[ZESTCaste] Dalit beaten to death for defying diktat
http://www.ptinews.com/news/695592_Dalit-beaten-to-death-for-defying-diktat Dalit beaten to death for defying diktat STAFF WRITER 15:55 HRS IST Ballia (UP), Jun 6 (PTI) A dalit youth was beaten to death allegedly by some villagers after he attended a wedding function, defying a diktat, police said here today. A group of villagers barged into the house of Dhirendra Kumar at Panchhua village late last night and attacked him. When he resisted, they beat him to death, Deputy Superintendent of Police Deshraj Singh said. He said Dhirendra's family was socially boycotted by the villagers some years back. However, when he went to attend a marriage function last night, he was attacked in order to teach a lesson. Meanwhile, some persons have lodged a complaint alleging that the attack was in retaliation to the rape of a 15-year-old girl by Dhirendra and his two associates.
[ZESTCaste] NCW orders probe into Dalit father-daughter duo death
http://www.ptinews.com/news/694597_NCW-orders-probe-into-Dalit-father-daughter-duo-death NCW orders probe into Dalit father-daughter duo death STAFF WRITER 21:50 HRS IST New Delhi, Jun 5 (PTI) The National Commission for Women today said an inquiry has been ordered into the death of a Dalit father-daughter duo, who were burnt alive in Mirchpur in Haryana. The inquiry, which would be conducted by NCW member Wansuk Syiem, would inquire into the circumstances leading to the incident and the action taken by the authorities. The member shall meet the police officers and others concerned to ascertain the facts and circumstances and the protection provided to Dalit families. Tara Chand (70) and his daughter Suman (18) were burnt alive on April 21 allegedly when members of a particular community torched several houses belonging to Dalits in Mirchpur village.
[ZESTCaste] Caste-ing my vote (Opinion)
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/sunil-jain-caste-ing-my-vote/397231/ Sunil Jain: Caste-ing my vote If the census tabulates caste data with education, occupation and the place of residence, etc., it could be meaningful Sunil Jain / New Delhi June 07, 2010, 0:20 IST If the census tabulates caste data with education, occupation and the place of residence, etc., it could be meaningful Too many of India’s policies, especially in recent times, are made in a data vacuum. The Right to Education seeks to rid the country of unrecognised private schools, but there is no official data on just how many children study in these schools and how good or bad this education is. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act seeks to provide jobs to the unemployed, but the data on this is collected only once in five years by the NSSO. The government is happy to do caste-based affirmative action even while it has no data on how real the discrimination is. It is in this context that the proposal to ask for caste details in the census has to be seen. Those in favour of it argue that if you must have reservations along caste lines, you must know just how many people there are in each caste group. Those opposed to it argue that since the Supreme Court has put a 50 per cent ceiling on reservations, and there are more SC/ST/OBCs, the exact number needn’t be collected. Two, since there are benefits in being an SC/ST/OBC, people will flock to declare they’re SC/ST/OBC — the OBC share of the population rose from 36 per cent in the 1999-2000 NSSO survey to 41 per cent in the 2004-05 one for this very reason. So, it is likely the same thing will happen if caste details are canvassed in the census. There will then be pressure on the courts to raise the levels of reservation, leading possibly to another anti-Mandal type of bloody agitation. There is, however, an even more fundamental issue when it comes to canvassing caste details: in the absence of ways to put them in perspective, the data is just incendiary. Let’s say you know that while SC/STs are 25 per cent of the population, they comprise just 12 per cent of those with “administrative, executive and managerial” jobs. Before you shout discrimination, keep in mind SC/STs also comprise just 14 per cent of all graduates — and since you have to have passed out of school to become a graduate, the solution is clearly not affirmative action, it is ensuring low dropout rates in school. Or let’s say you get to know that while 20 per cent of OBCs are graduates, just 7 per cent of them have professional/administrative/managerial jobs. It’s natural to shout discrimination, but keep in mind the respective figures for upper castes are 34 and 11 per cent. All of this, and a lot more, form the crux of a book just written by Rajesh Shukla and me (out on the stands at the end of the month) based on the NCAER’s annual income survey across the country. While it would be foolish to deny caste discrimination, the book tries to analyse the reasons