How the Una protests reflect Ambedkar's great wisdom in the Constituent Assembly

The Dalit icon had said that continued marginalisation would lead to class struggle and noted that fraternity was integral to nation-building.

 

 Image credit:  Sam Panthaky/AFP

Madhav Chandavarkar

India celebrated its 70th Independence Day on August 15 against the backdrop of widespread agitations by Dalits over the increased boldness of cow protection vigilante groups in Gujarat.

But these protests are not just about gaurakshaks, they are another instance of a community rallying against discrimination in society. As one of the most recognisable Dalit icons, BR Ambedkar was aware of this and stated multiple times in the Constituent Assembly Debates that unless this disenfranchisement could be curbed, such sentiments would threaten the stability of the document with which he is most associated – India’s Constitution.

Some people may assume that as the “father of the Constitution”, Ambedkar is its sole author, but the document on the basis of which India is governed was actually the product of the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly comprised leading figures from the Congress party and members of other communities who sat and discussed the provisions of the Constitution, and were assisted in this capacity by various committees.

Though he had other roles, as the head of the drafting committee, Ambedkar was in charge of making sure that decisions made by the Assembly and the various committees were translated into the final draft.

Despite the hegemony of the Congress, the Assembly was remarkably diverse – the party actively sought out non-members (like Ambedkar) and allowed its own members to vote freely. Any given issue elicited a host of conflicting stands and the members would hammer out their differences until they came as close as possible to a unanimous decision.

The idea of India

Reading the proceedings of the Assembly (of which the Debates are just a part) thus provides a more textural understanding to the Constitution and acts as a window to the kind of India its founding fathers wished to create.

Ambedkar, unsurprisingly, is one of the prominent speakers in the Debates. One of his standout speeches was on the eve of the Constitution’s adoption. He spoke on the conditions that he felt would benecessary to ensure that the Constitution would last and that democracy in India would be achieved in reality.

Ambedkar felt that “democracy in India was only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic” and pointed out that ensuring political democracy would be insufficient without creating social democracy.

Granting political equality through voting, without simultaneously ensuring social and economic equality would be creating an unsustainable set of contradictions, he felt. This is why he included Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in the preamble and viewed them as inseparable.

What is paramount

Ambedkar valued fraternity as the most integral part of nation-building and felt that without it, liberty and equality “will be no deeper than coats of paint”. He dubbed castes as “anti-national” as they created social divisions in social life. He must have spoken from personal experience when he said that the historical monopoly of political power reduced many to “beasts of burden” and “beasts of prey” in a manner that sapped their “significance of life”.

He surmised that these subjugated peoples were “tired of being governed” and were impatient for self-governance. He felt that the longer they were denied this urge for self-actualisation, the more likely they were to resort to a class struggle. And in his view, nothing threatened the health of the Constitution more than societal divisions.

However, fraternity is extremely hard to create because unlike liberty and equality, it cannot be secured through laws. One way to achieve it could be to delve more into the founding of our nation as a society. This would mean school lessons that are not a drab timeline of events, well-researched biographies (not hagiographies) as well as plays, movies and stories.

Educating India

Knowledge of the founding of a nation is invariably accompanied by literacy in the core principles that the founders fought for and that the nation holds dear. Sadly, the average constitutional literacy of Indians is a fraction of that of citizens in other countries, such as the United States.

Most Americans are taught about the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights at an early age. Aside from giving the average American a working knowledge of the rights granted to him or her, this education has come to shape public discourse quite remarkably. Almost all civil-rights movements in the US, be it those for women, African-Americans, or more recently, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, draw their legitimacy from the language of the Declaration of Independence.

The remarkable response to the Broadway play Hamilton – a musical about Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the US – shows that the American polity recognises the worth of Constitutional history. However, in India these subjects have historically been handled dryly in Civics classes and a system of rote regurgitation prevents these lessons from having any permanency in children’s minds.

The long road to equality

The flogging of Dalit youth in Gujarat’s Una last month for skinning the carcass of a dead cow and the resultant protests show that India is still a long way off the vision of equality held by our founding fathers. But the longer that certain sections of the society – be it Dalits or Kashmiris – continue to feel marginalised, the greater the threat to the Constitution.

It is to their credit that the protestors in Gujarat followed another tenet of Ambedkar and used constitutional methods to express their dissent. But unless such sections of society feel more included, stability will be difficult to sustain – as Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

It is, therefore, time to inculcate the fraternity Ambedkar spoke of by rediscovering our constitutional history, both inside and outside schools. Not only would this help give Indians a better knowledge of their rights but also a sense of the idea of India. This could be the umbrella under which Indians discover a sense of fraternity – and if nothing else, create public literacy in the rich language of constitutionalism that people looking to reform India can capitalise on.

Madhav Chandavarkar is a research associate at Takshashila Institution, an independent, non-partisan think tank and school of public policy. 

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin

How the Una protests reflect Ambedkar's great wisdom in the Constituent Assembly

The Dalit icon had said that continued marginalisation would lead to class struggle and noted that fraternity was integral to nation-building.

 

 Image credit:  Sam Panthaky/AFP

Madhav Chandavarkar

India celebrated its 70th Independence Day on August 15 against the backdrop of widespread agitations by Dalits over the increased boldness of cow protection vigilante groups in Gujarat.

