Palash Speaks

U.S. Counterterrorism Policy and Indo US Nuke Deal
Pentagon Ready to Attack Pakistan with Indian Cooperation
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: alashchandrabiswas@gmail.com">palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
Pentagon has already scripted the Counterterrorism, War against Terrorism to escalate to Indian Subcontinent. US attack on Pakistan is most imminent after US has got full control over Bangladesh. The bottleneck issue of US INdo NUke deal remains unsolved until INdia is ready to launch a South Asian NATO led by US strike Power. Entire India has been already captured by MNCs and US interests have to be defaended. Americanisation of polity, socity is economy already done. White house wants a formal mechanism with Hindu Brahmincal India to make the planet its Colony. Pakistan has to be attacked with Indian cooperation!Misinformation machin is on run and it is pre Gulf War campaign once again!
Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday that negotiations pertaining to the formalisation of the July 18, 2005 US-India civil nuclear copperation agreement were in the last stages, and he was hopeful about a positive outcome.Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a book release, Dr. Singh said: 'We are in the last leg of negotiations."Asked when he expected the deal to be finalised, the Prime Minister replied: "I can't say".On the other hand,ruling out imposition of Emergency to deal with a spate of bombings in Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday, however, made a case for his continuation as both President and Army Chief saying that a "civilian set-up" alone cannot control the backlash of the military crackdown on the Lal Masjid.Musharraf, during an interaction with editors of the local media organisations in Rawalpindi, said that Pakistan was in "direct confrontation with the extremist forces."His remarks came after 34 people, including 17 soldiers, were killed in fierce separate clashes with pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan's restive tribal region on Wednesday.
"I must emphasise that no emergency is being imposed," Musharraf said during the interaction with editors. "There would be no imposition of emergency," he was quoted as saying by the state-run APP news agency.
At the same time, Musharraf also said that the violent situation arising out of the recent crackdown on the pro-Taliban Lal Masjid cannot be dealt with by a civilian set-up alone as unity of command was required to tackle it.
1993 Mumbai blasts: First death sentences handed out to 3
Zee News - 48 minutes ago
Mumbai, July 18: The special TADA court here today awarded the death sentence for the first time to three men convicted in the 1993 serial blasts case for planting explosives, saying their act caused the death of innoncent citizens and brought ...
Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism
The Varied Aspects of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy
International terrorism threatens the United States, its allies and interests, and the world community. Defeating the terrorist enemy requires sound policies, concerted U.S. Government effort, and international cooperation.
The primary mission of the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism (S/CT) is to forge partnerships with non-state actors, multilateral organizations, and foreign governments to advance the counterterrorism objectives and national security of the United States. Working with our U.S. Government counterterrorism team, S/CT takes a leading role in developing coordinated strategies to defeat terrorists abroad and in securing the cooperation of international partners. In all activities, we are guided by the National Security Strategy and the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism.
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/
Senate Rejects Plan to Withdraw Troops From Iraq War (Update1)
Bloomberg - 1 hour ago
By Nicholas Johnston July 18 (Bloomberg) -- The Senate rejected a proposal to withdraw US troops from Iraq after a rare all-night debate on congressional efforts to end the war.
State terrorism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_terrorism
State terrorism is a controversial term, with no agreed on definition, used when arguing that there may be a similarity between terrorism and certain acts done by states.
The concept of state terrorism and indeed of terrorism has its roots in the Reign of Terror in revolutionary France.
[edit] Confines and definition
Like the definition of terrorism and the definition of state-sponsored terrorism, the definition of state terrorism remains controversial. There is no international consensus on what terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, or state terrorism are. Nations also disagree on what distinguishes a "terrorist organisation" from a "liberation movement". There is no international agreement or treaty defining these terms.[1]
The earliest use of the word "terrorism" identified by the Oxford English Dictionary is a 1795 reference to what the author described as the "reign of terrorism" in France.[2] During that part of the French revolutionary period that is now known as the Reign of Terror, or simply The Terror, the Jacobins and other factions used the apparatus of the state to execute and cow political opponents.
According to the Britannica Concise terrorism is "systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective".[2] According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, State terrorism, also known as Establishment Terrorism, is "employed by governments—or more often by factions within governments—against that government's citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups. This type of terrorism is very common but difficult to identify, mainly because the state's support is always clandestine."[3]
Linguist and anarchist Noam Chomsky has stated in an interview that "The U.S. is officially committed to what is called "low-intensity warfare...If you read the definition of low-intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of "terrorism" in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they're almost the same.[3] Chomsky and Herman have argued that the distinction between state and nonstate terror is morally relativist and distracting from or justifying state terrorism perpetrated by favored states, typically those of wealthy and developed nations (Chomsky and Herman, 1979). Chomsky has in turn been criticized for ignoring or justifying terror by states that he has favored, such as Communist China, Vietnam, and Cambodia.[4]
There are several similar terms: Democide, Genocide, State-sponsored terrorism, Crime against humanity, Crime against peace, and War crime.
National Security Advisor M K Narayanan is presently in Washington, leading a high-profile Indian delegation in parleys to iron out differences with the American leadership on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.Indian and US officials were today engaged in a fresh round of negotiations in Washington to conclude the civil nuclear agreement, with Washington saying there are a couple of "tough issues" left to be resolved, but admitted that the deal was within reach.
On Monday, talks were held with senior American functionaries on bilateral defence cooperation and regional security issues.
The U.S. side was led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The Indian side was represented by Indian Ambasador to the United States Ronen Sen, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon, Deputy Chief of the Indian Mission here, Raminder Singh Jassal, and Joint Secretary of the Americas in the Ministry of External Affairs Gaitri Kumar.
The precise nature of the talks was not revealed.
The Indian delegation is expected to have sensitive and critical exchanges with their American counterparts at the State Department. The Indian delegation will meet Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and his team to sort out the differences on the 123 accord.
Indian and US officials were engaged in a fresh round of negotiations to conclude the civil nuclear agreement on Wednesday.Washington said there are a couple of ''tough issues'' left to be resolved but the deal was within reach.As officials of the two sides met, the Bush administration expressed confidence that both India and the United States are going to try to ''make a push'' to finalise the 123 Agreement so that a deal can be done but the question was one of timing.At the State Department, spokesperson Sean McCormack stressed that Washington is willing to work in a ''constructive manner'' to get the deal done and this was also the case as far as the Indian negotiators were concerned.
''We're going to take stock of where we are in negotiating the so-called 1-2-3 agreement. This is a serious, high-level delegation. And it's really to try to make a push to get this agreement over the finish line.
''There are a couple of tough issues that we have left to resolve. We believe that we can get a deal; we can get an agreement,'' McCormack said in his regular briefing.
''I think it really comes down to a matter of timing. When is that going to get done? This meeting will provide us a good indicator as to the answer to that question, when can we get that deal done, '' the Spokesperson added.
During the meetings, ''we'll see if we're able to bridge the differences. There is certainly a willingness on our part to work in a constructive manner to get a deal done. And I suspect that you would hear the same thing from our Indian partners. But you can ask them where they stand,'' he said.
President George W. Bush's Republicans blocked a Democratic plan to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of April 2008 to cap a rare round-the-clock U.S. Senate debate on Wednesday.
On a vote of 52-47, backers fell short of the needed 60 to clear a Republican procedural hurdle and move toward passage of the measure opposed by the White House.
Critics called the marathon session, which had featured cots, pillows and toothbrushes, a theatrical stunt by Democrats frustrated by their inability to keep a 2006 campaign vow to end the increasingly unpopular war.
But Democrats described the debate as a bona fide wake up call to pressure wavering Republicans, many of whom are up for re-election next year, to break ranks with Bush and demand a change in course for the war.
Democrats had hoped the showdown vote would be a possible defining moment in the ongoing clash with Bush over the Iraq war. Coinciding with a candlelight vigil by war protesters nearby, the long night's debate drew a majority of senators but appeared to change few minds.
The outcome, though expected, had an air of solemnity as weary senators voted while seated quietly behind their desks.
Bottleneck issues
The reference was to the issues of Reprocessing and the Right of Return on which New Delhi has serious reservations.The high-level Indian delegation led by National Security Advisor M K Narayanan is scheduled to hold a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Department on Wednesday evening.After consultations with Rice, the Indian team will be at the White House where Narayanan will be meeting his counterpart in the Bush administration, Stephen Hadley for what has been billed as giving yet another qualitative push to the ongoing negotiations, with a focus on the 123 agreement.
The White House meeting is for an extended session that will include a one-on-one meeting at the delegations' level and over a working lunch.
Menon on Tuesday led the Indian delegation in extensive talks over the outstanding issues standing in the way of the two countries inking the 123 Agreement.
Menon's delegation included Deputy Chief of the Indian Mission in Washington Raminder Singh Jassal, R B Grover, senior official in Atomic Energy Commission.
S Jaishankar, India's High Commissioner to Singapore, who has been a part of the negotiating team for a long time, Gaitri Kumar, Joint Secretary for Americas in the Ministry of External Affairs.
The American side was led by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns who was assisted by Richard Stratford dealing with nuclear and non-proliferation affairs at the State Department and Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs.
Burns hosted a working dinner for the Indian delegation at the end of the formal talks at the State Department.
PM defends Indo-US nuke deal
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NDTV Correspondent
Monday, December 18, 2006 (New Delhi):
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has strongly defended his government's negotiations with America on the historic nuclear deal.
He said that India's strategic programme will not be affected in any way and that the Department of Atomic Energy's research and design programme will not be hit.
Intervening in the special discussion in the Lok Sabha on Monday, the PM in fact hit out at the BJP, saying they held secret talks on a similar deal with the US and did not take parliament into confidence.
'Edwina-Nehru affair got Kashmir deal done'
CNN-IBN
Published on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 21:22 in Nation section
Tags: Devil's Advocate, Pamela Mountbatten
E-mail this report | Print this reportPamela Mountabatten, the daughter of Lord Mountbatten, writes of the passionate relationship between her mother Edwina and India's first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru in her book India Remembered. On Devil's Advocate, Karan Thapar questions her on the affair and how it could have influenced India's history.
Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to Devil's Advocate. Lord Mountbatten's daughter. Lady Pamela has written a book India Remembered about the time she spent in the country when her father was the last Viceroy and the first Governor General. I shall talk to Lady Pamela about her memories of Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Lady Pamela, let’s start with the subject that everyone is most curious about: the relationship between your mother Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru. In your introduction you write: "…towards the end of the 15 months we spent in India, the immediate attraction between my mother and Pandit ji blossomed into love". What do you mean by love?
Lady Pamela: I mean a very deep love. The kind of love that the old knights of old, a chivalric love really. Now days everybody assumes that it has to be a carnal love, but you can have just as deep an emotional love with two like souls in a way, people who really grow to understand each other, and to be able to listen to each other and to complement each other and find solace in each other.
Karan Thapar: In your book you write with incredible candour: "my mother had already had lovers, my father was inured to it" but then you add: "the relationship with Nehru remained platonic."Can you be really sure of that?
Lady Pamela: I was with them most of the time. We called it a gooseberry. It was very awkward for them, you know, if I was around the whole time. I would say yes, anyway Nehru was a very honorable man who liked my father. There was a great affection between the two, and it was nearly always in my father's houses either in England or in India that they were together, and I think he would have never dishonoured his friends, you know.
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/edwinanehru-affair-got-kashmir-deal-done/45181-3.html
[Apart from the difficulties that have cropped up, particularly since March 2 2006, in concluding the 123 agreement, the following report draws our attention also to the piquant aspect that more concessions India is able to extract from the US the more difficult it'd become to cross the subsequent NSG hurdle.
There is little acknowledgement in India of this paradoxical dynamic - "success" leading to failure.
After March 2, however, a leading daily had carried an editorial lamenting Indian doggedness and consequent success in extracting a very favourable deal, a bit too favourable, making the passage of it rather difficult through the US Congress. The same logic, mutatis mutandis, would apply here as well.
This pessimistic prediction, however, may very well also turn out to be a move, wilfully or otherwise, in the ongoing war of nerves, an element facilitating softening up of the 'other side'.]