for the difference in incomes — how much is due to education, how much is due to where you live (villages, small towns, metros, prosperous states, poor states), how much is due to your occupation, and so on. The results are illuminating. To cite just one type of example, while an illiterate ST household earns Rs 22,456 per year, this rises to Rs 85,023 for a graduate household; an illiterate upper class household earns Rs 31,511 versus Rs 135,086 for a graduate household. At all levels of education categories, upper castes earn more than STs. But the caveats are critical. Here are a few: # The difference in income between an illiterate and a graduate ST is far higher than the difference between an ST and any other caste group — that is, education is critical (and keep in mind the point about the high school dropout rates). # As salaries are the highest (and the relative differences between caste groups the least) in the modern services sector, a big reason for low ST incomes (regardless of their education level) is that very few of them are in this sector. # Since incomes are the lowest (and relative income differences between caste groups the highest) in low-income states, a very major reason for low ST incomes is that they are mostly located in these states. # As incomes are the lowest in rural areas (and relative income differences among the highest), and this is where the greater share of ST households are, this is another reason for lower ST incomes (again, this applies to all education groups). While the census does not ask for information on incomes, it does ask for information on some surrogates — pucca house, own kitchen/bathroom, TV, car, mobile etc. If this information is married with information on education, occupation and location (rural, urban, small town, metro etc.) in meaningful cross-tabulations of the type discussed above, the exercise could yield powerful results on caste discrimination. The raw numbers, it must be
[ZESTCaste] BSP leader who humiliated dalit walking free
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/BSP-leader-who-humiliated-dalit-walking-free/articleshow/6016320.cms BSP leader who humiliated dalit walking free TNN, Jun 6, 2010, 01.43am IST LUCKNOW: BSP Aligarh unit chief Moolchandra Baghel and four others have not been arrested so far for publicly humiliating a ‘‘mentally challenged’’ dalit woman at Aligarh on June 2. Two days after the incident, the UP government on Friday refuted media reports that the victim was stripped and paraded naked. It, however, admitted that the woman’s hands and legs were tied and she was assaulted in full public view. The government also said the woman had got violent and had to be controlled. Virma Devi of Chandaukha village in Aligarh district had gone to attend a religious congregation in the village where Baghel was present. Reports reaching here said organizer Netrapal Baghel had promised Virma Devi to plead her case before Moolchand for some financial assistance from the government. When Virma reminded him of his promise, Netrapal got angry and allegedly drove Virma Devi out of the pandal. INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to zestmedia-dig...@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/ PARTICIPATE:- On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:- If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to zestcaste-subscr...@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/ Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: zestcaste-dig...@yahoogroups.com zestcaste-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: zestcaste-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[ZESTCaste] An eye-opening article on Gandhi's views on and practice of Chastity
Why one more article on Gandhi's sexual life? Very often, the talk about Gandhi's sexuality sounds as disgusting as his own views and actions.It is still necessary to use well-researched and mildly written pieces such as this in our campaigns against this monster called Mahatma-image which still rules the minds of our headmasters, principals and recently, even some professors and academics. Mr. Adams continues to believe Gandhi is a great man and even says such ways are common to great men. Yet, the central point of the article really damaging: Gandhi's claims to Brahmacharya were actually retrospective constructs. He started talking about Brahmacharya only after there was criticism against his 'perverse' ways of forcing children and women to sleep with him naked. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html Thrill of the chaste: The truth about Gandhi's sex life With religious chastity under scrutiny, a new book throws light on Gandhi's practice of sleeping next to naked girls. In fact, he was sex-mad, writes biographer Jad Adams *Wednesday, 7 April 2010* [image: No sex please: Gandhi, above, 'tested' himself by sleeping with naked grand-nieces Manu, left, and Abha, right] http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html?action=Popup *Alamy* No sex please: Gandhi, above, 'tested' himself by sleeping with naked grand-nieces Manu, left, and Abha, right - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html?action=Popupgallery=no It was no secret that Mohandas Gandhi had an unusual sex life. He spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed, often provocative, instructions to his followers as to how to they might best observe chastity. And his views were not always popular; abnormal and unnatural was how the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi's advice to newlyweds to stay celibate for the sake of their souls. But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at play in Gandhi's beliefs, preachings and even his unusual personal practices (which included, alongside his famed chastity, sleeping naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint)? In the course of researching my new book on Gandhi, going through a hundred volumes of his complete works and many tomes of eye-witness material, details became apparent which add up to a more bizarre sexual history. Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted or suppressed after his death during the process of elevating Gandhi into the Father of the Nation Was the Mahatma, in fact, as the pre-independence prime minister of the Indian state of Travancore called him, a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac? Gandhi was born in the Indian state of Gujarat and married at 13 in 1883; his wife Kasturba was 14, not early by the standards of Gujarat at that time. The young couple had a normal sex life, sharing a bed in a separate room in his family home, and Kasturba was soon pregnant. Two years later, as his father lay dying, Gandhi left his bedside to have sex with Kasturba. Meanwhile, his father drew his last breath. The young man compounded his grief with guilt that he had not been present, and represented his subsequent revulsion towards lustful love as being related to his father's death. However, Gandhi and Kasturba's last child wasn't born until fifteen years later, in 1900. In fact, Gandhi did not develop his censorious attitude to sex (and certainly not to marital sex) until he was in his 30s, while a volunteer in the ambulance corps, assisting the British Empire in its wars in Southern Africa. On long marches in sparsely populated land in the Boer War and the Zulu uprisings, Gandhi considered how he could best give service to humanity and decided it must be by embracing poverty and chastity. At the age of 38, in 1906, he took a vow of brahmacharya, which meant living a spiritual life but is normally referred to as chastity, without which such a life is deemed impossible by Hindus. Gandhi found it easy to embrace poverty. It was chastity that eluded him. So he worked out a series of complex rules which meant he could say he was chaste while still engaging in the most explicit sexual conversation, letters and behaviour. With the zeal of the convert, within a year of his vow, he told readers of his newspaper Indian Opinion: It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife. Meanwhile, Gandhi was challenging that abstinence in his own way. He set up ashrams in which he began his first experiments with sex; boys and girls were to bathe and sleep together, chastely, but were punished for any sexual talk. Men and
[ZESTCaste] NCW to probe Mirchpur incident
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article447437.ece Published: June 6, 2010 01:45 IST | Updated: June 6, 2010 01:45 IST NEW DELHI, June 6, 2010 NCW to probe Mirchpur incident Aarti Dhar Taking cognizance of the killing of an 18-year-old Dalit girl and her 70-year-old father at Mirchpur village in Hissar district of Haryana in April, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has set up a committee to enquire into the incident. The incident reportedly took place on April 21. A mob, reportedly belonging to a dominant community, torched several Dalit households, forcing families to flee. As many as 35 houses were destroyed and 50 ransacked and 25 people injured in the violence. The committee, headed by NCW member Wansuk Syiem, will enquire into the circumstances leading to the incident and the action taken by the authorities. It will meet the police officers concerned and other officials as it deems proper to ascertain the facts and circumstances and protection provided to Dalit families. Court notice Taking a serious view of the forceful eviction of 150 Dalit families from Mirchpur after the incident, the Supreme Court has also issued a stern notice to the Haryana government for its response to a petition highlighting their plight. It has asked the State to come out with a plan for rehabilitation of these families, many of which are camping at a temple here.
