Fwd: [PMARC] Dalits Media Watch - News Updates 05.06.10

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From: Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC <pmarc2008@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 9:33 PM
Subject: [PMARC] Dalits Media Watch - News Updates 05.06.10
To: Dalits Media Watch <PMARC@dgroups.org>

Dalits Media Watch

News Updates 05.06.10

Pride and Prejudice: Dalits' symbols of worship - NDTV
http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/pride-and-prejudice-dalits-symbols-of-worship-1-29991.php

Newlyweds seek protection - The Tribune

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100605/haryana.htm#6

AISCC in favour of CBI probe in State recruitment - The Pioneer

http://www.dailypioneer.com/260542/AISCC-in-favour-of-CBI-probe-in-State-recruitment.html

Dealing with oppression and exploitation - The Hindu

http://www.hindu.com/2010/06/05/stories/2010060554961200.htm

NDTV

Pride and Prejudice: Dalits' symbols of worship
http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/pride-and-prejudice-dalits-symbols-of-worship-1-29991.php

NDTV Correspondent, Saturday June 5, 2010, New Delhi

While political parties calculate gains and losses of a caste based census in terms of votes. Post Mandal, Dalits have started asserting themselves in every field, even in matters of faith and belief.

Images of Dalits offering prayers at the Jagannath temple in Kendrapara, Orissa, through holes in the compound wall shocked the country. Five years ago a compromise was reached. Only the temple priest is now allowed inside the sanctum sanctorum.

Today most temples are open to Dalits, but many continue to worship pictures of gods at home. A trend which started in the 1920s with the mass production of religious images.

"Where earlier a Hindu image could not be worshipped until it was not ritually consecrated with the service of a Brahmin priest, the mass produced image changed this. So, there was a kind of democratization of image and the relation of the worshippers to the image became more independent of prescribed norms of worship," said Dr Jyotindra Jain, an Art historian.

As Dalits began to assert themselves politically, post Mandal, they also started searching for their own icons in the Hindu pantheon of gods and goddesses. So, the author of the Ramayan, Valmiki, is transformed into a modern day deity.

"Valmiki is a Dalit devata so, they want to worship him separately from the others. Earlier, posters showed Valmiki writing the Ramayan, with Ram and Sita watching him from the skies and everyone worshipped that image. Now he is alone," said M L Garg, MD, Brijbasi Art Press.

But outside their homes, for all Dalits, Hindus and neo-Buddhists, Dr Ambedkar's statue still remains the most powerful and popular public symbol of pride and identity.

The Tribune

Newlyweds seek protection

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100605/haryana.htm#6

Tribune News Service

Fatehabad (Haryana): June 4

A newly wedded couple from Kumharia village of Sirsa today sought protection from SP Jagwant Singh Lamba fearing life threat from their families. Husband Sita Ram and his bride Pinki hail from Kumharia village falling under Nathusari Chopta block of Sirsa district.

Arjun Dev Dhundhara, SHO of the city police station, Fatehabad, who provided security to the couple on the directions of the SP, said Sita Ram belonged to the Jat community and Pinki was from a Dalit family of the village.

The couple married at a temple in Chandigarh on May 24, 2010, and moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court for protection.

They alleged that families of both the boy as well as the girl were furious at their marriage and they apprehended threat to their lives.

The High Court directed the district authorities to provide security to the couple as the two were living in a "dhani" of his maternal uncle near Bighar village in Fatehabad.

The Pioneer

AISCC in favour of CBI probe in State recruitment

http://www.dailypioneer.com/260542/AISCC-in-favour-of-CBI-probe-in-State-recruitment.html

SR | Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh):

The All India Schedule Caste Council (AISCC) has demanded CBI inquiry to know the exact figure of the employees of general quota on reserved seat for Scheduled Caste and the role of the State Government in this whole recruitment. State president of AISCC, BL Karen addressing media persons here on Friday informed that National Schedule Caste Commission, New Delhi has found the State Government, guilty of violating the Reservation Act 2002. Karen further informed that the State Government has recruited and promoted many employees of the general quota in the reserved seats and also provided relaxation to them. Such sort of recruitment and promotion of employees were performed in many departments like PWD, General department and many others, he added. He said that the council has handed over a memorandum to the Governor of the State Rameshwar Thakur to forward it to the President of India Pratibha Devi Singh Patil, and also has faxed the copy of memorandum to the President and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which council has demanded CBI inquiry of all such irregularities done in the State since 2006. He further gave the detail of the incidents in which people from general category have been recruited and promoted on reserved seat. He said that such incidents are limiting the scope of the backward classes in Government job.

The Hindu

Dealing with oppression and exploitation

http://www.hindu.com/2010/06/05/stories/2010060554961200.htm

Pushpa M. Bhargava

The means of oppression may be varied but the objective is the elimination or exploitation of the marginalised sections.

Human beings are products of the process of Darwinian evolution. The human species has been around for some two million years. We, however, are the progeny of a woman who lived in Africa some 200,000 years ago. All other lineages appear to have died out. Man had two advantages. He could speak and thus construct a language, and he could use his two hands. He, therefore, evolved both biologically and socially.