But these protests are not just about gaurakshaks, they are another instance of a community rallying against discrimination in society. As one of the most recognisable Dalit icons, BR Ambedkar was aware of this and stated multiple times in the Constituent Assembly Debates that unless this disenfranchisement could be curbed, such sentiments would threaten the stability of the document with which he is most associated – India’s Constitution.

Some people may assume that as the “father of the Constitution”, Ambedkar is its sole author, but the document on the basis of which India is governed was actually the product of the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly comprised leading figures from the Congress party and members of other communities who sat and discussed the provisions of the Constitution, and were assisted in this capacity by various committees.

Though he had other roles, as the head of the drafting committee, Ambedkar was in charge of making sure that decisions made by the Assembly and the various committees were translated into the final draft.

Despite the hegemony of the Congress, the Assembly was remarkably diverse – the party actively sought out non-members (like Ambedkar) and allowed its own members to vote freely. Any given issue elicited a host of conflicting stands and the members would hammer out their differences until they came as close as possible to a unanimous decision.

The idea of India

Reading the proceedings of the Assembly (of which the Debates are just a part) thus provides a more textural understanding to the Constitution and acts as a window to the kind of India its founding fathers wished to create.

Ambedkar, unsurprisingly, is one of the prominent speakers in the Debates. One of his standout speeches was on the eve of the Constitution’s adoption. He spoke on the conditions that he felt would benecessary to ensure that the Constitution would last and that democracy in India would be achieved in reality.

Ambedkar felt that “democracy in India was only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic” and pointed out that ensuring political democracy would be insufficient without creating social democracy.

Granting political equality through voting, without simultaneously ensuring social and economic equality would be creating an unsustainable set of contradictions, he felt. This is why he included Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in the preamble and viewed them as inseparable.

What is paramount

Ambedkar valued fraternity as the most integral part of nation-building and felt that without it, liberty and equality “will be no deeper than coats of paint”. He dubbed castes as “anti-national” as they created social divisions in social life. He must have spoken from personal experience when he said that the historical monopoly of political power reduced many to “beasts of burden” and “beasts of prey” in a manner that sapped their “significance of life”.

He surmised that these subjugated peoples were “tired of being governed” and were impatient for self-governance. He felt that the longer they were denied this urge for self-actualisation, the more likely they were to resort to a class struggle. And in his view, nothing threatened the health of the Constitution more than societal divisions.

However, fraternity is extremely hard to create because unlike liberty and equality, it cannot be secured through laws. One way to achieve it could be to delve more into the founding of our nation as a society. This would mean school lessons that are not a drab timeline of events, well-researched biographies (not hagiographies) as well as plays, movies and stories.

Educating India

Knowledge of the founding of a nation is invariably accompanied by literacy in the core principles that the founders fought for and that the nation holds dear. Sadly, the average constitutional literacy of Indians is a fraction of that of citizens in other countries, such as the United States.

Most Americans are taught about the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights at an early age. Aside from giving the average American a working knowledge of the rights granted to him or her, this education has come to shape public discourse quite remarkably. Almost all civil-rights movements in the US, be it those for women, African-Americans, or more recently, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, draw their legitimacy from the language of the Declaration of Independence.

The remarkable response to the Broadway play Hamilton – a musical about Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the US – shows that the American polity recognises the worth of Constitutional history. However, in India these subjects have historically been handled dryly in Civics classes and a system of rote regurgitation prevents these lessons from having any permanency in children’s minds.

The long road to equality

The flogging of Dalit youth in Gujarat’s Una last month for skinning the carcass of a dead cow and the resultant protests show that India is still a long way off the vision of equality held by our founding fathers. But the longer that certain sections of the society – be it Dalits or Kashmiris – continue to feel marginalised, the greater the threat to the Constitution.

It is to their credit that the protestors in Gujarat followed another tenet of Ambedkar and used constitutional methods to express their dissent. But unless such sections of society feel more included, stability will be difficult to sustain – as Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

It is, therefore, time to inculcate the fraternity Ambedkar spoke of by rediscovering our constitutional history, both inside and outside schools. Not only would this help give Indians a better knowledge of their rights but also a sense of the idea of India. This could be the umbrella under which Indians discover a sense of fraternity – and if nothing else, create public literacy in the rich language of constitutionalism that people looking to reform India can capitalise on.

Madhav Chandavarkar is a research associate at Takshashila Institution, an independent, non-partisan think tank and school of public policy. 

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin

Ending the impasse

Sriram Panchu  August 22, 2016

Illustration: Deepak Harichandan

The judiciary-government face-off cannot go on indefinitely. The Supreme Court and the executive need to finalise the Memorandum of Procedure for appointment of judges

The tension between the judiciary and the government on the appointment of judges to the High Courts and Supreme Court seems to be intensifying. The two have been locked into conflict on this issue for the last 16 months. Meanwhile, 475 seats in the High Courts remain unoccupied, a staggering and unprecedented number. The damage to an already overloaded judicial system is beyond calculation. Our higher judiciary at the State level struggles to keep its head above water, managing against odds to keep the system going, but its hopes of an efficient and responsive justice delivery system have receded considerably.

The collegium debate

Supreme Court judgments in 1993 and 1998 gave rise to the collegium of the five senior-most Supreme Court judges, who exercised the supreme power of appointment to the judicial ranks. The judgments provided for a consultative process between the executive and judiciary, and for the government to return for reconsideration a name sent by the collegium. However, the appointment had to be made if the collegium reiterated its view. Essentially, the court had the last word; this was the cardinal concept laid down. The methodology for consultation was contained in a Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) formulated in 1999.