http://internationalreporter.com/News-2425/Leading-US-think-tank-says-India-US-nuke-deal-unlikely.html
Leading US think tank says India-US nuke deal unlikely
MIL/ANI, Jul 17, 2007.
Washington, July 17, 2007 (Tuesday) - An expert attached with a leading American think tank has ruled out the possibility of India and the United States finalizing a significant bilateral nuclear deal, in spite of several rounds of negotiations since its signing on July 18, 2005.
Michael Krepon, President Emeritus of the Washington based Henry L Stimson Center, said in an interview with Asian News International (ANI), that it would be next to impossible for the Bush Administration to agree with the demands being put forward by the Government of India vis-?is the 123 Agreement, the bilateral part of the Indo-US nuclear deal, that puts nuclear testing restrictions on New Delhi.
"We (the US) can't do the things that the Government of India wants, and even if we did, all the other people - the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) - they're not going to say yes either. And so, you know, I'm not sure," said Krepon.
Krepon's doomsday prediction comes even as senior Indian officials, comprising of National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and Chairman of Department of Atomic Energy, Anil Kakodkar are in Washington meeting with U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, and U.S. National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, with the objective of resolving the stalemate over the 123-agreement.
Krepon further claimed that the Bush Administration's hands are tied over the issue of giving India blanket permission for nuclear testing and supplying civilian nuclear fuel in perpetuity.
"The Government of India wants a free pass. If it decides to resume nuclear testing, it doesn't want to be penalized. And the legislation passed by the Congress penalizes India (should it decide to nuclear test), and the NSG would also penalize India if they resumed testing. So, that's a bone of contention (between the two sides), " Krepon told ANI.
New Delhi's desire for uninterrupted nuclear fuel supply was also a problem, as the Bush Administration "has signed a Congressional legislation that does not give India a huge reserve of fuel, because the (U.S.) Congress does not want to give the Government of India a free ride if it resumes testing. It (Congress) wants that to be a hard (to come by) decision.
Krepon's views notwithstanding, the Indian delegation is expected to put the onus on Washington to show some 'flexibility' to facilitate the conclusion of the 123 Agreement, negotiations which began in November 2006, but encountered a roadblock over the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
Krepon also claimed that Washington has reached a compromise with New Delhi on the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but added that he did not see New Delhi becoming a signatory to the treaty anytime soon.
While the U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said over the weekend that Washington is ready to resolve the remaining outstanding issues on the 123 Agreement, Krepon said US policy objectives in South Asia go beyond the signing of the nuclear cooperation agreement.
"There are more important things going on in South Asia. Even if an agreement is reached between Washington and New Delhi this month, it will take a lot longer to implement the agreement, because there will be very hard negotiations in the NSG, there will be very hard negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Government of India is not going to get the deal that it wants. This is domestically divisive in India. Even if all of this gets done, all of it, the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) is unlikely to pass legislation" committing the country in the event of an accident at a nuclear power plant constructed by a foreign company, or an MNC, "which means that at least in the US, nobody is going to build a nuclear power plant in India without a liability waiver," said Krepon.
He was also critical of Washington's latest geo-strategic initiatives, saying that the Bush Administration's penchant for undertaking such ventures have landed it in trouble.
"The Bush Administration gets into big trouble when it tries to do big geo-strategic things, like remaking Iraq and remaking the Middle East. The Bush Administration is trying another big geo-political ploy - trying to get India to be a partner against China. That's what this (nuclear) deal is really about. It's not about American firms building nuclear power plants in India. I doubt it seriously if that's ever going to happen. It's about China, and New Delhi is not going to do Washington's bidding on China. New Delhi has its own agenda, and is very capable of improving relations with China, as it has improved relations with the United States," opined Krepon.
He further claimed the existence of a triangular nuclear competition between China, India and Pakistan, which fell short of an arms race, "but it is heating up and cruise missiles are coming in, more and better ballistic missiles are coming in all three corners of this triangle."
He predicted that if there is a resumption of nuclear testing in the area, China, India and Pakistan would seek to improve their nuclear warheads.
It was all a question of calculations about nuclear weapons requirements for each country, and it was not coincidental that China is backing away from treaty negotiations to stop the production of fissile material for a (nuclear) bomb. He also said that it was no coincidence that Pakistan is building not one, but two new plutonium reactors.
He concluded by saying that there was a need for Washington to move on.
"We've got to be helping India with its energy needs, in clean energy, we ought to be helping India in so many different ways. But to make this (the nuclear deal) the number one priority, is a big mistake. We (the US) will be paying for it. India will be paying for it," Krepon said.
Already four rounds of formal negotiations and numerous meetings on the sidelines of multilateral fora have taken place on the 123-agreement since November 2006, but New Delhi is not keen to conclude the agreement in haste.
India had earlier stated that the US administration has assured it that there is nothing in the Henry Hyde Nuclear Cooperation Act that prevents them from implementing their obligations as laid in the July 18, 2005 and March 2, 2006 statements.
The Indian Government is optimistic that by late July or August 2007, the agreement could be formalized.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's expected visit to New Delhi in the next couple of months may finally see an end to the negotiations. (ANI)
Nuke experts slam Indo-US deal
Press Trust Of India
Published on Tuesday , July 25, 2006 at 10:42 in World section
Tags: India, Us
Washington: On the eve of the House of Representatives taking up legislation on Indo-US nuclear deal, a dozen nuclear experts sent a letter on Monday to International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohamed ElBaradei criticising his support for the pact as "surprising and disappointing" because it requires breaking with existing US and international nuclear trade rules.
The letter to the IAEA chief comes in handy to critics of the civilian nuclear deal, who are likely to use it in the floor of the House to slam the accord.
The signatories of the letter are known opponents of the deal and some have testified to this effect at Congressional hearings besides putting out statements.
They said in the letter that ElBaradei's support for creating exceptions to established rules and practices "betrays" two principled positions he has long advocated.
ElBaradei has argued for universal progress toward nuclear disarmament and against double standards for nuclear weapons haves and have-nots.
Reality Check: UK-US State Terrorism & Global Terror
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/17012
The World needs a reality check on "terror". Since 9/11 the World has been in the grip of what the US Administration calls the "War on Terror". Every atrocity involving mass murder of innocent Western civilians is reported in detail by mainstream media. Using official US and Israeli sources and mainstream media we can determine that the total number of Western civilians murdered by jihadists or Arab insurgents over the last 20 years has totalled about 5,000, with most dying on 9/11 or in the Holy Land and the remainder largely in the Lockerbie, Bali, Madrid and London atrocities.
However Western mainstream media in general resolutely refuse to report First World-complicit global avoidable mortality or the actual human cost of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The unspoken journalistic "excuse" seems to be that "news" only lasts a day or so and that the only death worth reporting is violent death. Of course, any reader of Western mainstream media quickly appreciates the profound but unspoken racism that allows, for example, continuing saturation coverage of 56 innocent commuters recently murdered by terrorist bombers in London but resolute ignoring of some 55,000 Third Worlders who die EACH DAY due to First World-dictated deprivation and avoidable, treatable disease.
Some "liberal" Western media (such as the UK Guardian and the UK BBC) have reported the latest Iraq Body Count findings of about 25,000 post-invasion VIOLENT Iraqi civilian deaths - but still will not report the post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess mortality) in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories that now totals 1.9 MILLION (from the latest UN Population Division data [1-3]). Such "liberal" mainstream media resolutely ignore the palpable realities that whether a person in an OCCUPIED COUNTRY dies VIOLENTLY or dies NON-VIOLENTLY (through deprivation and avoidable or treatable disease) the end result is the same and that the occupying Ruler is responsible for the Ruled (as set out in the Geneva Conventions).
The extent of this dishonest and racist reportage by mainstream media can be quickly estimated by a simple Google search for "terror" and for the phrase "under-5 infant mortality" (one of about 10 key parameters used by UNICEF to assess societal health as affecting child health) [4] - "terror" returns 40,100,000 URLs but "under-5 infant mortality" returns a mere 648. Small wonder then that after 9/11 (3,000 murdered victims) the Anglo-American mainstream media went hysterical and bayed for Muslim blood through advocacy of the dishonestly and absurdly named "War on Terror".
The "investigative reporters" of the mainstream media permitted the UK and the US to launch an illegal and horrendous war against a crippled Iraq on the basis of egregious lies and "slies'" (spin-based untruths) about pre-invasion Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (6,870,000 Google search-derived URLs), Iraq-Al Qaeda links, uranium from Niger, mobile germ warfare laboratories, imminent "45 minute" Iraqi threat etc. George Bush, who is notoriously inarticulate and famously incapable of pronouncing nuclear ("nucular") and dissemble ("disassemble"), has been permitted by the "professional wordsmiths" of the mainstream media to conduct a semantically-absurd "War on Terror" (8,060,000 Google search URLs) - just how can you conduct a war against your feelings?
The UK and US Administrations have also been permitted to hijack the word "terror" (and its derivatives such as "terrorist" and "terrorism"). "Terror" is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as "intense fear" and "terrorists" are defined as those who indulge in "terrorism" and "terrorize" by "coercive intimidation" i.e. by inducing "intense fear". However the mainstream media have permitted the Anglo-American warmakers to redefine "terrorists" as a very small sub-set of non-Europeans involved in egregious violence against innocent people around the World. To Bush, Blair and the dishonest Anglo-American mainstream media, the "terrorists" are "jihadists", "Arab insurgents" and indeed anyone else from the Third World deemed to be "opponents they wish to kill".
The Coalition and mainstream media definition of "terrorism" ignores the palpable reality of horrendous UK-US state terrorism that has so far been associated with an horrendous avoidable mortality in the post-invasion Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories totalling 1.9 million. The horrendous death toll in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan largely arises from non-provision of life-sustaining requisites by the Coalition occupiers in utter dereliction of the Geneva Conventions and hence constitutes "passive genocide". The mainstream media have become complicit in the horrendous passive genocide in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories, utterly ignore UK-US state terrorism and indeed have also largely ignored both "state" and "non-state" terrorism that is perceived to be in the interests of the Anglo-American alliance.
The ACTUAL terror of those subject to "state terrorism" or to "non-state "terrorism" is related to their "perception of avoidable death" for themselves or their loved ones i.e. to the "perceived probability of avoidable death". While it is experimentally difficult to assess human perceptions of "terror", we can readily determine the "empirical probability of avoidable death" by considering the actual numbers of people who have died avoidably from a particular cause over a particular time period [5]. The following statistics provide a further dramatic demonstration of the Big Lie of the mainstream media over the "War on Terror".
The empirically-estimated "PROBABILITY OF DEATH EACH YEAR" is:
1 in 3.3 million (0.00003%) (for Western civilians at the hands of jihadist terrorists post-1985);
1 in 3 million (US citizen being killed by a shark);
1 in 4 million (US citizen being electrocuted);
1 in 6 million (US citizen being struck by lightning);
1 in 500,000 (0.0002%) (US citizen at the hands of jihadists in the 21st century);
1 in 10,000) (0.01%) (from car accident in the US);
1 in 1,250 (0.08%) (under-5 year old infant in Australia from all causes);
1 in 1,000 (0.1%) (from cigarette smoking-related causes in the US);
1 in 38 (2.6%) (under-5 year old infants in UK-US-occupied Iraq);
1 in 17 (5.8%) (for under-5 year old infants in US-occupied Afghanistan).
Clearly the parents of Iraqi and Afghan infants are being "terrorized" by any reasonable sense of the word. The probability of "heads" when you toss a coin is 1/2. The probability of death for each try in Russian roulette with a 6 shooter is 1 in 6. Would you cross the road without lights if the probability of death was 1/2, 1/6, 1/17 or 1/38? Would you have "intense fear" for your loved ones if the probability of their demise each year was 1/17 or 1/38? Clearly the other "risks" listed above are simply "low probability risks" that can be minimized by individual or collective action - they are certainly not the basis for "terror", for illegal invasions and occupations (which have actually increased the terrorist threat to Westerners), mass murder, mass infanticide or for draconian constraints on civil rights and human rights in the US, UK, Australia and other Coalition countries.
It should be absolutely clear to decent people that murdering and terrorizing innocent people is evil and vile. In response to the awful London bombings, the Australian Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kim Beazley, vigorously stated of the perpetrators: "These terrorists are subhuman filth and must be captured and eliminated" [6]. But how then should we describe the Coalition perpetrators of mass murder, passive genocide and mass infanticide in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan? Thus, to reiterate, passive genocide by UK-US democratic imperialism (democratic Nazism) in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories through non-provision of life-sustaining requisites demanded by the Geneva Conventions kills 0.4 MILLION under-5 year old infants EACH YEAR, this corresponding to 1,000 (ONE THOUSAND) avoidable under-5 infant deaths EACH DAY [2, 4]. The post-invasion avoidable mortality in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories now totals 1.9 million [1-3]

