Articles by Anand Teltumbde

Dividing Dalits: Writings on Sub-Categorisation of Scheduled Castes edited by Yagati Chinna Rao

If castes are counted in the 2011 census, it will be the second biggest blow to the emancipation project of the oppressed, the first being the Mandal reservations.

The idea of Maharashtra had nothing to do with Marathi parochialism. The radical tinge that resonated in the slogan "Samyukta Maharashtra, Socialist Maharashtra" implied that the new state was to favour the interests of workers, farmers, dalits and minorities, with Marathi merely providing the sociocultural glue in its shaping. Tragically, what Maharashtra has been reduced to by its leading, regressive politicians, is the very antithesis of what it was designed to be.

Reservation has proved to be a potent weapon in the hands of the ruling classes to control the political barometer and as a strategic tool to manipulate people. Our progressive automatons need to learn this basic fact. The women's reservation bill, in its current form, can benefit the major political parties, with a relatively larger feudal hold on the population, to get their women elected to a disproportionately larger number of reserved seats and improve their tally.

The following three incidents reflect the utter lumpenisation of the polity in India today: (1) the manhandling of Abu Asim Azmi, the Samajwadi Party MLA in the Maharashtra assembly by the newly elected MLAs of Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena while taking the oath in Hindi in defiance of the diktat of their leader; (2) the unearthing of the mind-boggling loot by Madhu Koda, the ex-chief minister of Jharkhand, a relatively minor politician belonging to a scheduled tribe, who could so diligently execute such a huge loot in such a short time; and (3) the grant of parole by the Delhi government to the infamous prisoner Manu Sharma, the killer of Jessica Lall, on the ground of ill health of his mother, and for running his business. And yet, these incidents are taken as normal occurrences in this country.