In April last year, the government brought in the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act, after securing an unanimous vote for its passage in Parliament and some State Assemblies. This was widely seen, in the language of Star Wars, as the empire striking back, an attempt to break the judiciary’s monopoly by placing the Law Minister and two “eminent persons” (in whose choice the judiciary had a minority voice) at the deciding table, along with the Chief Justice of India and his two senior-most colleagues. Predictably, the NJAC was challenged. Several appointments were in the pipeline, but the court declined to direct these to be processed for appointment.

In October 2015, a five-judge Bench of the court held the NJAC to be unconstitutional, a decision that caused heartburn to the entire political class, and a severe loss of face for the government. It was clear that it would only be a matter of time before another attempt was made to undermine the supremacy of the collegium. That opportunity presented itself sooner than later. Following its judgment, the court, admitting that the existing collegium system had serious flaws, called for suggestions to improve it. Responses came in thick and fast. The court could itself have proceeded to reformulate the MoP, and in retrospect, it would have been wiser for it so to do. Instead it heeded the request of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi that the government should be permitted to do this exercise. Perhaps the judges felt that this would compensate for having excluded the government from the deciding table, and that if the government drafted the revised MoP it would be co-opted into acceptance of the judgment. However, in its Order dated December 16, 2015 permitting the government to formulate a revised MoP, the court was careful to mention the points that needed to be addressed, namely eligibility criteria, measures for transparency, establishment of a Secretariat, and a complaints mechanism. It also specified that this MoP was for the faithful implementation of its decisions in the earlier cases.

The MoP runs into a few pages, and all it needed were insertions to cover the above points. This exercise should have taken a couple of weeks. However, it is eight months now and the document is far from finalised. It appears that the logjam is over the government’s assertion that if it rejects a candidate on the ground of national security or public interest, then such rejection is binding on the court. In simple terms, the last word would belong to the executive whenever this reason is invoked. This is where the court is unwilling to relent, since it goes against the grain of its judgments establishing the collegium.

The government’s position

An observer can be forgiven for thinking that the Arab and the camel syndrome is playing out here. The government sought a limited role as the draftsman of the MoP, and then utilised this slender opening to prise open the door, seat itself at the table, and exclude the judiciary by invoking the mantra of national security or public interest. It may be noted that the existing MoP does not deal with the “last word” issue, that being contained in the judgment itself; the government is therefore out of bounds in its current attempt. It is also somewhat strange that the government positions itself as the protector of national security and public interest, as if the court will insist on a name going through where these are threatened.

This hiatus cannot go on indefinitely. Appeals, remonstrations and rebukes from the Chief Justice of India do not seem to have the desired effect. It looks as though apart from the court, the other branches do not view the deterioration of the justice system as a pressing issue. Perhaps the time has come to face the problem squarely, and to adopt a more direct method of engaging for resolution. The Attorney General could take the lead in meeting both sides, formulating and reformulating proposals. Else, the Law Minister, with necessary authority, could engage with the judges. Another option is for the Prime Minister to take the lead to invite the Chief Justice and senior judges for a discussion. And let us not rule out the ultimate possibility of the President being just that bit proactive to bring the heads of the two institutions together. These above methods may serve to end the impasse and get matters resolved. If these are not tried, or are unsuccessful, the Supreme Court should consider recalling its order permitting the government to draft the revised MoP, and to undertake the task itself. That exercise should take a week at the most.

Sriram Panchu is a Senior Advocate at the Madras High Court. Email: srirampanchu@gmail.com

Source: thehindu

The Importance Of Cheering For Caster Semenya

Lindsay Gibbs

Sports Reporter at ThinkProgress. Contact me: lgibbs@thinkprogress.org.

South Africa’s Caster Semenya reacts after finishing in second place in the women’s 800-meters final at the 2012 Summer Olympics, London. CREDIT: LEE JIN-MAN, AP

You might not know the name Caster Semenya, but it’s likely you’ve heard her story.

When she was only 18 years old, the South African runner won gold at the 2009 world championships in the 800 meters. She went on to win the silver medal at the London Olympics, and is the overwhelming favorite in Rio.

But, unlike her record-setting peers on the track, Semenya isn’t best known for her speed.

Semenya is allegedly intersex. Ever since three hours before her world championship race in 2009 — when news unacceptably leaked that the International Association of Athletics Foundation (IAAF) was going to subject her to a gender test — she has been more famous for her naturally-occurring testosterone levels than her talent.

“God made me the way I am and I accept myself.”

Over the last seven years, the narrative surrounding Semenya has taken on a life of its own. She’s no longer viewed as a human being; she’s merely a concept to debate. While others get fawning Sports Illustrated covers when they dominate their sports, Semenya gets ridiculed and questioned, poked and prodded.

When the controversy over her gender erupted, it took Semenya and those close to her by surprise.
 

According to the Guardian, at the world championships, she “was so overwhelmed by the global controversy that she had to be persuaded to accept her gold medal.”

Still, through it all, Semenya just keeps running, and refuses to apologize for the body she was given.

“God made me the way I am and I accept myself,” she said back in 2009, when intimate details about her body first became a talking point for pundits.

“I can’t stop running because of people,” Semenya said to the BBC last year, as reported by ESPN. “If you have a problem with it, come straight to me and tell me. I cannot stop because people say no she looks like a man this and that. It’s their problem, not mine.”

