-Live Mint Preventing entry of Dalits, tribespeople to places of worship should be made a punishable offence, says NAC Preventing Dalits and tribespeople from entering places of worship will be made a punishable offence under legal changes proposed by the National Advisory Council (NAC), which sets the social policy for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Obstructing members of such groups from using community resources will also be made an offence under...

-Kashmir Times If psychologist Ashis Nandy had planned to ignite a potentially ugly controversy at the Jaipur Literary Festival, he couldn't have done better than by insinuating intimate links between corruption and Dalits, Adivasis and Other Backward Classes. After warning that he was about to make a "very undignified" and "almost vulgar" statement, "which will shock you", Nandy said: "It is a fact that most of the corrupt come from the...

-Frontline The 64th Republic Day was a special occasion for the Dalits of Kokkampatti in Karur district. It was poetic justice that on this historic day, the caste Hindu residents of the village signed an accord with them to end the centuries-old practices of un-touchability and dis-crimination against Dalits, in the presence of the local authorities. Through the agreement the caste Hindus have promised to live in harmony with members of...

-Counterpunch.org     “The rearing and guiding of a civilization must depend upon its intellectual class.”     BR Ambedkar, Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah, 1943, Delhi. I. Arrest. States are clumsy with their enormous power. When it suits the modern state, it uses it immense apparatus to constraint those who make claims upon it or who say things that denigrate this or that section of society. A college professor in West Bengal draws a cartoon of...

-The Hindu Act needs urgent amendments in order to plug loopholes in implementation: Union Minister The Union Government will bring in amendments to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, during the Budget session of Parliament next year. Addressing a National Dalit Adivasi Sammelan at Ramlila Maidan here on Friday, Union Minister for Social Justice & Empowerment Kumari Selja said the Act needed urgent amendments in order to plug loopholes in...