Anand Patwardhan’s paean to Dalits, that took 14 years to compose, probes even as it praises, says Saroj Giri THERE IS an entrenched tendency to represent Dalits fighting for rights and reservations as just (another) competitive bloc vying for self-interest and power. It leads to a pernicious inversion: ‘Dalit rights’ dividing the nation along caste lines. Victim as perpetrator! Anand Patwardhan’s film Jai Bhim Comrade takes us beyond the grid of...

Why kill over a people’s dietary preference for beef? “The university and all teaching systems that appear simply to disseminate knowledge are made to maintain a certain social class in power, and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class.... The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack...

A classroom reflecting life's diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching teaching experience. Now that the Supreme Court has validated the Right to Education (RTE), its success will depend on teachers. When I said this to a friend who teaches in a primary school, she said, “you are being unfair.” I was startled to hear this response because what I had said was common sense. When I pointed this...

-NYDailyNews.com Recent deaths of battered baby girls in different parts of India have jolted the nation's conscience. The United Nations ranks India as the deadliest place for female children. A few days back, 3-month-old Afreen died of cardiac arrest in a southern Indian hospital. She bore signs of beatings and cigarette burns, allegedly abused by her father. The 25-year-old father was apparently upset at having a daughter instead of a son, his wife...

Bollywood has now been blamed for fuelling India's love for alcohol. Alcohol use in Bollywood movies is directly influencing the drinking habits of India's adolescents, according to a new study presented on Friday at the World Congress of Cardiology in Dubai. Overall 10% of the students (aged between 12-16 years) surveyed in the study had already tried alcohol. But students that had been most exposed to alcohol use in Bollywood movies...