That attitude in itself is worth celebrating.

South Africa’s Caster Semenya celebrates winning silver in the Women’s 800m final at the 2011 World Athletics Championships in South Korea. CREDIT: LEE JIN-MAN, AP

Now, before we continue, let’s get a few of the facts straight.

The IAAF cleared Semenya to compete in 2010, and the following year, it implemented new regulations for women with hyperandrogenism, or elevated testosterone levels. The purpose of the new rule was to maintain the division between men’s and women’s sports, based on the belief that the primary reason that elite male athletes are better than elite female athletes is testosterone.

If women tested had testosterone levels higher than the new rules permitted, they had to artificially lower them through medication or invasive surgery in order to keep competing against other women.

 

Thus, Semenya’s presence in Rio is completely by the rules. Furthermore, it’s crucial to note that she has never been suspected of doping or cheating in any way; her condition has never been officially confirmed or detailed; and there is no definitive proof that she took anything to lower her testosterone levels between 2011 and 2015 in order to comply with IAAF regulations.

However, from 2010 to 2015, most of Semenya’s times in the 800m were great but not other-worldly, and this year, she is running even faster than she did in 2009. While there are multiple explanations for her career renaissance — she just started to work with a new coach; she is finally healthy after dealing with injuries for a few years; she is taking her fitness and training more seriously than she did earlier in her career— many assume it is because she no longer has to artificially suppress her testosterone levels.

In the past, the IAAF has specifically documented that they single out female athletes who “display masculine traits” for testosterone tests.

So how did we get here, to the place where a quiet 25-year-old from a small village in South Africa is the poster child for gender limits in sport?

Well, back in 2009, IAAF officials said they were forced to gender test Semenya because her time in the 800m dropped seven seconds in less than nine months and they had to make sure she didn’t have an “unfair advantage.” But that was not the sole reason.

“Just look at her,” Russian Mariya Savinova, who finished fifth in the 2009 world championship, told reporters after the race. (If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Savinova just happens to be known as “the face of Russia’s doping scandal.”)

Unlike drug tests, gender tests (or testosterone tests, if you will) are not carried out at random. And Semenya happens to be tall, muscular, flat-chested, and black. This is not a coincidence. According to Katrina Karkazis, a senior research scholar at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, in the past, IAAF specifically singled out female athletes who “display masculine traits” for testosterone tests, while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has encouraged its national charters to “actively investigate” any “perceived deviation” in gender.

In practice, gender testing is far more about policing women’s bodies than protecting women’s sports.

Dutee Chand CREDIT: RAFIQ MAQBOOL, AP

Testosterone tests tend to target women who don’t fit into the ideal Western standards of what a woman should look like — delicate and overtly feminine, white and lithe. This includes women like Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter who was selected for gender testing after her success at the 2012 under-18 national championships and 2013 Asian Championships.

The tests Chand was forced to undergo — without explanation, mind you — were extremely invasive. As reported by the New York Times, it involved an MRI and a gynecological exam that included “measuring and palpating the clitoris, vagina and labia, as well as evaluating breast size and pubic hair scored on an illustrated five-grade scale.”

She was subsequently banned from competition, and wasn’t given a reason until she found out through the media that she produced more testosterone than most women.

To echo Jessica Luther of Excelle Sports, “ How is this in any way okay? How can we care more about some old racist, transphobic, and sexist imperial idea of ‘woman’ than about the lives of these actual women?”

But instead of undergoing an operation like four elite athletes from “rural or mountainous regions of developing countries” were allegedly forced to undergo before the London games, or taking medication to alter her body’s natural chemistry, Chand decided to fight the ruling.

Thanks to Chand’s legal challenge, the CAS overturned the hypoandrogenism regulations last year. And this year, Chand made it all the way to Rio, with her natural body in tact.

But, significantly, Chand did not win the gold medal in her 100m Olympic race this week. In fact, she didn’t even advance to the semifinals, let alone the final. She finished seventh out of eight in her heat, with a time of 11.68 seconds.

Her naturally elevated testosterone levels did not launch her directly to the top of the podium, or automatically separate her from the rest of the field. Among other athletes on the Olympic stage, she was simply one of the many elites watching the handful of exceptionals breeze past them.

Chand still made the most of her trip to Rio, though, by meeting one of her idols.

This photo is everything. Tears of joy! Dutee and Caster! pic.twitter.com/qPamidKnJa

— Katrina Karkazis (@Karkazis) August 15, 2016

You’d think that Chand’s rather mortal performance would put this argument over elevated T levels into perspective. Of course, it hasn’t.

There is literally a sense of trepidation in the air ahead of Semenya’s 800m final on Saturday. Everyone is already discussing what it will mean if Semenya wins, and, heaven forbid, beats the world record time of 1:53.28. (Which at 33 years old is the longest-standing record in track and field.)

The Associated Press calls Semenya as a “dilemma.” Denise Lewis wrote in wrote in Telegraph Sport that Semenya’s inclusion is “not a healthy situation for the sport.” Tom Fordyce of the BBC wrote if Semenya breaks the world record in Rio, it could spell the end of her career because of the attention it would bring to her condition.

And Paula Radcliffe, a ridiculously dominant marathon runner in her time who currently holds the world record in the sport, says Semenya is an affront to the entire competition.

“When we talk about it in terms of fully expecting no other result than Caster Semenya to win that 800m, then it’s no longer sport,” Radcliffe told the BBC.