Mao’s Law of Contradiction and Dr. Ambedkar’s works

Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: alashchandrabiswas@gmail.com">palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
Please watch:
Documentary on Nandigram in English
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3924953024386968311&hl=en
“100 Best Brains” to avert “sunset over Dalit world”
A. XAVIER, ENG. DEPT., ST. MARY’S HR. SEC. SCHOOL, DINDIGUL - 624 001
Dalit Intellectuals Forum, Dindigul, TN, wants to have a national seminar for “100 Best Brains”, on applying Mao’s Law of Contradiction (for photocopies write to DV office Rs. 45) to Indian conditions. The seminar may be held for three days in May/June 2008. The following three topics will be discussed. V.T. Rajshekar, the Editor of Dalit Voice, will chair all the deliberations for three days.
Day-1 : Mao’s law of contradiction.
Day-2 : Applying the Law of contradiction under Indian social and political conditions.
Day-3 : Indian revolution by Dalits and Non-Brahminical forces.
Those who have already mastered or who want to master Mao’s Law of Contradiction and Dr. Ambedkar’s works can participate in the seminar. Dalit Voice family members and other thinkers will also join. Noted political thinkers and social activists may also attend. The purpose is to give a theoretical guideline to the Dalit thinkers engaged in launching the Indian Revolution. The venue is Dindigul which is a district headquarters town right in the middle of TN connected by train and highway.
Those who attend the seminar will choose the “100 Best Brains” suggested by the Editor (DV March 1, 2000).
The latest report by the Intelligence Branch (I of the state police has brought both relief and concern for the West Bengal government regarding the Maoist future plan of action in the state.
The element of relief comes from the decision of the top ranking CPI(Maoist) leaders that there would not be any major “hit-and-run” action by the Maoist guerrillas in their strongholds like Bankura, Puruliya and West Midnapore during the next six months.However, at the same time, the CPI(Maoist) leaders have decided that during the so-called peace period, there will be a major drive to mobilise new followers from other parts of the state especially Nandigram in East Midnapore and Singur in Hooghly.
The leaders have also instructed that the farming community’s displeasure against the recent land acquisition drive for industry would be the exploiting factor in mobilising the new followers and for that Nandigram and Singur would be the two best ideal spots to launch this mobilisation drive.
Highly-placed IB sources said the decision was taken at a secret meeting of the Ninth Unity Congress of CPI(Marxist) last month somewhere in East Midnapore district.
On the other hand, seeking amendments in the SEZ Act, the West Bengal government today said that the state governments should be allowed to intervene in land acquisition and upper limit should be fixed for every state regarding area for SEZ to prevent regional imbalance.
"The state government's intervention regarding land acquisition is needed to protect interest of the farmers. We also want an upper limit for every state regarding area for SEZ, else it would lead to regional imbalance. We will soon write to the Centre in this regard," Industry Minister Nirupam Sen told the Assembly. Sen said the West Bengal government has reservation regarding huge tax concessions proposed to be given to the units in the SEZs.
The government, he said, would urge the Centre to lower the minimum size of the SEZ to 1,000 acre from 2,500 acre as it was difficult to get so much of non-agricultural land in a contiguous area. The land acquisition act also needed amendment to incorporate rehabilitation clause besides compensation, he said.
Appealing to the opposition Trinamool Congress to come forward for talks to expedite industrialisation, the West Bengal government today said it did not want bloodshed over the setting up of industries.
"We don't want bloodshed to set up industries. But bloodshed did not stop despite the state government's categorical announcement that a chemical hub will not be set up in Nandigram," Industry Minister Nirupam Sen told the assembly while winding up a debate on budgetary grants for his department.
In the absence of Trinamool members who were boycotting the assembly proceedings, Sen said, "I am again appealing to them to sit for talks. Let us sit together to expedite the industrialsation process. How can we set up industries if they say no farm land can be acquired for the purpose?"
The state had received investment proposals worth Rs 90,000 crore and the government wanted cooperation from all parties, including the main opposition Trinamnool Congress, to implement these projects, he said.
The Trinamool Congress had earlier said it would continue its indefinite boycott of assembly proceedings till land acquired "forcibly" from farmers in Singur is returned and justice given to people in Nandigram.
The state government wanted to build consensus and expedite industrialisation but the opposition had tried to halt it, Sen said without naming the Trinamool Congress.

