Articles by Anand Teltumbde

The Maharashtra government has renounced its freeship scheme for students belonging to the ranks of the oppressed and has thereby jeopardised the future of 13 lakh students. Their parents and the concerned schools have challenged such delinquent governance in the courts, but the government seems bent on implementing the neo-liberal policy of self-financing of schools.

Operation Geronimo evoked the most farcical reactions in India. Besides approvingly endorsing US imperial arrogance, the media also began advocating that India should carry out similar surgical operations to kill the likes of Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed hiding in Pakistan.

It was heartening to witness dalits in Saurashtra, deprived of the use of land that was de jure theirs, marching to take possession of it. One was reminded of an event in Mahad on 20 March 1927 when the delegates to the Bahishkrit Conference had marched under the leadership of their newfound leader B R Ambedkar to the Chavadar Tank to assert their civil rights to use its water.

With the arrest of Sudhir Dhawale, the well-known dalit social activist and editor of Vidrohi, another Binayak Sen has emerged, charged with sedition and declaring war against the Indian state.

In the 1880s, in colonial India a Faizabad court disallowed the building of a Ram temple on the Ram chabutara, but now, a high court in independent India, swearing by the lofty ideals of the Constitution, relies on the "faith and belief of the Hindus" to decide a property dispute, thereby retrogressing to pre-modernity.