Semenya should not be seen as a threat; she should be seen as a treat.

But all of this pearl-clutching and fear-mongering is as absurd as it is demeaning.

After all, sports are supposed to reward freak-of-nature athletes. Looking across the Olympic games, it’s clear that there is no one “right way” to have an Olympic body, especially for women. There are super skinny and flexible synchronized swimmers, short gymnasts, plus-size weight lifters, and abnormally tall basketball players. Every elite athlete has some sort of physical advantage they were born with.

Semenya runs in her 800m preliminary heat in Rio on Wednesday. CREDIT: MARTIN MEISSNER, AP

And the most dominant athletes? They really have the physical gifts. Michael Phelps has feet and hands that are practically fins. Usain Bolt is much taller than most sprinters. Simone Biles is even shorter and more muscular than the majority of the gymnastics field.

These stars have found ways to maximize the gifts they were given and take their sports to the next level. Their dominance isn’t seen as boring; it’s seen as extraordinary. How is what Semenya is doing any different? The concept of a level playing field has always been a myth. From bodies to coaches, economics to nationality, a lot of luck and chance goes into who turns into an Olympic athlete and who doesn’t.

For that reason, Semenya should not be seen as a threat; she should be seen as a treat. After all, a woman running in the body she was born with and setting records is not an affront to the sanctity of sport. It is the entire purpose of sport. We should be marveling at it.

The public flogging Semenya has endured would have broken most people. Her trip to the world championships in Berlin was only her second trip away from home, and it ended with bookmakers offering odds on her gender. Shy and private, she’s tried to stay away from the spotlight that’s followed her over the last decade, but she’s never given up her love for and dedication to her sport.

“Running is what I will always do,” Semenya said.

“Even if, maybe, the authorities could have stopped me from running in 2009, they could not have stopped me in the fields. I would have carried on with my running, it doesn’t matter. When I run I feel free, my mind is free.”

There are two more chances to see Semenya run in Rio: the 800m semifinals on Thursday night and the final on Saturday night. Cherish it, because her races are truly something special — not because of her gender, because of her greatness.

Source: thinkprogress

PV Sindhu’s caste highly searched on Google, reveals ingrained biases of India

Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Haryana are the top three states where the phrase was searched for.

Written by Tarishi Verma | New Delhi | Published:August 20, 2016 3:38 pm

The phrase ‘pv sindhu caste’ promptly appears as a search suggestion as soon as one types PV Sindhu in the Google search bar. (Source: PTI)

As PV Sindhu prepared to take on world number one Carolina Marin in the gold medal match of women’s Badminton singles at Rio Olympics, Indians poured in wishes for her in thousands. There was, however, a completely different concern that plagued the people of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana which likely prompted a Google search for Sindhu’s caste.

The Hindu, on Saturday, reported that both states claimed Sindhu was their daughter or ‘ammayi’. The paper went on to say that people looked up her caste also because her parents had a love marriage, a situation where caste differences are often ignored.

The phrase ‘pv sindhu caste’ promptly appears as a search suggestion as soon as one types PV Sindhu in the Google search bar. Digging deeper through Google Trends, I found that ‘pv sindhu caste’ was a highly-searched term, peaking on August 20, 2016, after she won the silver medal in the finals. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Haryana are the top three states where the phrase was searched for.

Sindhu was not the only target of this bias. The phrase ‘Sakshi Malik caste’ was also a highly searched term on the day of Malik’s victory and is still an active search term, with the maximum searches from Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Related queries are, Google tells me, ‘pv sindhu caste’, ‘malik caste,’ ‘pusarala caste’ and so on.

The spike of these search terms make the question of caste extremely relevant, quite opposite to what one would like to believe. The manifestations of our biases can be seen on a daily basis when we give the sweeper an exact change for his salary so we don’t have to take the money they are carrying or when we don’t want to use an elevator when a housemaid is travelling in it.

It doesn’t quite come as a surprise then that achievements come only after caste is established, because superiority of one’s caste is over and above skill, years of hard-work and years of dedication.

For both Sindhu and Sakshi, the laurels that they brought to the country by achieving first-time feats at a very young age at an international platform are sub-par until their caste identities are established. These women faced the world’s best in their respective games and emerged victorious. But in a country where undercurrents of such discrimination are prevalent, achievements are deemed second to a caste identity. This in turn is believed to bring glory to the particular caste, elevating their status in its abject hierarchy.

But we don’t need the bigger incidents to be aware of this glorious bias. On Friday, a Twitter handle meant to ask for blood groups for patients put this out: “#Hyderabad ONLY Kamma Caste Donors, O+ ve blood needed at Max Cure Hospital. 3 yr old CHILD. Pls call 8063266677. Aug 19. Via ShekarNews”. While the handle apologised later, it does serve to show how matters of life and death can be put at stake because of a socially constructed menace.

For both Sindhu and Malik, their struggles are evident in the fantastic games they play. To reduce them to their caste identities is debilitating their life’s resolve, their perseverance and everything that they put in to reach that stage which got them accolades from the country and the world.