Why shudra castes are hated:
What is puzzling is a caste which claims itself to be the country’s “most intelligent”, is not intelligent enough to understand that the Bahujan (85%) concept not only does not include the Brahmin but it also keeps out not merely the Brahmin but also the Kshatriya, Vaishya and the landed shudra castes like Karnataka’s Lingayats and Vokkaligas who are much more hated than the Brahmins.
Brahmins are not the only hated jati. In UP, the Dalits consider Yadavas as oppressors. In different parts of India different jatis are oppressors.
The Brahmana Jati Party (BJP) in Karnataka is loaded with Lingayats. BJP’s top leader is a Lingayat, presently Dy. CM in the JD(S)-BJP coalition govt. They also form the largest chunk of MPs from Karnataka.
Lingayats and Vokkaligas are the state’s landed (shudra) gentry and all landlord communities are oppressive all over the country. Marathas (MS), Jats (Punjab), Nairs (Kerala), Reddis and Khammas (AP), Mudaliar and Goundars (TN), Rajputs, Patels (Gujarat). It is this class of landed gentry — despite pushed to the despised fourth -grade place in the Brahminical caste hierarchy — that has gone closer to the Brahmins instead of remaining nearer to the Bahujans.
In other words the Enemy No.1 of the Bahujans is the shudra landed castes — and not so much the Brahmins.
We had cleared this point while writing on Mayawati victory in UP (DV Edit June 1, 2007). The Yadavas of UP despite being part of the Bahujan Samaj tormented the Dalits so much that they readily agreed to join the Brahmins.
Does it not become clear that the Bahujans have nothing against Brahmins. In the caste pyramid, the Brahmins are at the top and the Untouchable Dalits are at the bottom. The two have no chance to meet like the North Pole and South Pole. How then can there be any Dalit hostility against Brahmins?
Why the “brainy Brahmins” go on saying that Dr. Ambedkar suffered from intense anti-Brahmin mania and DV is generating Brahmin hatred (DV Edit July 16, 2005: “In defence of Brahmins”).
Babasaheb Ambedkar had many Brahmin friends, many Brahmins joined him while he embraced Budhism in a mass conversion.
Truth never admitted: The “brainy Brahmins” may know the truth but they will not admit this truth. This is the problem with them.
All these are facts of history. And yet the “brainy Brahmins” have not read this history. And that is why they are losing on all fronts and have now become the target of all-round attack. Thousands of them are fleeing India itself and settling with their White Western racial family.
The problem with the Brahmin is any amount of study, experience, travel or long stay in a foreign country will not change his mental make-up which is a genetic characteristic. The hate mail from Brahmins we get daily after seeing our website come mostly from very young Brahmins. Not the oldies. Some of them say they are working as nuclear scientists in USA. But whether he is a scientist, a philosopher or Harward professor he is first a Brahmin. This is also the case with the Jew. After all the “Jews of India” are their brothers.
The Times headline for their conspiratorial story is “Caste calculations”. Fine. But there is a problem here. When we talk about our caste, the Brahmin is the first to pounce and warn us not to talk of caste. They hate caste-based reservation and insist “merit” alone shall be the criterion (Merit, My Foot, DSA-2006, Rs30). We have received hundreds of emails and letters warning us not to talk of caste. The Brahmin hates any talk of caste because he knows any discussion on caste promotes caste consciousness.
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/july_a2007/editorial.htm
Teen’s Documentary Shows Plight of ‘Untouchables’ in India
By Jen Reed
The Catholic Witness, Diocese of Harrisburg, Pa March 18, 2005
CAMP HILL, Pa. – Try to imagine living a life deprived of basic human rights.
You live in squalor, are subjected to forced labor and violence, and have little
or no access to sufficient nutrition, running water, electricity or sanitation.
Now image that your chances of changing your situation are slim because
society denies you the right to education, the right to possess assets, and the
right to improve yourself socially or economically.
For many, this picture is impossible to comprehend. But for some 240 million
men, women and children in India, these conditions are a harsh reality.
They are known as Dalits, or “untouchables,” labeled by their society as
people unworthy of belonging to India’s four-fold caste system. Without
education, affirmation and opportunity, most of those who are born Dalits will
die as Dalits. It’s been that way for more than 3,000 years.
The plight of these people is an injustice about which too few people are
aware, even though the exploited people account for nearly 25 percent of their
country’s population.
http://www.dalitsolidarity.org/catholicwitness.pdf
DALIT: THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA
THIRD EDITION
by V.T. Rajshekar
ISBN: 0-932863-05-1, 124 pp., illus., 1995, $9.95
"Every hour - two Dalits are assaulted. Every day - three Dalit women are raped
two Dalits are murdered
two Dalit houses are burnt"
Human Rights Education Movement in India

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Dalit is not only forbidden to enter the home of a Brahmin but he must also not draw water from the same well, nor eat from the same pot or plate. He must not glance at or allow his shadow to fall on the Brahmin. All these acts will pollute the 'pure' Brahmin. The Dalit 'is not only Untouchable, but also Unseeable, Unapproachable, Unshadowable and even Unthinkable'... This book should be compulsory reading for those who wish to understand the true nature of the caste system and the suffering it causes to millions." Crescent International
Originally published in India under the title Apartheid in India, V.T. Rajshekar's passionate work on the plight of the Indian Dalits was first introduced to North American readers through the publication of DALIT: The Black Untouchables of India in 1987. This book is the first to provide a Dalit view of the roots and continuing factors of the gross oppression of the world's largest minority (over 150 million people) through a 3,000 year history of conquest, slavery, apartheid and worse. Rajshekar offers a penetrating, often startling overview of the role of Brahminism and the Indian caste system in embedding the notion of "untouchability" in Hindu culture, tracing the origins of the caste system to an elaborate system of political control in the guise of religion, imposed by Aryan invaders from the north on a conquered aboriginal/Dravidian civilization of African descent. He exposes the almost unimaginable social indignities which continue to be imposed upon so-called untouchables to this very day, with the complicity of the political, criminal justice, media and education systems. Under Rajshekar's incisive critique, the much-vaunted image of Indian nonviolence shatters. Even India's world-celebrated apostle of pacificsm emerges in less saintly guise; in seeking to ensure Hindu numerical domination in India's new political democracy, Mahatma Gandhi advocated assimilating those whom Hindu scriptures defined as outcastes (untouchables) into the lowest Hindu caste, rather than accede to their demand for a separate electorate. Rajshekar further questions whether the Brahminist socio-political concepts so developed in turn influenced the formation of the modern Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy, placing the roots of Nazism deep in Indian history.
This new updated and illustrated Third Edition includes: Y.N. Kly on the Dalit plight as a warning to African-Americans; Runoko Rashidi on "Blacks as a Global Community"; the 1995 intervention at the UN on behalf of Dalits by Dr. Laxmi Berwa, and the recent US Congressional Bill 4215 on human rights in India, which marks the first US Congressional recognition of the Dalit plight.
V.T. RAJSHEKAR is recognized worldwide as one of India's foremost human rights activists and a spokesperson for the Indian Dalits. Combining the essentials of Marxism and the philosophy of the late Dr. B.R. Ambedkar into a new indigenous political philosophy, his writings clarify the caste-class struggle in India. He is editor of the internationally distributed English-language Indian bi-weekly, Dalit Voice, and Director of the Dalit Sahitya Akademy, 109/7th Cross, Palace Lower Orchards, Bangalore 560 003, India.
http://www.bookmasters.com/clarity/b0001.htm

Dichotomization:
In the words of Owen Lynch, dichotomization is "concerned with dyadic relationships of a status and a counter-status but analytically specifies what happens to the dyad when a third party enters into the relationship." The third party, however, tries to change the dyadic relationship through redefinition of "the roles of statuses." (1972. The Politics of Untouchability. New Delhi: S. Chand and Co. p. 17). "The status of untouchable vis-a-vis non-untouchable has become the concern of the Indian Government (herre the third party)." (p. 18). (:409).
Dalits were culturally different from the caste Hindus. Their food habits, recreation, language, rituals and
ceremonies, deities, manner of worship, etc., were different from those of caste Hindus. They consequently developed a sense of separateness or isolation from each other. There was absolutely no endosmosis between the caste Hindus and the Dalits (:410).
In the whole dichotomic situation, the government positively intervened to settle the communal problem through the historic Round Table Conference held during 1930-32, but in vain. However, the matter was amicably settled between the Dalits and caste Hindus under the Poona Pact, 1932. Accordingly, the government prepared the list of Scheduled Castes for the purpose of seeking certain benefits under the Act of 1935. Thereafter, several measures were taken to ameliorate the socio-economic condition of the Dalits. The process of dichotomization could not last for long, but it proved to be effective in awakening the Dalits to their problems. It could, however, instill in them a sense of self-identity and self-pride (:411).
Jobs, facilities elude UP Dalits
18 Jul 2007, 0435 hrs IST,TNN

LUCKNOW: In a state headed by a powerful Dalit leader, the community members are yet to gain much in terms of employment, land or other facilities that could push them socially upward. Even cases of atrocity against Dalits have not gone down drastically in the past few months.
For the past few years, the government's efforts to procure surplus land and distribute them among Dalits have remained on paper only.
In 1999, the government had asked district magistrates to give detailed reports about surplus land which could be distributed among Dalits. After persistent persuasion of several years by the government, most of the DMs said that there was not enough land to be distributed among Dalits.
The state had 1.36 crore landless people who were promised small patches of land by various governments but not one could be given till now, according to official sources.
Only three DMs said that there was some land which could be given to Dalits. Interestingly, the government always maintained that there was enough land to be given to Dalits.
Further, though the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme — providing for 100 days job to rural poor—is being implemented in 22 districts in the state, many Dalits fail to avail this facility because their names do not figure in BPL cards. Without their names in the BPL cards, they cannot be given jobs. This has left thousands of Dalits scurrying for rural jobs which should have been given to them.
Of the total population of the Dalits, nearly 26 per cent are daily wage earners. This percentage has refused to go down during successive governments.
In the past three months, cases of atrocity against Dalits have not decreased, said SR Darapuri of Ambedkar Mahsabha.
At least in half a dozen cases where crime were committed against Dalit women, the government did not act on time, he added. Darapuri felt that unless Dalits "retaliate in affective manner", their plight would not improve irrespective of claims made by political leaders.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lucknow/Jobs_facilities_elude_UP_Dalits/articleshow/2212507.cms
THE STATES/TAMIL NADU
Violent eviction
S. VISWANATHAN
In Nagapattinam district, Dalit agricultural workers demanding house sites face the police's ire.

