Dalit News on the World Wide Web
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The Untouchable Country, a documentary was screened in the Russian Cultural Centre on 30.8.2001 at 6.00 in the evening.
This short-film is made with a view to highlight the acts of violence perpetrated against a section of the Indian people who are labelled as untouchables and to bring them to the notice of the United Nations. This will be screened in the conference to be convened in Durban, South Africa, from 31st August to 7th September against racism.
The Untouchable Country is directed by R. R. Srinivasan, who has directed other documentaries of a class like 'Nadhiyin Maranam,' 'Sidhilam,' 'Kaanamal Povadhu,' 'Suzhar Pudhir, 'Vizhigalai Moodungal.' This documentary running for 30 minutes has been made by Dalit Media Network.
Chennai online
Forget the masjid-mandir dispute, it's a Buddhist Vihara at stake in the disputed site at Ayodhya. And now it's a Dalits versus VHP fight.
In a new political twist to the Ayodha tangle, Dalit leader Udit Raj (Ram Raj) has threatened that if the VHP backtracks and insists on the construction of the temple, he will lead thousands of Dalits to "physically resist" the kar sewaks and sants on March 15 at Ayodhya.
"We have a mass base. We had confronted them on November 4 last year. We are prepared. Thousands of Dalits will stop the VHP physically if they defy the Constitution and construct a temple at the disputed site," Udit Raj declared in the capital on Thursday.
Hindustan Times
DURBAN, South Africa/GENEVA, 6 September 2001 (LWI) - “Dalits’ rights are human rights!” Wearing this slogan on headbands, a large group of women and men, mostly from India, ran from panel discussions to demonstrations during the NGO Forum at the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Associated Intolerance (WCAR). They are representing the 250 million Dalits of India who comprise the outcast substratum of Indian society. “Here in Durban we want to show the world that we are mercilessly and shamelessly oppressed in India,” one young Dalit told a television reporter.
Lutheran World Information
The more than 40 beds in the female burns ward of the Victoria Government Hospital are always occupied. There is a typical occupancy profile in this ward. The women who come here are mostly young, married, from lower middle-class or poor economic backgrounds. Most of them are victims of the most vicious forms of marital violence. It is here that we get a searing picture of the horror and violence of a death by burning. The wards are as busy as a railway platform, and indeed as unclean.
Frontline, Volume 16 - Issue 17, Aug 14 - 27, 1999
Shoe as weapon:-
1- It does not require any license from police or District administration.
2- No extra money is required for the purchase of shoes.
3- It is a twenty-four hours companion.
4- If applied (shoe-treatment), no cognizable offence is booked against the offender.
5- If applied, it has deeper and long-lasting impression on the victim.
6- The offenders of shoe-treatment cannot be branded as terrorists.
7- This weapon is more effective than the bullet as it has no adverse effects on the offenders.
What we require? Courage. Just courage:-
BSS
Dalits are forced to clean public toilettes and remove human feces, usually with their hands. They sweep up after Indians defecate in the streets and move dead animals. According to an extensive report on caste by the respected Human Rights Watch, large numbers of Dalit women are routinely raped and forced to become sex slaves for Hindu priests and land owners. Of India's estimated 40 million indentured laborers - a modern form of slavery - most are Dalit children, often sold into lifelong servitude by starving parents.
INDIA'S `HIDDEN APARTHEID'
bigeye.com
Murder, rape and arms smuggling
are a way of life for the sadhus of the
matts in Ayodhya and Bihar. Read:
Week
Vrindavan is a pilgrimage town now home to thousands of destitute widows.
Ashtabala Mundo is one of thousands of widows who have been driven by poverty to the holy town.
She was married off when she was still a baby and widowed when she was still a child.
"We have to come and sing here morning, noon and night and for all that I only get is $10 a month," she said.
"By the time I've paid the rent, I can't afford to buy cooking oil. So I often go all day without a hot meal," Mrs Mundo said.
BBC
Website on Nepal and Himalayan Studies
Press articles
By J. Venkatesan
NEW DELHI, OCT. 27. Several human rights groups have voiced concern over the promulgation of the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) 2001, as they feel that some provisions are harsher than the provisions of the defunct TADA.