© The Indian Express Online Media Pvt Ltd

Source: indianexpress

The Hole in Obama’s Legacy

 By Eric Alterman , August 12, 2016

Before becoming President, Barack Obama raised a question he hasn’t come close to answering: What to say to the white working-class people whose way of life was being destroyed? 
Photograph by STEFAN ZAKLIN / EPA / Redux   

n the spring of 2005, I received an invitation to a small dinner in Washington, D.C., with the new junior senator from Illinois. The other invitees all turned out to be leaders of national progressive organizations. We introduced ourselves, and John Podesta—then the president of the Center for American Progress, now Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief—thanked Barack Obama, on the group’s behalf, for an invitation to a meal that was not accompanied by a demand for at least a thousand-dollar donation. We all chuckled, in those innocent, pre-Citizens United days, about our corrupt electoral system.

Obama, who had entered the Senate with sky-high expectations, began his brief remarks by noting that, at his very first press conference, he had been asked to describe his legacy. Then he got serious. He talked about campaign stops that he made in former factory towns and manufacturing centers across Illinois. These were places that, until recently, had kept generations of working-class men gainfully employed. He worried that he had nothing to say to them that would be both honest and hopeful. He had gathered us, he explained, to find out if the members of the progressive community had some good ideas to help these people that he might be able to champion as senator. He was not saying that he considered himself to be on our team. Rather, he was looking for a mutually beneficial relationship.

No doubt many sensible ideas were proposed by the wonks present. Perhaps some of them have even been implemented; my memory fails on these details. I can say with some certainty, however, that no one present was able to offer the kind of overarching political framework that could be deployed to counter the conservative mantra of small government, low taxes, and reduced regulation. What I do remember—indeed, what I will never forget—is the feeling of both awe and relief at meeting a successful national politician who was so damn normal. Obama happened to be seated next to me, and our talk felt not in the least forced or staged, as it had with virtually every other politician to whom I had ever spoken in semi-private. The authenticity he communicated struck me as even more impressive when I considered the fact that he was, as we all knew, just about the only glimmer of hope offered to liberals in the aftermath of George W. Bush’s 2004 victory. I left the dinner on a kind of high. I recall hoping that my daughter, who was then seven years old, might one day be able to vote for this amazing man to be President, once the country got over itself regarding race.

You know the rest. Aside from daily e-mails asking for money, I never heard from Obama again, but he did somehow win two Presidential contests. (My daughter, now eighteen, will instead get to cast her first vote for the woman we all expected to be the nominee in 2008.) Obama’s two terms have been a disappointment in many respects—mostly growing out of his need to bow to the financial forces that ever more tightly control our electoral system. Even so, his Presidency looks to have been the most consequential for progressives since Franklin Roosevelt was in office; Obama not only saved the economy in 2009 but also moved the country toward universal health care, tamed some financial market abuses, and significantly improved America’s standing on the global stage. That he has done this without starting any wars or creating any major scandals, and in the face of ridiculous Republican recalcitrance, while remaining basically the same cool dude I met eleven years ago—and a great dad—in the bargain, leaves me breathless with admiration.

And yet Obama never even came close to solving the problem he raised at that dinner: What to say to the white working-class people whose way of life was being destroyed by the vagaries of global capitalism coupled with a political system that responded first and foremost to the wealthy? This, too, is part of his legacy. And it has helped to give rise to a billionaire demagogue, who has answered Obama’s question with a combination of racism, xenophobia, false promises, and threats of violent reprisals.

Most progressives I know would say that Obama barely even tried to fix the problem he raised that night. By picking an economic team from the pro-corporate wing of the Democratic Party, embracing an insufficiently robust stimulus package in a failed attempt to secure Republican support, and then pivoting too quickly to deep deficit reduction, he insured that those left behind in the wake of the financial crisis would stay behind (if not quite as far behind as they were at its outset). And, given his support for the corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, one can only conclude that he believes in this course—something few people understood when we elected him. In this respect, the seeds of dissent and dissatisfaction were sown at the moment of his inauguration.

Of course, Donald Trump’s success is not Obama’s fault, as some empty-headed, allegedly “evenhanded” pundits would have it. Republican leaders, egged on by Fox News and talk radio, encouraged the bigoted language that has defined Trump’s campaign by questioning Obama’s religion, birthplace, patriotism, and legitimacy from day one. They certainly deserve to see their party taken away from them. The journalists who looked the other way as Republican spokespeople, in the Party leadership and the media, exploited racial hatred and anti-immigrant fervor deserve a significant share of the blame as well.

But the fact remains that this year’s election hangs on the question of whether enough members of the white working class can see past the hatred and blame that Trump is stoking. Trump’s egregious flaws as a candidate might turn out to be our saving grace. The grievances that drove his success, however, are not going anywhere. Even if Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine’s convenient flip on the Trans-Pacific Partnership sticks, they will still be, as Obama was, answerable to a political system that puts campaign contributors far ahead of ordinary voters. More than merely winning the 2016 Presidential election, this will be the Democrats’ greatest challenge—assuming that Trump returns to a comparatively private life, and our political system to the level of dysfunction and distrust we have all come to take for granted.

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College, a media columnist for The Nation, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Source: newyorker

Gujarat: Forced out, these Dalits are refugees 15 km from home

On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that it was “our duty to protect and respect the poor and Dalit people of our country”. For the Dalit families of Sodapur, these words come as cold comfort.

Written by Leena Misra | Sodapur | Updated: August 10, 2016 7:50 am

The Dalits who have relocated to Sodapur. (Express Photo)

Priyanka Meghwa was in Class X when she was forced to give up school in her village in Ghada. At her new home 15 km away, with nothing much to do, the 15-year-old spends time watching television. Ghar Ki Lakshmi Betiyaan, a soap celebrating daughters, and Sapne Suhane Ladakpan Ke are her favourite shows, she says.

