The National Commission for Scheduled Castes Sunday rejected the Uttar Pradesh government's claims of bringing down incidents of violence against Dalits, terming them 'baseless and misleading'. The commission's newly-appointed chairman P.L. Punia said the state government released figures of only the first six months of this year, and atrocities against Dalits had actually registered a steep rise over the three-and-a-half year rule of Bahujan Samaj Party, according to statistics by National...

The Uttar Pradesh government today termed as "baseless" the allegations made by the Chairman of National Commission for Scheduled Castes that crimes against SC and ST communities in the state have increased."State chief secretary Atul Kumar Gupta has forwarded entire data related to these issues to the NCSC while terming the allegations of its Chairman PL Punia as baseless," an official spokesman said here.Punia during his visit to Lucknow on...

Dalit activist Meena Kandasamy: This is something that has to be changed Dalits make up more than 16% of India's population of one billion. Yet, despite years of campaigning and state intervention, many of them still face discrimination in society. Their hardship has been highlighted at an exhibition in London. A little girl leans against a stained turquoise concrete wall. You first notice her face, which appears deep in thought - then your...

In a shocking incident in Rajasthan, three Dalits were fined Rs 45 thousand by a Panchayat for daring to drink water from a public tap. A case has now been registered against the accused. These Dalits have been discriminated against not just by the upper castes, but also by Muslims. The three of them from Randhisar village near Bikaner were fined Rs 15,000 each by their Muslim sarpanch Gope Khan. Their...

Untouchability was not so much a sin as a calculated crime. But it is easier for everyone, even some victims, to treat it as a sin, for acceptance of moral culpability costs nothing. The recent walkabout (padayatre) of Basavananda Maadara Channaiah Swamiji, head of a Dalit matha (gurupeetha) in Chitradurga, in a predominantly Brahmin-inhabited agrahara in Mysore, and the cordial, indeed reverential, welcome he received highlight the changing formal perceptions about...