Hindu
Liz Stuart
Thursday January 10, 2002
Guardian Weekly
The word "dalit" raises a blank, and "untouchable" just a small nod of recognition. Outside India the discrimination against more than 250m people born outside the caste system remains a rumour. Most of those aware of the caste system think it has been abolished. Martin Macwan aims to expose and kick away India's hidden apartheid.
N Sathiya Moorthy in Chennai
After 'Hindu Dalits', now it is the turn of 'Dalit Christians' in Tamil Nadu to convert to Islam.
Protesting against the 'upper caste Udayar Christians' to deny them access to the irrigation tank, 'Dalit Christians' in S Kavanur village in backward southern district of Ramanathapuram have decided to embrace Islam in the company of 'Hindu Dalits'.
Rediff News
Kalyani Shanker
(New Delhi, December 15)
THE CENTRE is looking into what is being described as "deadly secret documents" provided by former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar to the Speaker in Parliament two days ago. Mr Chandra Shekhar claimed that the documents were "a threat to national security". The fact that the documents have been downloaded from websites knocks the bottom out of the claim that they are "deadly secret".
Hindustan Times
My book, The God of Small Things, has had a very noisy journey into the world. Like other books, it has been praised and criticised, loved and sometimes hated. Amidst the din of this peculiarly 20th century personality cult around authors, people often remember the writers and forget their books. The reason that I am thrilled to be here is because I'm sure that this will not be the case with you. I know that you share the anger and outrage which lies at the heart of The God of Small Things.
Frontline (Hindu)
India has the largest population of street children in the world.2 At least eighteen million children live or work on the streets of urban India, laboring as porters at bus or railway terminals; as mechanics in informal auto-repair shops; as vendors of food, tea, or handmade articles; as street tailors; or as ragpickers, picking through garbage and selling usable materials to local buyers.
Human rights watch
The Dalits: 23 year old Radha Bathran is an educated, intelligent young Indian woman. She's studying for a Master's degree and hopes to become a journalist.
But many potential employers in her home country think she should be limited to doing society's most dirty and undesirable jobs simply because she was born into India's lowest social class, the Dalit or 'untouchable' caste
BBC
Luke Harding in New Delhi
Guardian
Wednesday May 9, 2001
A new report on the plight of lower caste women in rural India reveals a depressing portrait of rape, sexual abuse and harassment, and suggests that it is virtually impossible for victims even to file a complaint at a police station, let alone achieve justice.
Guardian
Daily, India’s 250 million dalits face constant discrimination and humiliation. As they fall outside the Hindu caste system, they are considered to be without identity and rights. Traditionally referred to as ‘untouchables’, they are generally treated as if they were impure and less than human. Ramani Leathard, Christian Aid's Asia Communications Officer, reports.
Christian News
According to Kancha Ilaiah, unless are given the right to priesthood scourge of untouchability cannot be erased.“The right to priesthood for all is guaranteed in every religion except Hinduism and if this wrong is not corrected Dalits would prefer to embrace other religions’’. Times of India
The Hindutva ideology is based on lies and distortions about India's history and culture, but even so the attack on the Christian community is astounding for its colossal combination of ignorance and arrogance. The constant refrain of the RSS school is that Christians are abusing 'our hospitality' as though India was the fiefdom of the RSS. By calling them 'alien', the saffron brigade appears completely ignorant of the fact that Christianity came to India in the first century AD, long before colonialism.
Indian Currents
THE NECKLACES SYMBOLIZE THE BONDAGE that defines devadasis girls from the lowest caste whose parents have given them to local goddesses or temples as human "offerings." Married to God before puberty, the devadasis, many of whom live in the temples, become sexual servants to the villages' upper-caste men after their first menstrual period
News Week,Inc
For thousands of years, women have suffered inhuman treatment under the monstrous laws of Brahmanism. The debilitating effects of Vedic sati, dowry, Vedic female infanticide and inhuman punishments have crushed Indian women to the status of sub-humans. Indeed, in no other civilization is the status of women worse than in Brahmanism, and never was it worse than during the Brahmanic Dark Ages (1500 BC - 1250 AD)
Dalitstan Journal
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