Two years ago, Priyanka’s family was among the 27 Dalit families who were forced to move to Sodapur from Ghada, both villages in the Deesa taluka of Banaskantha, the potato capital of Gujarat. All of them victims of untouchability, now refugees in their own state, which saw Dalit anger boiling over last month following the public flogging in Una of youths for skinning dead cattle.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that it was “our duty to protect and respect the poor and Dalit people of our country”. For the Dalit families of Sodapur, these words come as cold comfort.

At the entrance to Deesa, near the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) building, a huge potato installation welcomes you. Deesa is also where Canadian food giant McCain sources its potatoes from. Large potato cold storages dot the way to Sodapur. On one side of the road that cuts through the village, stand rows of shacks covered with asbestos and lined with tarpaulin. This is the home of the Dalits from Ghada. Across the road, lives the rest of the village.

The practice of “extreme untouchability”, the Dalits claim, led to the murder of one of them nine years ago, forcing them to first sit in protest outside the local revenue official’s office for five years after which they came to Sodapur, leaving behind 100 bighas of land where they grew potatoes, castor, wheat, groundnut, bajra and rapeseed.

Priyanka’s sister Savita, 20, is married in Dhaneri village, which is a “happier village”, but says this is “home”, where her parents and siblings live.

Savita came home for her delivery and a week ago, gave birth to a daughter. The newborn lies on a charpoy, wrapped in a white cloth, flies hovering over. “I have to keep it completely wrapped even in this hot weather,” she says. The buffalo tied outside belongs to her grandmother Puriben who brought it from her brother’s house to source milk for Savita.

“All the girls gave up studying when we left Ghada. What do we do? Here, we have to take them across the busy road and fetch them back, which is not possible,” says Savita.

An orange cycle stands in the corner against a wall, one of the government freebies handed out to Savita’s brother, who freelances as a mason, at a Garib Kalyan Mela.

Even the boys gave up school. Dashrath, 18, dropped out in Class V, and is now a labourer, as his younger brother who dropped out in Class VII. “They didn’t let us sit together. They never played with us,” says Dashrath, about his upper-caste “darbar” (OBC) classmates in Ghada.

Talbiben weeps at the mention of Ramesh, her eldest son among five children. Her husband Devjibhai is too traumatised to put together the story of what happened.

Their 22-year-old son was “fairly educated” and worked as an insurance agent. But he had “dared” to enter a temple nine years ago, “breaking the rules” of Ghada. And paid for it. “They ran a tractor over him out of revenge. The police were also from their community and did not heed our pleas to consider it murder,” alleges Devjibhai.

Bhurabhai Parmar, the leader of this Dalit group, says, “We protested outside the mamlatdar’s office for five years. Finally, the mamlatdar and other government officials came to escort us here two years ago, but have not yet built us homes.”

Babarsinh Vaghela, sarpanch of Ghada at the time the Dalit families left, denies allegations of discrimination and describes Ramesh’s death as an accident.

“There was an accident in which the boy died. We tried hard to strike a compromise between the Dalits and the upper castes but they just did not listen. Finally, after the 12th-day ceremony of Ramesh’s death, they left the village,” he says.

“There is no untouchability in our village,” says Vaghela, who was the sarpanch till 2010.

But the Dalits allege that discrimination hit them every minute back in Ghada. “We could not go with uncovered heads before upper castes, could not wear pants, footwear or any gold. There were two buses to Deesa, at 9 am and 12 noon, from our village. If we got a seat and a darbar got on board in the packed bus, we had to vacate,” says Bhurabhai.

They had to send separate vessels for their children to have midday meals. “Our children were made to sit separately in the anganwadi, too,” he says.

The worst was when an upper-caste death occurred. “We would have to carry the body, collect the firewood and do all the rituals for 12 days for free. Ramesh opposed all these discriminatory practices. His murder was the last straw that provoked us to leave,” says Bhurabhai.

The few Ghada children who go to school in Sodapur are happier. Ashwin, who studies at the Bhakotar primary school in Class VIII, says everyone eats and studies together.

The Ghada Dalits are also grateful to the sarpanch of Sodapur, Amarsinh Dansinh Rajput, who got a resolution passed in the gram panchayat to let them stay.

“But only I know what I went through to get this done,” says Rajput, from the only Rajput family in Sodapur which has a large population of Brahmins, Patels and other OBCs.

“I needed five signatures in the sabha of nine members. I cajoled and convinced them to endorse it. But later, I got booked in two criminal cases and went to jail for 10 days. In one case, a Patel accused me of loot and I paid Rs 2.65 lakh for a compromise,” claims Rajput.

He continues to stand by the Dalits, who now total 35 families in this village. “There was a police inspector here who was a friend and he asked me if I could give some land to the Ghada Dalits and I agreed. I allotted them two bighas,” says Rajput.

All of the Sodapur resettlers have EPIC cards and all of them are registered under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) since 2014, but they say none of them have got any work or wages under it. “It is all on paper. We work as labourers — masons or farmers,” says Bhurabhai.

They are upset with the government for not building them homes, and point to half-built houses on one side of the land assigned to them. “They gave us only Rs 45,000 per home of which we spent Rs 10,000 on the landfill itself,” says Kaliben, one of the Dalits who moved to Sodapur.