Let me give an example of the biological evolution of man. Sickle cell anaemia is a disease in which our blood cells make a "wrong" haemoglobin (the pigment of the red blood cells). The normal haemoglobin has a capacity to carry oxygen to various tissues. When one is afflicted by sickle cell anaemia, this capacity is drastically reduced. If one inherits the sickle cell haemoglobin gene from both parents, one would have reduced chances of survival on account of limitation of physical activity. If one inherits just one sickle cell haemoglobin gene from one parent, the person becomes a carrier. The normal frequency of carriers of sickle cell haemoglobin genes is one in several thousand in most parts of the world.

However, in Africa, this frequency is 20 per cent. This is because if you carry a sickle cell haemoglobin gene, your red blood cells become impermeable to the malarial parasite and you thus become resistant to malaria. As malaria has been a major health hazard in Africa, nature balanced the advantage of having a sickle cell gene against the disadvantage of a limitation on physical activity, at the level of 20 per cent of the population. African Americans are the progeny of Africans. Since there has been no malaria in America, the sickle cell haemoglobin gene gives one no advantage. Therefore, as expected, the frequency of this gene in African Americans has been decreasing and has reached 12 per cent. So, biological evolution is continuing.

Social evolution

While it is important to realise that we continue to evolve biologically, it is more important to recognise that, beginning in the last century or so, we have been witnessing social evolution. Such evolution has led to the codification of certain laws. The first law is that social evolution, on account of sound scientific reasons based on obligatory variability in the human species, must take a tortuous path. Thus if the goal is defined as north, you may have to begin by first going south, then east, and south again, before you reach the northern destination.

Another law of social evolution is that mankind is today internally compelled — without being aware of it — towards some kind of a utopia which, like that of Thomas More, we will probably never achieve.

The question is: how close to the projected utopia can one eventually arrive? We don't have an answer.

The third law that has emerged following social evolution, and the inevitability of which is hardly ever recognised, is that in the 21st century (and beyond) the oppression of people will never succeed in the long run, and the oppressor will have to pay up sooner or later. We may call this the Law of the Eventual Demise of the Oppressor (LEDO).

It took seconds after the Big Bang which led to the formation of our universe some 12 million years ago for physical laws to come into existence and elements to be formed. It took much longer for the evolution of LEDO. So the original inhabitants of the U.S., Canada or Australia were virtually wiped out by the European settlers through the use of knowledge which the local inhabitants did not have.

The situation has changed today. With the movement to universalise school education, the growing emancipation of women, the recognition of basic human rights, and several other similar demands made by civil society, there is a strong check on the propensity of power and knowledge to be used as agents to keep people oppressed forever. Thus we have seen colonies disappear and the zamindari abolished. The United States — which used to be the epitome of power in all spheres — has become the most hated nation in the world, declining financially, socially and politically.

Unfortunately, our governments at the Centre and in the States have not understood the power of LEDO. They have not recognised the reasons for the emergence and consolidation of left-wing extremism and have attempted to solve the problem by increasing oppression. It is not a coincidence that the areas dominated by left-wing extremists are largely tribal belts and among the richest in the country in respect of natural wealth and resources.

To control these resources and wealth — rather, give their control to the rich for a consideration that would benefit only a few individuals — the government believes it can eliminate naxalites and tribals through mechanisms such as the unfettered use of arms and by setting up vindictive organisations such as the Salwa Judum.

Increasing gap

The farmers, rural poor, slum-dwellers, members of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, who comprise a vast majority and include the 77 per cent who, according to Arjun Sengupta, live on less than Rs.20 a day are relatively worse off today than they were when India achieved Independence. The GDP growth rates we proclaim with great fervour have created more billionaires and millionaires, but the gap between the rich and poor has been increasing exponentially.

We have been blind to the root causes of the problem such as lack of education and provision of adequate housing, sanitation, potable water, and energy. So we have a situation where the number of those who have a cell phone is twice that of those who have reasonable toilet facilities.

Virtually every element of our agriculture policy that is actually practised and delivered is — in some cases such as the MGNREGS, in the long run — anti-farmer, in spite of the fact that 62 per cent of Indians derive their total sustenance from agriculture or agriculture-related activities. When we design a policy for farmers or the rural sector, be it in the area of pricing or retail, we want to first make sure that the largest benefit will go to the top 20 per cent.

There is no area, sector or group in which corruption is not rampant. The rule is that the richer and the more powerful you are, the more corrupt you are. Corruption bleeds the powerless.

Our means of oppression of the bottom 80 per cent of our population are varied, but the objective is their elimination or exploitation (which are two sides of the coin of oppression). This is not a stable situation. The government, the bureaucracy and the rich and powerful who (barring notable exceptions) represent the oppressors, must realise that today we have a new universal law: the Law of the Eventual Demise of the Oppressor, in place whether one likes it or not. It will assert itself sooner or later. What form and how long it will take cannot be predicted, but it will surely be a kind of revolution. And in a revolution, even if the cause is justified, what actually happens is not always justifiable. Therefore, wisdom demands that we prevent such an eventuality. It is for the powerful and the privileged to take this warning seriously.

When I asked Noam Chomsky about 9/11, he said he knew it was going to happen. What he didn't know was when and how. We may well be entering the same situation

--
.Arun Khote
On behalf of
Dalits Media Watch Team
(An initiative of "Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC")
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Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre- PMARC has been initiated with the support from group of senior journalists, social activists, academics and intellectuals from Dalit and civil society to advocate and facilitate Dalits issues in the mainstream media. To create proper & adequate space with the Dalit perspective in the mainstream media national/ International on Dalit issues is primary objective of the PMARC.

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