"When the caste Hindu landlords are threatened by alternative political mobilisation of oppressed classes/castes, the state not only supports its law and order bureaucracy but nudges it to crush such mobilisation through use of excessive force and even by suppressing democratic rights... The inability therefore to fashion bureaucracy against caste and class biased actions and to restrain them from acting beyond the authority conferred by law can only be interpreted as indifference and apathy of the political leadership towards the problems of Scheduled Castes."

- Report on prevention of atrocities against
Scheduled Castes 2004, National Human Rights Commission.
THE Tamil Nadu Police's violent intervention in an issue that arose out of the demand of Dalit agricultural workers for house sites at Apparasapuram Puthur (A. Puthur), a small village in the coastal Nagapattinam district, on June 28 has only reaffirmed the truth in the report prepared for the NHRC by K.B. Saxena, a retired civil servant.
The police action apparently had no official sanction and came without any warning and under the pretext of removing encroachments on a piece of private land. The resistance put up by Dalits left over 50 persons injured, some of them seriously. Worse still was the attack on children. Even cattle were not spared. Ten policemen, including a Deputy Superintendent of Police, were among the injured. Some 40 Dalit victims were admitted to hospital and also taken into custody. The arrested included old men, women and students, besides a local political activist who backed the Dalits' demand. After dismantling about 25 thatched sheds put up by Dalits on a piece of land they had allegedly encroached upon, and resorting to the use of lathis and teargas on the protesters, the police allegedly ransacked their huts. Almost all their belongings, including utensils, cupboards and two-wheelers, were damaged. Dalits complained that gold ornaments purchased for a family wedding were found missing after the incident. Many students complained that they had lost their certificates.
District Collector Tenkasi S. Jawahar, who was away on a visit to Nainital in Uttarakhand on the day of the incident, ordered an inquiry by the Personal Assistant to the Collector (General). The State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Viduthalai Siruthaigal Katchi have condemned the police atrocities. The CPI(M) has demanded a judicial inquiry, action against the erring policemen, release of the arrested persons and payment of compensation to the victims.
It was at the instance of the Collector that the district administration had initiated steps to find a negotiated settlement between the cultivating tenant and the Dalit agricultural workers to identify suitable house sites for distribution. The talks were inconclusive and the process of locating "suitable" house sites was not completed. What was then the urgency for the police to step in?
Terming the incident as "very unfortunate", the Collector told Frontline on July 10 that he suspected "some foul play". He said: "I learnt on my return a few days after the incident that the District Revenue Officer, who normally heads the administration in the Collector's absence, had not been kept abreast of the developments by the officials." He said no eviction order had been issued by the administration. "Because it was private land, only the court can order eviction and, to my knowledge, there was no such court order as well," he said. He said that generally the Collector was expected to order only a probe by the Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) but he could not do so in this case because the RDO himself faced some charges. He said when the issue was brought to him two months ago he had told the officials that "we should call all the people concerned, discuss the issue and help evolve a solution that will hurt no one. There had been talks and there were also broad agreements." He said he was awaiting the inquiry report to find out how and where the process met with a snag.
It is obvious that a section of bureaucrats are resisting attempts to look at the problem from a different perspective to find an amicable solution.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/20070727002803900.htm
Buta for more powers to SC/ST panel
http://www.chennaionline.com/colnews/newsitem.asp?NEWSID=%7B056F3EEC-6572-419D-9B05-0A6F45947C81%7D&CATEGORYNAME=CHN
Chennai, July 17: The National Commission for SCs and STs should be given as much power as the Election Commission to deal with atrocities and issues of reservation, its chairman Buta Singh said here today.
Inaugurating a seminar on 'Human Rights for Dalits', Singh said he would make a request in this regard to the President.

The Election Commission has full powers in the poll process and the SC/ST Commission should have similar powers to decide on issues concerning Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, he said.

Singh said he would appeal to the government to increase reservations for Dalits in proportion to the increase in their population.

Dalits were the more harassed section of society and no other community would do jobs like carrying human excreta on their head, he noted. "In this situation, we cannot say the country had entered the 21st century with pride," he remarked.

"We are not asking for the moon but are fighting for equality. The future generation will not tolerate atrocities against them." Singh said, "This post is the last assignment in my life. I will see to it that Dalits get all the rights guaranteed in the Constitution."

DPI general secretary Thol Thirumavalavan said human rights activists and NGOs are fighting atrocities committed by the government but were not considering "casteist atrocities" as human rights violations.

Dalits should win political power and work for this goal unitedly, he added.
Disruption of Assembly Session Goes on Unabated
Patna: July 17, 2007
http://www.patnadaily.com/news2007/july/071707/opposition_disrupts_assembly.html
The opposition leaders in Bihar, whose constitutional roles have shrunk to shouting slogans and disrupting the Assembly sessions on a regular basis, on Tuesday, did exactly that blasting the NDA government for unleashing a reign of terror and failing to check crime in the state.
"This is a government that has lost control over everything. Criminals and bureaucrats are running the state and ordinary people are scrambling to save their lives," Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and the leader of the Opposition Rabri Devi said.
Demanding to control the atrocities unleashed by the bureaucrats, RJD, Congress, and other party leaders said corruption in every department had become the hallmark of the Nitish government and liberal liquor policy was turning the entire state into a safe haven for drunkards and alcoholics affecting lives of millions of people, particularly women and children.
The Opposition also disrupted the session over reservation issues saying Nitish Kumar, the state Chief Minister, had breached the trust of all when he refused to enforce reservation provisions to native Biharis only and instead, opened doors for people from other states.
Rabri Devi, a veteran in caste-based politics like her husband and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, accused the Speaker of the House Uday Narain Chowdhary of acting against the interests of dalits and backwards by continuing to provide defense for the Nitish government.
"We had thought by being a dalit himself, he would have some sympathy for his fellow dalits but he has proved himself to be anti-dalit and should not be allowed to occupy the seat of the Speaker of the House," Rabri Devi said.
De-Hinduization:
The term implies complete distance and protest against Hinduism, and acceptance of any other non-Hindu religion like Islam, Christianity, Sikh or Buddahism, with a purpose of getting rid of untouchability and to develop their moral and financial conditions (:411).
Under the census of 1901 there were 47,048,581 Muslims in northern India (Punjab, Kashmir, UP, Bihar, Bengal and Orissa) out of which 8,628, 566 were shown as Arjal (inferior) Muslims; Shri V. R. Shinde thinks that they were probably original Antyaj or untouchables. A good number of Dalits were converted to Christianity, especially in Kerala. Under the census of 1931, among the Pariah untouchables, 70,684 were Hindus, whereas 71,680 were Christians. Among the Pulayas 207,337 were Hindus, whereas 15777,813 were Christians. The Dalit leaders like Pampady John Joseph (Kerala), Rev. John Rathnam (TN) and Gurram Jashua (AP) were prominent among the converts. Iyakanu Pulawar (Karnataka) and M. Y. Murugesan (Karnataka) took the initiative in reviving Buddhism. Dr. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism along with millions of followers at Nagpur in 1956 (:412).
Social Dialecticism: Due to untouchability the whole Hindu society was divided into touchables and the untouchables. The touchables were to enjoy all the civil rights, whereas the untouchables were not to enjoy any right. The untouchables were to fulfil the duties imposed by the touchables. Their interests were diametrically opposed to each other (:413).
However, with the advent of British in India, the whole legal system was changed. The dialectic was not limited to civil rights only. It was in vogue in the field of economic uplift (:413). Dalit leaders like Ayyan Kali had to fight against serfdom in Kerala (:414).
The Communist movement was invariably in the hands of the high caste people and they could not realize the crucial role of caste in the Indian social structure. Neither had they any plan to exterminate untouchability nor had they any grasp of that problem (:414).
In order to fight against the socio-economic problems, Dr. Ambedkar formed the Independent Labour Party in 1936. He was of the view that all the key industries, including agriculture should be nationalized in the interest of the nation as a whole (:414).
Politicization:
Dr. Ambedkar said: "the problem of the Depressed classes will never be solved unless they get political power in their own hands. If this is true, and I do not think that the contrary can be maintaind, then the problem of the Depressed classes is, I submit eminently, a political problem and must be treated as such." (Bhagwandas., ed. 1963. Thus Spoke Ambedkar. Vol. I. Jullundur: Bheem Patrika Publications. p. 24.) (:415)
There were Dalit movements during the colonial period in Maharasthra among the Mahars. There is a study of Ad-Dharm movement in the Punjab in Mark Juergensmeyer’s Religion as Social Vision: The Movement Against Untouchability in 20th Century Punjab. (Berkeley: University of California). The Illava movement of Narayana Guru in Kerala has now been covered in at least a dozen recent books. There were Dalit movements during the colonial period also in western U.P. (the Adi-Hindu movement), Bengal (Namashudras),Tamil Nadu (Adi-Drividas), coastal Andhra (Adi-Andhras), and Hyderabad (Adi-Hindus). In addition there were unorgainzed Dalit assertions in such areas as Mysore and Bihar (Omvedt 1994:10).
There has been a continuous growth and change of Ambedkar’s movement. There were new developments and publications in the field of Buddhist conversion; the Dalit Panthers arose as a new force; the movement began to produce literature of such quantity and quality that Dalit Sahitya became a prominent part of the Marathi literary scene, and spread to the neighbouring states of Gujarat and Karnataka. (1992:introduction)
There was a group of movements among the Untouchables of Madras, although neither this movement nor others among the Ilavas of the Malabar coast, the Chamars of Chhatisgarh area, the Depressed Classes, chiefly Chamars and Churas, of the Punjab or the Namashudras of Bengal, were as sustained and all-encompassing as that among the Mahars of Maharashtra, the largest Untouchable caste in the area now called Maharasthra where this group constitute about ten percent of the population (1992:33 and 155). The political movement which the Mahars have dominated has never been confined exclusively to their caste and from 1936 has included non-Marathi speaking groups. Since 1956, a majority of Mahars have converted to Buddhism and no longer use the caste name (:118).
There were six essential factors in the processes by which the Mahar movement grew:
1. A leadership released from traditional service (and followers with some economic freedom).
The upward thrust of the Mahars was especially noticeable in the nineteenth century in Vidarbha, the eastern part of the Marathi-speaking region. Here the percentage of Mahars approached nearly twenty percent of the population, in contrast to the three or four percent along the coast and an average of nine percent over the entire area. This larger percentage could not be absorbed as village servants and in these eastern parts Mahars were also weavers, petty traders, carpenters and cultivators (1992:35). With one exception, the early leadership came from those Mahars who had entered the British army.
Gopal Baba Walangkar, a Konkani pensioned soldier from Ratnagiri, began the first Mahar newspaper. In 1894, he drew up a petition in Marathi requesting re-acceptance of Untouchables into army ranks, but secured little support from his less audacious caste fellows (:91).
Subhedar (captain) Bahadur Gangaram Krishnajee of Pune was the President of the earliest conference of Mahars, which met in 1903.
Subhedar Savadkar, an ex-soldier, was instrumental in securing the cooperation of village Mahars for the historic 1927 Mahar conference, a meeting planned by Ambedkar and his associates but dependent on Savadkar;s work for its local support.
Ambedkar himself came from a Ratnagiri family whose men served in the army for several generations, and he gave credit to the Mahar thrust toward new rights, to the education received by army men and their children.
Shivram Janba Kamble, organizer in the Pune area from 1903 to 1930, was a butler in the Masonic Hall in the Pune Cantonment.
Kisan Fagoji Bansode, 1879-1946, a labor leader, newspaper editor, social worker and a poet of the Nagpur area, persisted with the approach of the Mahar claim to religious worth within Hinduism (:95).
Later Mahar elite came from a new breed of primary school teachers, arising sometime after 1920, and from traditional watandar families who made good use of their land or extended their traditional role into government supply and contracting work (1992:36)
2. Grievances understood and felt by both the "elite" members of the caste and the masses.
Walangkar listed the disadvantages of the Untouchable: difficulty in getting education, exclusion from dharmshalas (pilgrims’ and travellers’ guest houses), discrimination while travelling, ban on par

Dalit literature and culture of Bengal Under Left Rule

Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: alashchandrabiswas@gmail.com">palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
Please watch:
Documentary on Nandigram in English
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3924953024386968311&hl=en
Kannan Devan to me, Lal, Jon, Moopan:

Communism is dead and gone. But the left over leftists are spreading like cancer in India. Miscreants, vagabonds and criminal mafia are acting as communist agents in India. They succeed because of lack of resistance. Communists are acting as agents of Jihadis and missionaries and busy subverting our country. Some communists are working as coolies for subversive groups.
Pl note this. I place the comment on web for your kind information!
Read This also:
The cavalier divisions reproduced by Prasad and Ilaiah make a mockery of the important role played by Communists like Nripen Chakraborty and Dasaratha Deb in Tripura and Shamrao and Godavari Parulekar and R. B. More in Maharashtra among Adivasis and Dalits. More, a close friend of Ambedkar, attracted several important figures from the Dalit movement into the Communist Party (notably S. B. Jadhav who was the Bombay secretary of the Scheduled Castes Federation, Captain Sasalekar of the Samata Sainik Dal, and Shahir Annabhau Sahte, founder of Dalit Sahitya). This history weighs heavily on the Left movement. One of the great gains for Dalits came in West Bengal, when, under Left Front rule, the government distributed land to two million landless cultivators, 56% of whom come form socially oppressed communities (37% to Dalits and 19% to Adivasis). None of this is taken seriously in the writings of Prasad and Ilaiah, who, while they are spot on in their condemnation of Indian liberalism, are far too anecdotal in their assessment of the place of the Left in the fight for Dalit liberation.
If the Left comes in for harsh criticism from both Ilaiah and Prasad, both are very tender with the BSP. Without a doubt, the emergence of the BSP is very important for Indian social democracy. The party has placed the problem of Dalits squarely on the national agenda, and it has trained many activists who will not allow Dalit issues to be put on the back burner. However, simply because the BSP is a party led by Dalits is no guarantee that it will work for the welfare of all Dalits. Take the example of Chakia Tehsil of UP,where the BSP government has worked against the interests of the local Dalits to the extent that in 2002 Dalit women marched with a banner that said, "Mayawati Open the Treasury and Give us Red Cards," referring to the red-coloured Antyodaya cards that would give them access to the public distribution system. A callous disregard for land reform and a strange alliance with the BJP pose no problem for Prasad and Ilaiah. In this, their politics based on identity (rather than a politics of identification) goes someway from Ambedkarism (he himself had this to say of his adversary, "By Brahmanism I do not mean the power, privileges and interests of the Brahmins as a community. That is not the sense in which I am using the word. By Brahmanism I mean the negation of the spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity. In that sense it is rampant in all classes and is not confined to Brahmins alone though they have been its originators. The effect of Brahmanism was not confined to social rights such as inter-dining and inter-marrying. It also denied them civic rights. So omniscient is Brahmanism that it even affects the field of economic opportunities" (Times of India, February 14, 1938). Dalit-cide is a problem, and it must be grasped politically, but the political solution should not be a mirror of the ailment itself.
The caste struggle
The promise of globalization, for Prasad, is not in its consumerism but in the gains made by African Americans. Both Ilaiah and Prasad write of the struggles of African Americans.
Vijay Prasad
http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:B6X_mTrNmnoJ:www.navayana.org/display.php%3Fid%3D19+Dalit+Sahitya+in+Bengal&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=28&gl=in
Tamil Nadu's Dalit saga
What both Viswanathan and Gorringe bring out is that paradoxical though it may appear, it is precisely the legal inclusion of the Dalits and the progress that they have made and continue make that constitute the Dalit problem today.
C T Kurien
Frontine
November 18, 2005.
DALITS - for long considered and treated as outcastes in a strictly caste- based social order, later attempted to be glorified as Harijans or people of God, and Scheduled Castes from the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 1950 - constitute approximately a fifth of the population of the country as also of Tamil Nadu. Their contemporary position is the theme of the two volumes brought together here.
Viswanathan's work consists of some 50 pieces published in Frontline from 1995 to 2004, which regular readers may recall. These pieces, which included the chilling accounts of the Melavalavu murders of 1997 and the Tirunelveli massacre of 1999, were the attempt of a dedicated journalist to bring to the notice of the public the atrocities against Dalits in Tamil Nadu in the 1990s and the early part of the present decade and the many ways Dalits have been responding to the situation. The collection comes with an Introduction by Ravikumar. It deals briefly with the question of the origins of the groups of people referred to as Dalits, the anti-Brahmin movement in Dravidian land and the ascendancy of non-brahmins, and the present attitude of the leading political parties towards Dalits.
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Reforms with a Dalit Face?
A fresh and powerful writer, who shows how caste pierces through layers of confusing social commentary, and illuminates contemporary trends.
Arvind Rajagopal
(New York University, ar67@nyu.edu)

Economic and Political Weekly December 4, 2004
Volume 39, No. 49; pp: 5229-5231
Chandra Bhan Prasad started writing the newspaper columns that would become this book when he read B.N. Uniyal’s article in The Pioneer in 1996, "In Search of a Dalit Journalist,"which stated that in more than 30 years of journalism, Uniyal had not met a single dalit journalist. Prasad went on to become the country’s first (and only?) regular dalit columnist, beginning in 1999 in The Pioneer.
His book is a collection of essays united by two themes.First, it offers an impassioned survey of caste discrimination, and of upper caste responses. Second and relatedly, it argues against a dalit-OBC alliance, stating that OBCs, or Shudras, to use the term Prasad applies here, are opposed to dalit empowerment. Indeed Prasad suggests that a dalit-Shudra caste antagonism shapes Indian politics and society today.
To discuss caste discrimination might seem a tedious civic ritual, at least for many upper caste readers, invoking ideals observed only in the breach. But if you read Chandra Bhan Prasad, you will find a fresh and powerful writer, who shows how caste pierces through layers of confusing social commentary, and illuminates contemporary trends.
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Much of the existing literature has characterized the advent of British colonial rule as the principal harbinger of a "revolution" of sorts in historical consciousness in Bengal (and in other parts of India). History now came to be understood as a rational-positivist discipline whereas earlier it had been formulaic, "mythic," and divorced from any material/sociopolitical context. A significant shift in historical consciousness had already occurred in 17th- and 18th-century Bengal and identifies the consolidation of Mughal rule over eastern India, accompanied by the greater penetration of a Mughal political and intellectual culture as key factors in this shift. Based on an analysis of several prose narratives (in Bengali and Sanskrit) produced in Bengal in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The British Raj changed the senerio and Dalit literature, Culture and folk were ousted from so called colonial Comrador Brahmin dominated Mainstream. Since then the Dalits in Bengal along with other underclass communities including BC, OBC, Tribals and minorities are deprived of any space in Bengali cultural situation. Transfer of power to the Brahmins of India, made these underclasses partition victims, displaced, deprived of citizenship and civil rights. Further, so called caste struggle in accordance with false and opportunist Marxist ideology deleted caste identity. Hence, the lower castes along with middle castes lost representation in every sphere of life. As the Brahmins were more than successful to destroy the Indian National Pre Independence dalit Movement ousting the militanat caste Namoshudra out of Bengali geopolitics, the infinite Brahminical dominance ensured. Unfortunately, the Marxist Statepower did not bother to change the scenerio and , rather it captured the Dalit, tribal, Muslim and refugee mobilisation with its cadre based grass root oganisation set up!
Thus, continuation of Bengali Dalit Sahitya Movement is rather a pleasant surprise!The movement for liberation of the sixty-five million if not more untouchables have been initiated by this pioneer, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. Born in a low-caste family on April 14th 1891, in Mhow, Maharashtra. He left the Hindu faith and converted to Buddhism in 1956, along with more than a million of his followers. He died on December 6th, 1956.But an increasing number of fundamentalist Hindus promote the caste system and incite many young people against reservation in seats of knowledge, jobs, equality of opportunity and other privileges given by Parliament to the underprivilege. Some Hindu chauvinist political parties have launched campaigns against the emergent Dalits, frequently using violent means.
While the historicity of the nation is now a well-established fact, the literature on nation-state formation has been largely silent on how the advent of states described as national might effect changes in definitions of state sovereignty, perhaps the most prized possession of nation-states in the international order.
The theoretical foundation of the current Dalit stir has been provided by the thought of Ambedkar and the ideals of Buddhism which he embraced with his followers; the struggle of Jyotiba Phule against caste domination which inspired Ambedkar himself to action, is also a role model for the movement.THE EMERGENCE of B. R. Ambedkar on the Indian socio-political scene as the outstanding leader of the Scheduled Castes in the first part of the 20th century led to a new awakening and a realisation of their state of deprivation among these sections of the society and stirred them to action on many fronts.
Dalit Literature - The nation-state functions as a given—the assumptive spatial framework within or against which scholars discuss sub-nationalist, anti-nationalist, or supra-nationalist movements. Thus, in narratives on nationalism the actual modality of making the nation-state escapes scrutiny. The nation-state assumes meaning either as horizon or as given framework but not as an active making, requiring study in its own right.'Dalit' literally meaning 'the oppressed' is now used widely to mean the most backward sections of the society who were considered 'untouchable' by the upper castes; while the Dalits have their traditional literature, the term 'Dalit literature' applies chefly to the contemporary writing done by educated Dalits; a great corpus of such writing that reflects Dalit life, history, anger, celebration of identity and aspirations is now available, especially in Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil, besides anthologies of translations in English; Dalit literature also implies a new subversive politics alongwith a new perception of life and society, just like 'Black literature'.
It is in the Bhakti archive that scholars such as Sontheimer and Dhere have sought to locate the triangulation of folk, subaltern (dalit), and dominant idioms. Such a "vernacular" complex in modern Marathi cultural and literary debates gives us a sense of dalit or caste subalternity as perpetually in process, always emerging, and never complete. To ask how the vernacular is configured between the folk, the subaltern, and the dominant is also to ask after the possibility of a dalit practical reason that is both less and more radical than its literary representation in the texts of Bhakti poets such as Tukaram and Chokhamela.
Those who were predominantly interested in the formal tradition were Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay ("Bibidha Rachana" or "Miscellaneous Essays," 1876) and Rajnarayan Basu ("Sekal ar Ekal" or "Then and Now," 1873). The other position was adopted by Dineshchandra Sen (Bangabhasha o Sahitya or Bengal’s Language and Literature, 1896) and Rabindranath Tagore (writings of the 1890s). With a view to establishing the roots of the Bengali literary and critical canon, the latter group began collecting songs, tales, and rituals that contained a predominantly indigenous idiom. In this way, the medieval poetic traditions began to be partly restored. Instead of being useless in the nationalist canon, as Bankim and Rajnarayan had earlier indicated, they now began to be seen as indispensable ingredients in Bengali literary history and culture. Clearly, the latter tradition has held sway since then, for it attempted to forge a relationship between the formalist and the indigenist approaches.

In fact, the raising tide of violence have been triggered by increasing numbers of Untouchables who no longer tolerate the linked oppression of caste and class (Seminar 1979. Delhi. November; Joshi 1982)). Agricultural laborers demand better wages and better access to land. In some regions there have also been waves of conversion - to Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. This too triggers violence, and also bureaucratic harassment as officials of a theoretically secular state struggle to stem desertions from the dominant religion (:2). Calls are being made for nationalisation of land (:3).
The Dalit Panthers began in the late 1960s in the slums of Bombay, as young Dalit activists developed a confrontational style to moblize their neighbourhoods against discrimination and violence (87). It is unlikely that any one organization will ever unify all Dalit. Differences in philosophy and strategy are quite as pronounced in the Dalit population as in the rest of Indian society, and personal conflict among leaders are quite as common... There is a slowly growing Dalit middle class (:108).
In 2002, the State of Gujarat burst out in violence that captured the attention of India and of the world. The torching of a train filled with militant Hindu activists returning from a political-religious pilgrimage to the highly contested Mosque/Temple site of Ayodhya, in north India, left 58 dead. In immediate response a retaliatory pogrom was launched against the Muslims of Gujarat that left about 1,000 dead The violence was condoned, and to some extent sponsored, by the state government. The Chief Minister apparently believed that the anti-Muslim violence, and accompanying anti-Muslim propaganda, would help his party, the BJP, at the polls in a forthcoming election. In fact, his party did sweep the polls by an unprecedented, unexpected, overwhelming majority. The thorough entwining of politics and religion that engulfed Gujarat—and brought victory at the polls—now threatened the secular character of the rest of India as well. Violence has continued to simmer, although on a much-reduced level; social relations in Gujarat have been degraded; and the rest of India continues to watch the State with apprehension.
The problem is especially acute in the case of colonial India, the history of which continues to be regarded as unique and incomparable to the history of colonialism in other contexts. This is particularly true in regard to settler colonies.
Manohar Biswas reports:
Annual Conference of Bangla Dalit Sahitya
Sanstha
Activity Report
Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha is an organization of
movement of Dalit literature and culture of Bengal.
People who believe in cultural and literary identity
of dalits as one different from the mainstream are
generally associated with this apolitical organization
having been working throughout West Bengal for last
one and a half decade. Every year in the month of May
or June or July the annual general body meeting of the
sanstha is organized by its members to assess the
activities of the previous financial year. Since its
activities are limited to Bengal, the language used in
the annual assessment report is Bengali. Hereunder the
reproduction in English is made a brief synopsis of
the report of 2006-07.
The report was submitted by Manohar Mouli Biswas, a
dalit writer and General Secretary of BDSS before the
house. The members who are dalit writers and activists
and some of whom are known as intellectuals of dalit
samaj took part in the discussions prior to accepted
in voice. In the beginning a warm reception was given
to the members for their kind presence in general body
meeting.
It is to be noted that this is an organization of
cultural identity and movement. They have broken their
silence and wanted to make others understand them.
They show their anger and anguish against the hatred
and oppression here in West Bengal work under the
carpet. The dalit writings are giving them exposure to
open air They are trying to remove the discrimination
whatsoever they are meeting in their daily life in the
field of education and job opportunities. The local
government is found very much reluctant to issue the
scheduled caste and scheduled tribe certificates to
the educated pupils of those communities
In the form of collective literary work, two issues of
CHATURTHA DUNIA , the literary magazine of dalit
writings were brought out, one in September, 2006 and
the other in March, 2007.
There are about 150000 reserve quota posts in the
different departments of West Bengal government are
yet to be filled by the schedule castes and scheduled
tribes. The Bangla dalit sahitya sanstha took part in
the MAHAMICHIL of about fifteen thousand people in
Kolkata along with other organizations similarly in
favour of the same cause under ‘ Sanjukta Sanrakshan
Morcha’ on 03.05 2006.
The sanstha arranged the condolence meeting in Kolkata
after sudden demise of Kanshi Ram, a Dalit messiah of
Indian social change who expired on 09.10.2006. It
also condoled the demise of its life-member
Mr.Ranendra Lal Biswas expired on 12.03.2007,
Mr.Rajendranath Golder exrired on 01.11.2007 and Mr.
Sudhanshu Kumar Neogi who expired on 28.03.2007.
During this year its members have condoled the loss
Binay Majumdar, a well-renowned poet of Bengali
literature who was born in Burma in dalit Namasudra
community of Faridpur.
Fourteenth April, the one hundred-seventeenth birthday
of Dr. B.R.Ambedkar was notably remembered by the
sanstha-members and this year they had been at the
feet of the statue of Dr. Ambedkar in Red Road of
Kolkata in the usual manner like other years to offer
a ring of flowers.
In premises of Sant Ravidas Temple, Tiljala, Kolkata a
Karmi Sammelan of a day-long programme on the 24th
June,2006 was held where the members of the sanstha
took active participation under Sanjukta Sanrakshan
Morcha.
This year on the 16th August, the 12th Chuni Kotal
Memorial Lecture was arranged at CK-101,Salt Lake,
Kolkata-91 on the subject ‘The Role of Guru Chand
Thakur in Women Emancipation and Dalit Consciousness’
and the lecture was given by Dr. Nanda Dulal Mahanta,
a specialist in the Matua cult of Bengal.
The sangiti (conference) of the sanstha happens to be
a two-days’ programme every year on the 24th and 25th
of December. In the last December,2006 it was the 15th
sangiti of the sanstha was arranged in Dr.
B.R.Ambedkar primary school of Uttar Panchannagram,
Kolkata-100. Like other year’s, competition on
different items such as recitation, debate, children’s
drawing on-sitting, discussion, drama and cultural
fest at end took place. In the morning of 25th Dec, a
procession of about 800 people carrying with the photo
of Ambedkar in front walked the locality.
In memoir of the Chaur Revolt of the untouchables of
West Bengal a memory-stone was laid on the 15th
Jan,2007 in the village Charanpur, Barabani of
Burdwan. The memory-stone was unveiled by Sunil Kumar
Das, an executive member, and on the same day a new
library has been opened in a small pukka room of the
campus. It is the ‘Bauri-land Library’. It’s opening
tape was cut by Manohar Mouli Biswas, General
Secretary of Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha.
A little magazine festival was held from 24th Jan to
28th Jan,2007 in the ground of Paschim Banga Bangla
Academy and the Calcutta Book Fair was held from 16th
Feb to 27th Feb,2007 in Yuba Bharati Krirangan,
kolkata. Since both the activities were related to the
literature and culture of Bengal, Bangla Dalit Sahitya
Sanstha was participants there with their published
books and journals.
(This is the report of activities of Bangla Dalit
Sahitya Sanstha for the financial year of 2006-07 and
it was submitted by Manohar Mouli Biswas, General
Secretary of Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sanstha)
Manohar Biswas
651 V.I.P nagar.
Gouranga Palli.
Kolkata 700100
Tel # : (033) 23451294
Cellular : +919433390044
Jamia Millia Islamia University launches two important
Jamia Millia Islamia university’s Dr K R Narayanan Centre for Dalit & Minority Studies has launched two unusual but much-sought after courses namely MA in Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policy and P G Diploma in Dalit & Minority Studies. The MA course is the first of its kind any where in India and is being launched for the first time here at Jamia from this academic session, whereas the first batch of the part-time Diploma course has already passed out from the Centre.
The fact that Social exclusion has come to acquire serious concern in academic debates, political discussions and intellectual discourses and also the fact that the tendency of social exclusion is found in all societies balkanizing social cohesion and harmony, a course on Social Exclusion becomes relevant and significant. Though the problem is as old as the civilization itself, it was only in the recent past that the issue assumed much significance. An important reason, inter alia, has been the economic reform process and the consequent liberalization privatization and globalization policies(LPG) that has shaken the infrastructural foundations in many developing societies. The model of development advocated by the New Economic Policies (NEP) has come to be viewed as a design in the marginalization of majority of the population all over the world. Since the early 1990s a perceptible shift has taken place in the developing world, in terms of the state withdrawing from the social responsibilities and moving towards privatization. It is widely perceived that the model of development popularly known as the World Bank model has widened the gap between the rich and the poor by marginalizing millions among the commonweal.
In a predominantly welfare state like India , state’s retreat from the welfare sector has excluded a large segment of the population from the path of development. Under the new dispensation the marginalized strata are left with no option- but to resort to violent socio-economic movements. In view of the growing unrest among the excluded groups it is pertinent to study the problem of social exclusion and its possible implications on the society at large.
There will be five papers every year however, in the final year an option to write a dissertation in lieu of two optional papers.
Post Graduate Diploma in Dalit and Minorities Studies is open to post-graduate and graduate students with an interest in Dalit and Minorities issues. This is a part time programme that can be pursued along with regular post-graduate courses. This Programme offers three papers including Dalit Movements in India, minorities in India and research methodology.
An Oriya poet makes note of literature in the region
Deepa H Ramakrishnan
Binapani Debta speaks to poets in Puducherry

