of them have been provided hostel facility," said H.V. Nagaraj, District Social Welfare Officer.
The department has worked out a proposal to construct roads, provide water supply and drainage system in the village at a cost Rs. 16 lakh. "We have sufficient funds in the Hassan Zilla Panchayat to take up these works. The proposal has been sent to the Commissioner of Social Welfare for approval," he said. Arkalgud Taluk Panchayat has prepared a Rs. 48-lakh action plan to take up works in the village under MGNREGA so that those in need work could be offered jobs. This is to discourage poor people from opting to work for landlords at meagre salaries.
The Hindu
Government to pay insurance premium for SC,ST members
Minister for Cooperation H.S. Mahadeva Prasad on Wednesday said the State government has decided to pay Rs. 210 to enrol each Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe member under the Yeshasvini Health Insurance Scheme.
Mr. Prasad was speaking after inaugurating the foundation stone laying ceremony for the proposed commercial complex of RAPCMS off the Bangalore-Mysore Highway here.
The government will pay the enrolment fee for around nine lakh SC,ST members to enter their names under the scheme, which is designed for farmers who are members of the cooperative societies to undergo hospitalisation when required, at hospitals of their choice.
Unable to pay
The majority of the SC,ST members are unable to pay the Rs. 210 premium for the health insurance scheme. Hence, the government has decided to pay the premium. With this, the SC,ST members can get medical treatment, including radiotherapy and implantations free of cost, the Minister said.
Loan
In Mandya district, a total of 35,703 farmers have benefited from the loan waiver scheme, Mr. Prasad said.
He said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is committed to work for all-round development of the State.
The government has already implemented 'Anna Bhagya', 'Ksheera Bhagya' besides waiving of loans for minorities and SC, STs who have taken loans from various government-run corporations. The government will implement all promises made in the Congress manifesto in the coming days, he said.
The State government has increased the incentive to milk producers from Rs. 2 to Rs. 4 for every litre of milk. This has increased the milk production in the State, the Minister said.
Mandya MP Ramya said she will work for strengthening the cooperative sector in the district.
The Hindu
Reading beyond the lines
http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/reading-beyond-the-lines/article5120336.ece
To name Premchand's story "Kafan" as proof of the author's anti-Dalit proclivities is to miss the point
Premchand is known for his realistic understanding of caste oppression in the countryside and his soul-stirring portrayal of the lives of the lower castes and the 'untouchables', now known as Dalits. His short story "Sadgati" (Deliverance) was turned into a memorable telefilm by none other than Satyajit Ray. It's by no means incidental that Ray chose only Premchand's short stories for his two Hindi films, the first one being "Shatranj ke Khiladi" (The Chess Players). When he was alive, Premchand was the target of fierce and abusive attacks from Brahmins and other upper castes because of his sympathetic portrayal of the oppressed lower castes and untouchables. He was dubbed as "anti-Brahmin" by his upper caste detractors who accused him of spreading hatred against them. It's an irony of fate that the same Premchand is being dubbed as "anti-Dalit" these days by many Dalit writers and critics.
A majority of Dalit writers and critics firmly believe that only a Dalit can write authentically about his community, as a writer belonging to an upper caste does not have those experiences that are specific to the Dalits. They may have a point but their insistence on its absolute validity robs it of literary relevance. By this logic, no male writer can create an authentic female character and express her feelings, emotions and thoughts as he is not privy to her experiences qua woman. In fact, some women writers do argue in this manner to buttress their case for building a body of literature devoted to 'feminist discourse'. However, those who adopt such stances forget that literature is not a mere re-presentation but a re-creation of reality through the mediation of imagination, experiences, talent and creativity. Had it not been so, Tolstoy could not have created an Anna Karenina and Premchand a Nirmala. Who can forget the women who inhabit the works of the great Bengali writer Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya or Hindi's very own Jainendra?
Premchand, who was only 56 at the time of his death in 1936, evolved as a writer over more than three decades. While his early stories show 'untouchables' having full faith in the beliefs of the Hindu religion and accepting the unjust caste hierarchy and oppression associated with it, stories like "Kafan" that were written shortly before his death show them free from such notions. Surprisingly, it is "Kafan" that has drawn maximum flak from Dalit writers and critics who read into it many things that are not quite there. Even relatively more liberal writers like Omprakash Valmiki have reacted strongly against it. They allege that Premchand has shown the father-son duo — Gheesu and Madhav — in poor light and they come through as villainous characters on account of their negative portrayal. Dalit thinkers see in it an attempt to mock at the 'untouchables' in "Kafan", a charge that looks truly preposterous if one takes into account Premchand's writings in their totality. A few like Dharmvir let their imagination run riot and attack the story for those episodes or relationships that are not found in it but which, according to them, logically flow from it. This is nothing but turning the methodology of literary criticism upside down.
As Marxist critic Kantimohan points out, "Kafan" is really not about the caste problem. Gheesu and Madhav are landless agricultural labourers who act as free agents and refuse to work if they are not in the mood or if the terms are not agreeable. They cannot be forced to work by the upper castes as used to be the case earlier.
However, a life of suffering and want has completely dehumanized them. Madhav's wife Budhiya is about to die in childbirth. However, neither of them is concerned about saving her. Unlike the Dalit characters of earlier stories, they question the custom of wrapping the dead body of a woman, who never got a new sari in her life, in a new shroud. They raise money for her funeral and spend it on drinking liquor and eating tasty food to their hearts' content. Premchand's artistic intention is not to portray the condition of the Dalits, but to bring the feudal-colonial exploitation of the peasantry into sharp relief because despite working much harder than Gheesu and Madhav, peasants did not fare any better.
News Monitor by Girish Pant
Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")
Pl visit on FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/DalitsMediaWatch
...................................................................
Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.
No comments:
Post a Comment