From: Peoples Media Advocacy & Resource Centre-PMARC <pmarc2008@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 2:38 PM
Subject: [PMARC] Dalits Media Watch - News Updates 19.06.10
To: Dalits Media Watch <PMARC@dgroups.org>
Dalits Media Watch
News Updates 19.06.10
Dalit set afire over phone - The Hindustan Times
Dalit woman found murdered - Zee News
http://www.zeenews.com/news635104.html
Dalits withdraw kids from school in Kendrapada village - The Pioneer
http://www.dailypioneer.com/263528/Dalits-withdraw-kids-from-school-in-Kendrapada-village.html
Hooda sets up one-man panel to probe Mirchpur dalits' killing - The Times Of India
Stardog champion - The Hindustan Times
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Stardog-champion/Article1-559859.aspx
The Hindustan Times
Dalit set afire over phone
Deepender Deswal, TNN, Jun 19, 2010, 05.08am IST
JHAJJAR: A dalit youth was set ablaze by a group of five people, said to be from the upper caste, after a fight over a missing cell phone in Gwalison village of Jhajjar district on Wednesday night, outside the venue of a folk song.
The victim, Sandeep Kumar, has been admitted to PGIMS at Rohtak with serious burns. A case of attempt to murder was registered at Beri police station.
The victim told police that Debi Singh came up to him and accused him of stealing his cell phone. When he denied this, Singh got into an argument. Soon, he was joined by four other youths who began abusing him.
However, when he stuck to his stand, one of the group, emptied a petrol can on him and set him afire. SSP, Jhajjar, Saurabh Singh said there appeared to be no caste angle, but a DSP has been asked to probe the matter.
Zee News
Dalit woman found murdered
http://www.zeenews.com/news635104.html
Updated on Saturday, June 19, 2010, 12:24 IST
Muzaffarnagar: A Dalit woman was found murdered by unidentified persons at Ghari village in the district, police said on Saturday.
Bholi, wife of Malkhan Singh, was yesterday murdered by slitting her throat, SP City Akash Kulheri said.
A case has been registered and investigations are on, he added.
The woman had gone to fields last evening to collect grass but did not return. Later her body was recovered near the field.
Meanwhile, two unidentified bodies were recovered by the police from the district.
One of the body was found from Rampur village here, while another was recovered from Kotwali area. PTI
The Pioneer
Dalits withdraw kids from school in Kendrapada village
http://www.dailypioneer.com/263528/Dalits-withdraw-kids-from-school-in-Kendrapada-village.html
Pioneer News Service | Kendrapara
The innocent Dalit children have also to bear the brunt of the ongoing tussle between their elders and the upper caste fellow villagers of Karandiapatana Jenasahi under Mehendipur GP of Marshaghai block as their parents have been forced to withdraw their children from the local school fearing the wrath of the upper caste people.
The Dalit students were allegedly abused and misbehaved by the upper caste people recently when they were crossing the village road on way to school.
Sources informed, about 20 Dalits children were forced to take their School Leaving Certificates (SLCs) from Surendra Bidyapitha of Rankal.
The Dalits alleged that their children were debarred from using the road that passed through the houses of upper caste villagers.
Notably, the Dalits are leading a socially boycotted life meted out to them by both the fellow upper caste villagers and its adjoining Rankal village for the last couple of months following a group clash over the digging of earth from a gochar land for construction of a Hanuman temple on February 18.
The police had nabbed 10 upper caste persons for allegedly creating the mayhem, ransacking the houses and injuring 23 Dalits.
Later, the upper caste of Karnadiapatana and Rankal made a decision to socially boycott the Dalits by restricting them from working in their fields. Even they were allegedly debarred from using the road in the area and were threatened with dire consequences.
The Dalit students, having taken SLCs from the Surendra Bidyapitha are said to be Rina Jena Class, I, Ritun Jena, Litu Jena and Jhunubala Jena of Class II, Pradip Jena of Class III, Hemanta Jena, Aliva Jena, Sanghamitra Jena, Purnima Jena and Puspalata Jena of Class IV, Rajalaxmi Jena of Class V, Bhajahari Jena, Tanuja Jena, Lopamudra Jena, Jyotishree Jena, Bikram Jena, Sushil Jena and Biswanath Jena of Class VI.
Some Dalit parents have taken SLCs and have reportedly started admitting their children to Japada School, one-and-half km away from the village, informed a Dalit and Karilopatana ward member Sudhanshu Jena.
When contacted, Surendra Bidyapitha teacher Khageswar Parida admitted that some Dalit students of the Jena Sahi hamlet of Karilopatana village sought SLCs to study in other schools, recently.
