INSIDE his hovel of branches and rags, a grizzled pauper called Badshah Kale keeps a precious object. It is a note, scrawled by a policeman and framed by Mr Kale, proclaiming that he “is not a thief”. For members of his Pardhi tribe, who are among some 60m Indians considered criminal by tradition, this is treasure. Squatting beside Mr Kale, on a turd-strewn wasteland outside Ashti, a village in India’s western...

The fear of khap looms large over Haryana with 40 members of the Dalit (Valmiki) community at Mirchpur village in Hisar district — where two people were burnt alive by Jats last week — fleeing their homes, rattled by khap support of Jat violence against them. Their fears were compounded on Sunday when, in a khap meeting in Jind, 300 khap representatives called for intensifying the agitation against the Hindu...

Haryana’s powerful khap panchayats have served an ultimatum on all MPs and MLAs from the state to extend their support to amending the Hindu Marriage Act to ban same gotra Marriages. The panchayats are up in arms against the judiciary and police after a Karnal court recently sentenced five people to death and one to life imprisonment for killing a young couple, Manoj and Babli, who had married going against...

A Marriage hall in Kolkata is packed with 1200 of India’s poorest citizens. They have trekked here from all over West Bengal, from remote forests and dingy alleyways, from Howrah, East Midnapore, South 24 Parganas. They have come because there is a story to tell, a brutal story that may otherwise never be told. Finally, there are people willing to hear. These people may never bring justice; may never be...

“She was thrown in the garbage dump outside the village for dogs that ate her. Her only fault — she was the fourth girl born in a poor family,” said Harshinder Kaur, paediatric doctor here, recalling the first time she witnessed discrimination against female infants in Punjab's rural side. “Over a decade ago, I couldn't save that infant and ever since I try to speak for the girls who never...