-The Indian Express Bulandshahr: Life, for them, had never been easy. The couple and their family of 16 live in a two-room tenement and the father, who works at a local grocery store for a daily wage of Rs 200, is the only earning member. Theirs is also one of four Jatav Dalit families in a majority Lodhe Rajput village just outside Bulandshahr city, and have been under pressure for long. But...

-The Indian Express They are denied entry to temples, given restricted access to water, made to work for a pittance. Now that Orissa's Dalits are asserting themselves against traditions, many are facing ostracism or violent attacks. Debabrata Mohanty reports Until a month before Naveen Patnaik became Orissa's chief minister in March 2000, Dalit labourer Ganapati Naik, now 42, had been living a happy if impoverished life with his bride and parents in...

-The Hindu In the recent incidents at Dhule and Thangadh, the communal bias of the police was caught on camera and is there for anyone who cares to see Images of the Delhi police lobbing tear gas shells at and using water canons on protesters at India Gate on a Sunday, December 23, 2012, who were agitating against the gang rape of a young girl are embedded in the nation’s psyche, courtesy...

-Tehelka Feminism cannot be a moving force if it is not grounded in the lived experiences of its patrons I HAVE always been conscious of the inequalities of gender and caste. A series of matriarchal, independent women in my family had been asserting and stretching their roles in society even before I was born. My great grandmother, Neelamma, set aside her caste prejudices to get her younger daughter — my grandmother...

-Manorama Online In the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, four characters have differing recollections of the same event. Did the samurai stab himself with his wife's dagger? Which of them, if any, is telling the truth? I felt like this after the session at last month's Jaipur Literature Festival during which Ashis Nandy said, among other odd things, “It is a fact that most of the corrupt come from the...