Category Archives: Dalits

‘Why are you asleep?’ Rahul Gandhi pleads with India’s low castes to vote out Modi

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On his 4,000-mile march across the country, congressman tells voters to wake up to the vast gulf between them and the rich

His voice hoarse from all the speeches he had made during his 4,000-mile march across the breadth of India, Rahul Gandhi urged people at a rally in Uttar Pradesh state to think hard.

Specifically, to think hard about caste. “Are there any of you Dalits or other low castes in the judiciary?” the leading face of India’s opposition Congress party, asked the crowd. “Are any of you in the media? Do any of you own even one of India’s 200 top companies? Of the civil servant class which rules this country, are any of you among them?

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Indian journalist freed on bail after being jailed for two years without trial

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Muslim reporter Siddique Kappan had been charged under draconian anti-terrorism laws

Indian journalist Siddique Kappan, who was held in jail for two years without trial, has walked free after being granted bail in a case human rights groups alleged was politically motivated.

Kappan, a Muslim journalist from the southern state of Kerala, was arrested in October 2020 as he was on his way to the northern state of Uttar Pradesh to report on the high-profile case of a Dalit girl who was gang-raped and later died.

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Jailed Indian journalist gets bail almost two years after arrest

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Muslim journalist Siddique Kappan arrested while covering gang-rape and killing of Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh

A journalist who has been in jail for nearly two years for trying to meet the family of a young Dalit woman allegedly gang-raped in Hathras in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has been granted bail.

The supreme court of India issued the bail order to Siddique Kappan, 43, a Delhi-based Muslim freelance journalist, on Friday.

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‘The heaven of film-making’: how a Dalit orphan got to tell her own story

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A gift of a camera inspired Belmaya Nepali to rise above poverty and abuse to make documentaries

• I Am Belmaya review

Belmaya Nepali’s life changed for ever when, at 14, she was given a camera.

The British film-maker Sue Carpenter had come to Pokhara, a tourist city in central Nepal, to run a photography project with disadvantaged girls living in an institution. One of those girls was Belmaya.

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Gail Omvedt: US sociologist who ‘lived by her principles’ among India’s poor

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The respected academic, who has died aged 80, was a leading anti-caste campaigner and fought tirelessly for women’s rights

At the village of Kasegaon, in India’s rural western region of Maharashtra, huge crowds turned up for the funeral in August of a US-born, white sociologist whom many local people saw as one of their own.

Most of the mourners were Dalits, who belong to the lowest caste in Indian society, previously deemed “untouchables”.

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‘Stop patronising me and give me an interview’: the female journalists speaking up for India’s poor

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India’s only all-women news organisation is the subject of an award-winning documentary. The film-makers explain their inspiring courage and energy

A woman explains how a group of four men repeatedly broke into her house and raped her; six times so far. Did she go to the police? Yes, but officers refused to investigate. Instead, they threatened her and her husband. “These men can do anything. They can even kill us,” the victim says to the reporter, Meera, who is filming on her smartphone. As Meera leaves, the woman’s husband tells her that she is their only hope. “We don’t trust anyone except Khabar Lahariya.”

Khabar Lahariya is India’s only all-female news organisation. Based in Uttar Pradesh, its journalists passionately believe in reporting rural issues through a feminist lens.

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‘We can do anything’: the Indian girls’ movement fighting child marriage

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At 17, Priyanka Bairwa refused her arranged marriage. Instead, she started Rajasthan Rising to help thousands of others and call for free education

Priyanka Bairwa was 15 when her family began to look for a husband for her. The pandemic sped up the process, as schools shut and work dried up. By October 2020, her parents had settled on a suitable boy from their village of Ramathra in the district of Karauli, Rajasthan.

But Bairwa, now 18, wouldn’t hear of it. “During the pandemic, every family in the village was eager to marry off their girls. You’d have to invite less people, there were fewer expenses,” says Bairwa. “But I refused to be caught in a child marriage. There was a major backlash – constant fights. I finally threatened to run away and, fearing I would do something drastic, my family called it off. My mother convinced them to let me study and I joined a college.”

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Caste aside: hide names to curb Dalit job bias in India, study says

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Concealing candidates’ surnames in the ultra-competitive civil service exam would help to overcome caste prejudice, report urges

The exam is considered to be the country’s toughest – about a million people sit it every year vying for only a thousand or so vacancies in India’s hallowed civil service. Now a report suggests that it would be much fairer if all the candidates’ surnames were kept secret throughout the application process, as about 90% of Indian surnames reveal a person’s caste.

Candidates’ names are currently concealed, along with their religion, when they sit the written tests. But after the exam, the names of those who qualify for the final interview stage are used. And this, according to the report, scuppers the chances of Dalits, the lowest Hindu caste once called “untouchables”, because of the innate bias of interviewers.

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‘Untouchable’ Bollywood poster provokes outrage over caste stereotypes

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Upper-caste actor playing Dalit politician Mayawati shown dishevelled and holding broom in publicity for new film

A picture of a woman holding a broom. Anywhere else, the image might pass unnoticed. But in India the poster for the film Madam Chief Minister, loosely based on the life of politician Mayawati, who is a Dalit, has triggered uproar for perpetuating caste stereotypes.

Bollywood actor Richa Chadha, who plays Mayawati, tweeted an image of the poster ahead of the film’s release later this month. She is shown looking dishevelled and holding the kind of large broom used by municipal roadsweepers. The tagline of the poster reads: Untouchable, Unstoppable.

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Caste-based area names to be changed across Indian state to ‘increase unity’

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Millions of people in Maharashtra to have neighbourhoods renamed but critics say plan means little without behavioural change

The names of neighbourhoods in the Indian state of Maharashtra based on the caste of people who have traditionally lived there are to be be changed, to reflect the country’s evolving attitudes.

In the same way Indian surnames reveal the caste to which a person belongs, neighbourhoods have acquired names based on the caste of the community that predominates.

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Nepal to investigate Dalit killings following arranged marriage dispute

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Committee set up to investigate deaths of young men allegedly chased into river as a result of ‘caste-based discrimination’

The Nepalese government has established an independent high-level committee to investigate the killings of six young men, including four Dalits, whose deaths drew condemnation from the UN human rights chief.

Friends Nabaraj BK, 20, Sanju BK, 21, Lokendra Sunar, 18, Tikaram Sunar, 20, Govinda Shahi, 17, and Ganesh Budha, 17, died on 23 May, after a dispute with a family.

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Coming out as Dalit: how one Indian author finally embraced her identity

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Raised to hide her low caste, Yashica Dutt’s new book traces her realisation that her history is one of oppression, not shame

Pretending not to be a Dalit took a heavy toll on the young Yashica Dutt.

Her mother, Shashi, was so determined to protect her three children from the discrimination of the Hindu caste system that relegates Dalits to the periphery of society that she pretended the family were Brahmin.

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