Recently, Jajpur MP and Dalit leader Mohan Jena visited Karandiapatana and listened to the grievances of the Dalits.
He has brought the said matter to the notice of the local Tehsildar and district administration to take necessary actions against the upper caste persons for allegedly denying the basic right to education of the Dalit children.
Meanwhile, the Dalits have brought the matter to the notice of the Patkura PS IIC for justice.
When contacted, IIC Alok Ranjan Roy stated he has been conducting investigation.
The Times Of India
Hooda sets up one-man panel to probe Mirchpur dalits' killing
TNN, Jun 19, 2010, 04.15am IST
CHANDIGARH: After Supreme Court's rap on Mirchpur, Haryana government on Friday set up a one-man commission to probe caste-related violence when a Dalit man and his physically-challenged daughter were burnt alive after a group from Jat community torched their houses.
After the April 21 incident, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi visited Haryana. Congress president Sonia Gandhi came down hard on chief minister B S Hooda. The message was clear: atrocities were unacceptable.
The commission will inquire into the circumstances leading to death of Dalit Tara Chand and his daughter Suman. It will also find out who was responsible for loss of life, property and violence and assess the damage caused to Balmikis.
The Hindustan Times
Stardog champion
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Stardog-champion/Article1-559859.aspx
Manu Joseph
Critics in Britain and the US have praised Manu Joseph's debut novel as a "bitingly funny Indian satire", a "cruelly pointed comedy" and a "comedy of manners". Thank God, it's escaped the charge of harbouring "mordant wit", another stock phrase beloved of knackered Anglo-American critics. But Serious Men goes beyond genre. It is indeed satirical but foremost, it is an amazingly accurate depiction of reality. Joseph is an acute, sensitive observer and his writing accumulates the myriad circumstantial details of everyday life which makes it real. If this is only satire then your life and mine are no more than mordant witticisms — and the lives of the less fortunate even more mordantly so.
The warp of the story is the silent, relentless class war which is fought in our cities in the name of caste. The weft is a skirmish over universal questions waged in the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai. It is an ivory tower struggle between balloon astronomy and radio astronomy, classical astrophysics and string theory, meaningful science and sexy science. Running across this texture is a twisted love story along with explorations of power and its subversion, old age and its triumph, truth and falsehood, the limits of reasonable science and the current crisis in physics.
The central figure is Arvind Acharya, a scientist of such stature that he is called the Nobel laureate without a Nobel. He heads a Brahmin cabal of scientists but has reached the point where intellectually honest physicists begin to chafe at the limits of their discipline. He is also a maverick viciously opposed to the Big Bang theory, which he regards as a Christian plot to justify the Book of Genesis. In the jealousies and crises which follow an illicit relationship with a colleague his daughter's age, he is discredited and loses everything — only to find himself and his world for the first time.
Brahmins make science. Dalits make coffee — and the plot. Ayyan Mani, a chawl-dwelling Dalit and Acharya's personal assistant, holds the story together. Part sutradhar and part puppeteer, he engineers the turning points of crisis and resolution. A self-made Dalit who once dreamed of escaping the chawl, he now knows that he cannot overreach his station. But perhaps this subversive Iago can do the impossible. Using the clerk's traditional passion for petty espionage and the capabilities of his apparently genius son, he spawns a game which could make it possible — after a fashion.
It's been a very good year for South Asian English novels and Serious Men could be the pick of the crop. By my lights, it has only one failing — the frequent use of an exaggeratedly male authorial gaze. The artifice belongs in the realm of the comedy of manners, but this novel ventures beyond its narrow precinct into the realm of the real world. The direct human gaze, without the baggage of gender, works far better when it is used.
I also have reservations about the way this title is being sold overseas. The Indian cover is appropriately and tastefully designed, but the British edition is pointlessly Orientalist, depicting a black man in a magician's turban riding an appliqué elephant. The US edition features lurid calendar art — Shiva, Ganesha, an infant Krishna and a missile, none of which has anything to do with the story.
Serious Men reflects a growing interest in the underclass heralded by Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger. It brings the focus onto Dalit assertion, a notable feature of several Indian language literatures in recent decades. The stage is now set for writers who know the community more intimately.
This book is also part of a trend towards small canvases. The age of the Great Indian Novel is over, barring exceptions like Amitav Ghosh's trilogy in progress. New writers no longer have to explain where they are coming from by turning their novels into brief histories of South Asia. Contemporary fiction is unself-consciously Indian, makes few concessions to the foreign readership and addresses current issues, hopes and fears in the local idiom. It is a sign that finally Indian writing in English has come of age and can be regarded as a peer of the Indian language literatures.
Pratik Kanjilal is publisher of The Little Magazine
--
.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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