[ZESTCaste] Existential dilemmas
http://www.hindu.com/lr/2010/06/06/stories/2010060650220600.htm ESSAYS Existential dilemmas INDIRA PARTHASARATHY Ravikumar's approach to human issues, as seen in his writing, befits his many-sided personality. Ravi asks: ‘Why is that the cultural sphere gains more significance than the killing of a human being? How are we to understand the meaning of the word ‘culture' here? Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics; Ravikumar, Translated from the Tamil by R. Azhagarasan, published by Samya, Kolkata, Rs. 650 The 1980s witnessed a gradual ascendance of the young brigade of Dalit intellectuals in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, among whom were artists, writers, journalists, academicians and human rights crusaders. They were largely instrumental in bringing to focus the subaltern literature in the Tamil region in the context of the Dalit movement, which had earlier failed to catch the attention of the mainstream history. Ravikumar, who had earlier started as a Marxist-Leninist, was one of the earliest members of this intellectually alert group. Self-made and well-read, and defying classification in any one of the conventional moulds of academic scholarship, he announced his arrival by publishing in Tamil in-depth articles in little Dalit journals. These pieces are now eminently translated into English by R. Azhagarasan and brought out as a book with the title Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics. Revelation In the 1990s, Ravikumar was largely responsible for the publication of the still-then unknown Siddha doctor Pandit C. Ayodhya Dasa's (1845-1914) collected works. It came as a revelation to many that such a person had existed much earlier than Mahatma Phule, Dr. Ambedkar and E.V. Ramaswamy. Dasa, in the true classical line of philosophical dissenters that distinguished the Indian intellectual tradition from the days of Carvaka and Buddha, repudiated the Manu Dharma that created the caste hierarchy and aggressively canvassed for the total emancipation of the Dalits. Ravi says in the appendix of this book, “Iyothee Thass (Ayodhya Dasa) is, perhaps, one among the several Dalit icons whose names have been blacked out by mainstream history.” The biographical sketch of this eminent Dalit, given by Ravi, tells us that he knew English, Sanskrit and Pali. He strongly believed that Buddhism flourished in Tamil Nadu before the advent of the later Cholas and a conspiracy of circumstances, resulted in the decline of this non-Vedic religion. Eventually, according to Dasa, the Buddhists were deprived of their religion and they descended to the status of untouchables. It reads like a speculative theory but does not seem improbable. Ravikumar's approach to human issues befits his many-sided personality, as is evident from the incident he narrates in this anthology. As a Dalit intellectual and also as a as a human rights activist, he raises this question why a metaphorical humiliation of a Dalit icon should anger people more than the calculated murder of a poor Dalit individual. He instances a case where a young Dalit was killed in police custody. It was cold-blooded murder and the Dalit organisations reacted to this by formally organising roadblocks and rallies. All attempts by civil liberty activists to get a post-mortem report to file a case properly were of no avail and it lacked sufficient backing by the other Dalit groups. ' Cultural crime A few days later, a statue of Ambedkar was desecrated by some miscreants in Tindivanam provoking violent riots all over the region. In the police firing, one person died and several seriously injured. Both pertain to a Dalit as well as a human issue. In one, a young man met his tortuous death inpolice custody and, in the other, an abstract or a ‘cultural' crime in the form garlanding the statue of an icon with chappals. Ravi asks: ‘Why is that the cultural sphere gains more significance than the killing of a human being? How are we to understand the meaning of the word ‘culture' here? Are the tools and methods currently available to define and understand the term, sufficient in the context of Dalit oppression?' Such questions pertaining to a situation of existential dilemma can never be satisfactorily answered. INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to zestmedia-dig...@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/ PARTICIPATE:- On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:- If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to zestcaste-subscr...@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting
[ZESTCaste] Dalit students face fee crisis June 6th, 2010
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/chennai/dalit-students-face-fee-crisis-213 Dalit students face fee crisis June 6th, 2010 DC Correspondent June 5: Poverty-stricken dalit students, pursuing their postgraduation at the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, have accused the management of indulging in coercive practices, including withholding the marksheets, to collect the tuition fee. The students are on the verge of discontinuing their studies. The institute, one of the 16 blacklisted deemed universities, functioning near the Rajiv Gandhi memorial in Sriperumpudur, offers postgraduation courses in five streams, including youth empowerment, gender studies, life skill education, career counselling and local governance. According to the affected students, they had quit their jobs to join the course following an announcement by the institute that dalit students would be exempted from paying the tuition fee. “During the last two semesters, the management did not ask us to pay the fees. Only after the new director assumed office, the institute has started demanding fees. If they had asked for fees earlier, we would not have joined the course. All of us are first generation graduates, hailing from very poor families. We have no choice but to discontinue the course,” said a student requesting anonymity. Pointing out that the institute’s brochure highlights the exemption of SC and ST students from paying the fee, another student rued that they could not apply for scholarship now as the time had lapsed. “The management has withheld the results for the third semester. We don’t know whether we have cleared all the papers. We are not in a position to apply for re-examination even if we have failed,” a student complained, adding that it was impossible to pay more than Rs 12,000 now. The students said the management had assured employment on completion of the course besides providing free education. Nearly 30 aggrieved students were vexed with the attitude of the management and are planning to complain to higher officials about the sudden change in policy. INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to zestmedia-dig...@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/ PARTICIPATE:- On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:- If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to zestcaste-subscr...@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/ Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: zestcaste-dig...@yahoogroups.com zestcaste-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: zestcaste-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[ZESTCaste] Shift The Target
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Shift-The-Target/articleshow/6017323.cms Shift The Target DIPANKAR GUPTA, Jun 7, 2010, 12.00am IST The best way to fight poverty is not to plan for the poor. The moment one singles them out for special services, absurdities, and worse, begin to abound. This is especially true when their numbers are large. Targeted policies work best when they are aimed at a small minority. It is not possible to have special programmes that affect anything between 50 and 70 per cent of the population. In which case, one might as well have a revolution! If that is a death wish no functioning republic would like to entertain, it should think differently about poverty. As poor-seeking programmes leave the better off untouched, they are always subnormal in their performance. The famished have neither voice nor energy to protest. Their bodies are just about stitched together. This lesson should have been apparent from the fact that schools, hospitals and food for the poor are always way below standard. Also, poor-oriented services are a natural magnet for graft and corruption. A study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research shows that though ration shops are strictly for Below Poverty Line families, not all their provisions go to the right address. A chunk regularly finds its way to more affluent homes, year after year. In fact, N C Saxena figures that 17.4 per cent of the richest quintile possesses ration cards. Yet, as the emphasis is always the targeted poor, we end up playing with numbers. If poverty estimates were like batting averages, it would roughly stand at 50 per cent. When Arjun Sengupta's committee is at the crease the poverty figure touches 77 per cent, but when the Planning Commission takes over it drops to roughly 29 per cent. Suresh Tendulkar took the score up to 41 per cent and that seemed very impressive till Saxena hit the average at 50 per cent. This would mean half the country's population cannot purchase the minimum recommended caloric requirements. Current consensus is around Saxena's finding for it is believed Tendulkar probably doctored the pitch. He pegged the minimum calorie intake at a level well below that posted by the Indian Council of Medical Research. But do we really need poverty statistics to tell us that India is poor? How does it help if Sengupta is a bigger hitter than Tendulkar or the Planning Commission? No matter which way you look at it, between 10 and 15 crore families can barely feed themselves. If Abhijit Sen is to be believed, about 80 per cent of rural India faces chronic starvation. With numbers as large as this, can there be special programmes for a targeted group? As these initiatives for the poor do not affect the well-to-do, the resources needed for them balk administrators. When the Tendulkar committee announced the poverty figure at 41.9 per cent, the Planning Commission and the ministries of finance and social welfare choked on their tables. So much money would now have to be put away for those other people who are not like us. The food subsidy would now cost Rs 47,917.62 crore and not 28,890.4 crore, as estimated earlier. That was still high, but the government could probably live with it. Naturally, when Saxena came up with 50 per cent, nobody in the administration wanted to hear about it. Such exercises with numbers don't really help when the targeted group is almost the entire society. In such conditions, there are only two options. Either we let revolutions step out of history books or we get real about poverty eradication through democratic means. If it is to be the latter, we can and should learn from prosperous states. Sweden, Denmark, Finland, even Spain and Singapore, did not begin rich, but became rich because they did not devise programmes for the poor. Their emphasis was to frame policies that affected the entire society, and not this or that section of it. One could object to this suggestion by hiding behind our awesome population figures. With a billion-plus on the census rolls, how could we possibly look like Europe? Are we then destined to remain poor? From Antyodaya to NREGA, our poverty rates keep spiking year after year. Isn't it time we changed tack and started to think the way prosperous societies do? All across the western hemisphere, one finds more things in common than differences. From public transportation to garbage disposal, health to piped water or electricity, the similarities between rich countries are striking. Children don't die of malnutrition, people don't turn up late for work. Banks may crash in Iceland, even volcanoes can go up in smoke, but babies will be born healthy and hospitals will still be clean. To look the way rich countries do, we must pay attention to their processes and systems: the results come later. Where there are no short cuts or package deals, poverty figures don't count. Affluent societies have become what they are because they did not
[ZESTCaste] Arrest of Dalit leader, wife as ‘Naxalites' condem ned
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article447550.ece Published: June 6, 2010 02:06 IST | Updated: June 6, 2010 04:37 IST AHMEDABAD, June 6, 2010 Arrest of Dalit leader, wife as ‘Naxalites' condemned Manas Dasgupta Several voluntary organisations and “concerned citizens” fighting for human rights have condemned the “indiscriminate” detention of some human right activists and trade union leaders, branding them as “Naxalites.” “It has become an obsession with the Gujarat government and its police to brand human right activists as Naxalites to stifle the voice of protest by the poor and the downtrodden. The civil society need to stand up against such undemocratic methods of the police to curb dissensions against the government administration,” Mr. Hiren Gandhi, director of “Darshan,” a voluntary organisation, noted human right activist and advocate Girish Patel, and several others said here on Tuesday. They were particularly protesting against the detention earlier this week of a Dalit leader, Ambubhai Vaghela Srinivas Sattayya Kurapati alias Kishore, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, but has made Gujarat his work place for the last eight years or so, and his young wife, Hansaben. “One can easily find holes in the police story of them being Naxalites because the police do not even know that the 30-year old Hansaben is a local Gujarati girl and does not hail from Andhra as claimed by the police. The only crime of Hansa, an employee of the well-known Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), was that she was a niece of Ambubhai,” Mr. Gandhi said. Ambubhai, who worked as a computer operator at Darshan for the last four years, had migrated to Surat from a remote Andhra village years ago and Mr. Gandhi said he had never seen him involved in any controversial activity during his four-year association with him. The police, however, raided the Darshan office in the wake of Ambubhai's arrest and took away a computer. Human rights activists said they knew Ambubhai very well; except raising the voice of protest against communal disturbances and fighting for the poor and the oppressed in Gomtipur and the neighbouring labour-dominated localities through street theatres and other cultural activities, Ambubhai had never participated in any violent activities. “The detention of the three in the name of Naxalite activities is the height of the police imagination and their oppressive measures against the human right activists,” Mr. Patel said. Citing the arrest of tribal activist Avinash Kulkarni in Dangs more than a month ago and is still languishing in jail despite protests by the civil society, the human right activists expressed the apprehension that after Darshan, the police planned to target all voluntary organisations working for human rights. They believed that the Narendra Modi administration was creating the bogey of “Maoism out of thin air” to divert attention from the CBI investigation into the Sohrabuddin and other fake encounters as well as the 2002 communal riot cases that were taking the inquiry on the doorstep of top political leaders in the State. Valjibhai Vaghela, a close associate of Ambubhai, said people in Gomtipur and its neighbourhood had decided to put up boards at all houses “proclaiming themselves as Naxalites and getting ready to be arrested to flood the jails” if this was the way the Gujarat police wanted to stifle the voices of the downtrodden. INFORMATION OVERLOAD? Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to zestmedia-dig...@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/ PARTICIPATE:- On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:- If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to zestcaste-subscr...@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/ Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: zestcaste-dig...@yahoogroups.com zestcaste-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: zestcaste-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
