Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

-The Times of India   The Puri district police on Saturday denied that chairman of the National SC/ST Commission P L Puniya had entered a Kali temple at Ranapada village near Brahmagiri. A section of the media had reported that Puniya had entered the temple, breaking an age-old ban on the entry of dalits into temples in Puri. IIC (Brahmagiri police station) Debi Prasad Dash said Puniya, along with senior officials of...

-NDTV   A board outside a temple for the Goddess Kali orders dalits to stop at this point. "Harijans can pray from here," it declares. The warning sign was put up in August last year after three schoolgirls entered the shrine to offer Prasad to the Goddess, an icon of empowerment and Shakti. The caretaker of the temple in Orissa's Puri district offers no apologies for the discrimination. "It is against tradition,"...

Names 7 from mob that burnt to death his father, step-sister Mirchpur victim Tara Chand's son Amar Lal who was called to depose as a court witness by the Sessions court here hearing the Mirchpur caste violence case on Thursday named seven members of the Jat community who he said were part of a mob of 300-400 people from Mirchpur village in neighbouring Haryana that burnt to death his father and...

For decades, the victims of communal and targeted violence have been denied protections of law that the rest of us take for granted. It's time to end this injustice. In a vibrant and mature democracy, there would be no need to have special laws to prosecute the powerful or protect the weak. If a crime takes place, the law would simply take its course. In a country like ours, however, life...