Banaskantha collector Jenu Devan says, “They were given homes under the Dr Ambedkar Awas Yojana covering two installments, one of which was given. They will get the rest of the installment only after completion of their homes. This is as per the guidelines of the scheme.”

According to Devan, since the exodus was the result of an “accident” to Ramesh, it was not considered as “migration”. Migration is declared by the state government when conditions in the native place are not conducive to return and there is no scope of compromise with the upper castes.

While Devan says that one of the Dalit families returned to Ghada, sarpanch Vaghela claims that five families have come back from Sodapur.

Kaliben, meanwhile, settles down with three other women to mourn the drowning of her infant grandson in a water tank, a month ago. Their wails, and the mooing of the buffalo, rise over the everyday sounds in the basti.

Source: indianexpress

Mind the gap: Why the decline of Harappan civilisation sent India's sewage system down the drain

Anything that moves

How did a country home to the world's oldest sophisticated toilets became the ground for Bezwada Wilson's battle against manual scavenging?

Image credit:  Haseeb Ur Rehman Malik/via Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday · 08:00 am 

Girish Shahane

Bezwada Wilson richly deserves the Ramon Magsaysay Award, announced on July 27, for his efforts to eliminate the removal of human excrement by hand, mostly by workers belonging to the Dalit caste.

We call the practice manual scavenging, which is rather inexplicable because scavengers rescue things that have been discarded but retain some use or resale value – and fecal sludge extracted from dry latrines possesses neither of those qualities.

It is bitterly ironic that the land where sophisticated toilets were believed to have been first invented and used is also the place where the most primitive means of defecation and waste disposal are most prevalent in the 21st Century.

Past perfect?

The sewage systems of Indus Valley cities are famous for good reason – nothing comparable has been discovered in Mesopotamia or Egypt. About 4,500 years ago, most Harappan homes were equipped with toilets that connected to waterproof drains, which conveyed waste water to cesspits or beyond city limits.

The cesspits needed to be cleaned regularly, as did the sewers, but that was a job entrusted to teams of labourers working in tandem.

Each city was a comprehensive unit laid out in a precise grid, administered by one authority overseeing the functioning of public utilities in a manner not dissimilar to modern metropolises.

One can state this with some confidence despite having no access to any records kept by the Harappan people, for the design of towns such as Harappa, Dholavira and Mohenjo-daro tell a detailed story.

Dholavira, Mohenjo-daro and habitations across the region were laid out in uniform grids, built using baked bricks of identical size and shape, and containing similarly sophisticated drainage systems. The Indus Valley civilisation declined for reasons that are not fully apparent but probably involved a combination of climate change, chronic drought and broken trade links.

Rising from the ruins

There is a yawning temporal and geographical gap between the long slide of Harappa, which lasts for 500 years from around 1800 BCE, and the rise of the kingdoms and cities of the Indo-Gangetic plain circa 600 BCE.

Strangely, this period of urban decline is also one of tremendous religious and philosophical development. Even as great cities crumbled and died and settlements shrank to the size of villages, the literary output of the subcontinent flourished, culminating in the mature Hindu, Buddhist and Jain philosophical texts and treatises that continue to fascinate us today.

It is unusual, if not unique, for degeneration and blossoming to go hand-in-hand in this fashion. Alongside the efflorescence of spiritual and ritual texts, a crucial technological step is achieved – the harnessing of iron, resulting in the start of what has come to be known as the Iron Age.

While vegetation around the Indus valley was sparse, the plains of North India were now covered with thick jungle that only a combination of iron and fire could render fit for agriculture. The new towns that were built on cleared forest land looked very different from those to the West that preceded them by over a millennium.

Homes and city walls were built of wood rather than brick, streets were rather haphazard instead of being organised in a strict grid, with no discernable plan encompassing an entire settlement.

Sewage canals with carefully calculated gradients running the length of breadth of the city were absent. Instead of being transported away by gravity, waste collected in pots dug into the ground. Vertical disposal had replaced horizontal. It required no complex planning, investment or teamwork to run this individualised system – just people tasked with cleaning out excrement.

Flushed away

A four-fold hierarchy determined the shape of the new urban agglomerations. People of the same group clustered together, wanting little to do with others. There was no question of a single overarching plan encompassing the entire settlement.

Ultimately, those who cleaned out the waste and got rid of bodies of humans and carcasses of dead cows, as well as a few others whose work was considered unclean, were excluded completely from the city’s ambit. In the greatest indignity ever invented for a group of humans by another, their touch, or even their presence was deemed to pollute the so-called high-born.

And that’s the India that is all too familiar to us even today, the India that Wilson and his ilk are trying to make slightly less inhumane.

Back to the future

What is the connection, if any, between the cities of the Indus Valley, whose careful planning we are so far from being able to emulate, and the easily recognisable India of profound philosophical speculations and dreadful social divisions first discerned in the Indo-Gangetic plain some 2,600 years ago?

Was it the same people, retaining the same belief systems, who eventually recovered from the desertification of their erstwhile habitat and established new centres in the East? Or did the system of hereditary social stratification, of caste, enter the equation in the millennium between decline and rise, along with new myths and new gods?

I’ve hinted where I stand in what has become a heated debate about the origins of Indian and Hindu beliefs. I believe that if Wilson could be placed in a time machine and transported to Lothal 4,500 years ago, he would find no reason to be an activist of the kind he is, for he would encounter a very different civilisation based on a very different set of values.

Next week, I will explain why I think so.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin