Category: Uncategorized
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Archives: One day I cursed that mother-fucker God. by Keshav Meshram
One day I cursed that mother-fucker God. He just laughed shamelessly. My neighbour – a born-to-the pen Brahman- was shocked. He looked at me with his castor-oil face and said, ‘How can you say such things to the Source of the Indescribable, Qualityless, Formless Juggernaut? Shame on you for trying to catch the dharma-hood in…
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ARGUMENTS WITH BILGRAMI: REVISITING GANDHI’S IDEAS OF SECULARISM
Secularism is one of the important pillars of India’s Constitution and the guiding light of its national polity. “In the early years after independence, it was believed that secularism would fast acquire a consensus as a value underlying Indian polity. But today it is under fierce attack” (Mohanty, 1989). Notions of Secularism are shrouded by…
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Archives: Self-introduction by Neerav Patel
be my guest someday, sawarna [high caste hindu]. if you want to feel the pangs of woe come in the guise of an untouchable. see, yonder is the way to our village from the city. avoid that tallest mansion – our young girls are seduced there customarily. that landlord is the king of our village…
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Social Progress Index: States and Districts of India 2022
Happy to have been a part of preparing ‘Social Progress Index: States and Districts of India’ report for 2022 SPI is a comprehensive tool that can serve as a holistic measure of a country’s social progress at the national and sub-national levels. The index assesses states and districts based on 12 components across three critical…
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Persistence of Caste as the axial principle of stratification
Based on his twenty-one-year fieldwork, Jonathan P Parry authored ‘Classes of Labour: Work and Life in a Central Indian Steel Town’, in which he argued the weakening of the caste system as a principle of stratification. According to Parry, with a few exceptions, class system is key for social divisions and in determining social behaviour…
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Book Review: Police matters: the everyday state and caste politics in South India, 1900–1975, by Radha Kumar
This book explores the role of state policing in shaping caste politics in the Tamil countryside from 1900 to 1975. Using the archival records preserved in rural police stations, the author argues that policing as a coercive instrument of state power produced and deployed knowledge of caste in its interactions with subject-citizens through routine police…
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The Essence of Right to Vote in Indian Democracy
JBS Haldane, an eminent British biologist of 20th Century, who settled in India and later became Citizen of India towards the end of his life, when asked by an American Journalist about what makes him proud to be an India, he said, “I happen to be proud of being a citizen of India, which is…
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Democracy or Dictatorship?
In democratic societies, expressing displeasure on the government and political leadership is routine affair. It is characteristic of any ideal democracy to allow the space for people to express their discontent on its working. At times, individuals detest democracy itself as the cause of miseries in the nation and advocate for replacing the democratic system…
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Rejuvenation of the Buckingham Canal
The rapidity of transformation of human civilization increased manifold since the inventions are made in the mode of transportation. Even in India, beginning with the colonial period and after independence, continuous efforts are made to improve the transportation networks in the country connecting the length and breadth of the subcontinent. At present, governments are developing…
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