PUDUCHERRY: A separate literature for Dalits by Dalits is something new to this young Oriya poet from West Bengal. Binapani Debta has been talking to writers from Puducherry about the literature in these parts, and she found that Dalit literature, feminist literature, and folklore were the particular traits of the region.
"I have never come across Dalit literature in Orissa or West Bengal. The only reference that I have seen [on the subject] is a research paper from Maharashtra. I spoke to several authors, both Dalits and non-Dalits and they argue in favour of a separate literature for the Dalits," she said. Ms. Debta is on a travel grant of the Sahitya Akademi from Kolkata, and is doing a small project on the recent trends in Indian literature, particularly in the southern region.
She spoke to 10 writers, including Manoj Das, Panchangam, Kee Rajanarayanan, Visalam, Gunasekaran, Nagasundaram, P. Raja Pudhuvai Rajani and Uma Pushparaj, and discussed various issues with them. Ms. Debta said that all the writers she met, whether young or old, were original.
"I have grown up reading the stories of Manoj Das, who is in Puducherry and is a winner of both the Padma Award and the Sahitya Akademi Award. I was fascinated to meet him and discuss the current trend. But, I am sad because he said he will not be writing any short stories in future and that he is waiting for an inspiration for a novel. He said that he had been impressed by Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, and that the one that touched him most was the one on human immortality."
She found Kee Rajanarayanan to be a very great writer, whose strength lay in the folklore that he uses. `But, the same strength is also his weakness, because people who want to translate it into other languages are unable to do so." She said that writer Panchangam felt that one need not necessarily be a Dalit to write for their cause.
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Superstar Dhasal
SUDHANVA DESHPANDE

Dilip Chitre packages Namdeo Dhasal for the globalised reader, properly glossed and sanitised.
THERE is nothing that can quite describe the sensation of reading the poetry of Namdeo Dhasal. One's hair stands on end. One feels slapped and spat upon. Vijay Tendulkar, no stranger to street vocabulary, wrote the introduction to Dhasal's first collection of poems, Golpitha, about Mumbai's underbelly, Kamatipura. Tendulkar writes: "This is a world where the night is reversed into the day, where stomachs are empty or half-empty, of desperation against death, of the next day's anxieties, of bodies left over after being consumed by shame and sensibility, of insufferably flowing sewages, of diseased young bodies lying by the gutters braving the cold by folding up their knees to their bellies, of the jobless, of beggars, of pickpockets, of holy mendicants, of neighbourhood tough guys and pimps... "
Out of this "loathsome and nauseating universe" (as Dilip Chitre puts it in his Introduction to the present volume) emerged Namdeo Dhasal's voice, unique, shocking, searing: "Man, you should explode / Yourself to bits to start with / ... / You should carry acid bulbs and such things on you / You should be ready to carve out anybody's innards without batting an eyelid / ... / Launch a campaign for not growing food, kill people all and sundry by starving them to death / Kill oneself too, let disease thrive, make all trees leafless."
As a Dalit, Dhasal is plagued by memories of loss: "Generation after untouchable generation has resulted in me / And this is how I lost the village of my dreams / Its green mynah, its green tree." He engages with history, and identifies with every "outsider": "My original ancestors were dark Dravidian non-Aryans / Followed by Scythians, Huns, Kushans, Turks, Iranians and Afghans / Then white soldiers in uniform and the Firangs / Mixtures of races and castes / The soil of this country never practiced untouchability."
Dhasal can be tender as well, as for instance in his poem Mandakini Patil: A Young Prostitute, My Intended Collage: "I've been dazzled by your worn-down and lackluster face. / From that lackluster look you descend inside me; and stream inside me; and appropriate me. / Is that the scream of an ending; or is the end itself a scream beginning?" He can be vulnerable, too, as we see in a later poem: "What is it that coddles me? / Is that a tree, or a woman laden with many branches?"
Dhasal is also a political activist. He was one of the founder-members of the militant Dalit Panther. In Maharashtra itself, Dhasal is known as much for his poetry as for his activism. Indeed, he sees no distinction between the two: "I am a committed person and I am constantly involved in political activity. However, during these activities, I write poems too." As Chitre puts it: "Namdeo cannot separate his activism from his poetry, and his poetry is only the literary form of his activism." It is perhaps no coincidence that Golpitha came out in 1972, the same year that Dalit Panther was formed.
As an activist, Dhasal has repeatedly taken shocking political positions - in 1975, he supported the Emergency; in 1997, he allied with the Shiv Sena, to which the Dalit Panther had been violently opposed for decades; in 2006, he appeared on the RSS platform. Dhasal knew exactly which bed he had jumped into. Eleven years earlier, in 1995, Dhasal had published his collection Ya Sattet Jeev Ramat Nahi (The Soul Doesn't Find Peace in this Regime). In a poem on December 6, he had described the Hindu Right thus: "Yesterday they murdered Gandhi / Now they want to put the whole nation to death." He had then nothing but stinging contempt for the Hindu Right: "Not even a diseased dog would care to piss / On the cadavers of their forebears."
His personal life has been tumultuous. His wife, Malika, herself a leading poet, daughter of the legendary Communist bard Amar Sheikh, published in 1984 her autobiography, Mala Udhwastha Hoychai (I Want to Destroy Myself) in which she details her difficult relationship with her husband.
There is something of a rock star in Namdeo Dhasal. He delights in shocking, in shaking up the staid, in stirring up controversies. The more his critics are exasperated, the more he enjoys being outrageous. Which is why it is intriguing that Dilip Chitre completely sidesteps Dhasal's cozying up to the Hindu Right. Chitre writes a long introduction to the volume, follows it up with another essay on Dhasal's Mumbai, and concludes with his delight and despair in translating the poetry; while all three pieces discuss Dhasal's politics at some length, he never once mentions Dhasal's support of the Shiv Sena or the RSS. Ordinarily, this would be called intellectual dishonesty. But Dhasal's own political positions are so well known - at least in Maharashtra - and he is so unapologetic about them, that one is simply amused at Chitre's touching hope that readers would not notice.
Chitre is himself a major poet, adept at working two languages, Marathi and English. Dhasal speaks only Marathi. That Chitre does a fine job of translating the virtually untranslatable Dhasal is clear. The volume as a whole has been clearly planned and packaged by Chitre, to introduce this "lumpen" and "ruffian" poet to the wider reading public. Chitre has been Dhasal's friend for 40 years. One is apt to feel protective about one's friends.
But Chitre does more. He puts a spin on Dhasal's politics. Consider Dhasal's meeting with Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. Chitre puts it thus: "In 1975, the Maharashtra police had about 360 charge-sheets filed against Dalit Panther... and Namdeo Dhasal, who evaded arrest, was on their `wanted' list... . Indira Gandhi proclaimed a national Emergency... . Recognising the implications of this for Dalit Panther and him, Namdeo went to Delhi, sought a meeting with Mrs Gandhi - who gave him a patient hearing - and talked about atrocities committed against Dalits. Mrs Gandhi ordered the Maharashtra government to drop all charges against members of Dalit Panther and their leader, Namdeo Dhasal... . There was no hidden deal in this."
So, according to Chitre, Dhasal so moved Mrs Gandhi with descriptions of atrocities against Dalits that she dropped all charges against him and his p