anti-caste: RESERVATIONS CONTROVERSY

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May 26, 2006

RESERVATIONS CONTROVERSY

Letter from India: Addressing inequality in a land ruled by caste (International Herald Tribune)

"For a snapshot of the social importance of caste in modern India, you just need to turn to the matrimonials section of any daily paper. A small minority of the advertisements declare CASTE NO BAR, but most are arranged according to caste groupings, and go along the lines of: 'Engineer with multinational corp. seeks beautiful girl from decent Brahmin family.' Sociologists estimate that more than 90 percent of people marry within their caste."

Posted at 01:38 AM in caste, dalits (untouchables), reservations (affirmative action) | Permalink

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major stories

“THE HINDUS: AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY” by Wendy Doniger
scholarly book withdrawn under pressure from Hindu-right
SECTION 377 reinstated
Supreme Court throws out decision against reactionary law criminalizing consensual sex acts
ROMA “CHILD ABDUCTION” cases in Greece and Ireland
false reports fuel vicious campaign against Europe’s outcastes across the continent
LAXMANPUR-BATHE MASSACRE acquittals
“After 58 murders, no one is guilty. The courts are theirs, the government is theirs, the lathi [baton of power] is theirs. The poor have nothing.”
MUZAFFARNAGAR
anti-Muslim riots
50 killed and 50,000 displaced in communalist outbreak fomented by Hindu right
honor killing in
ROHTAK, HARYANA
parents proudly murder daughter and would-be husband over
intra-gotra elopement
ORIGIN OF THE CASTE SYSTEM pinpointed by study
all Indians regardless of caste share a common ancestral
make-up
DARBHA ambush
organizer of Salwa Judum death squads killed along with other Congress-Party leaders in targeted Maoist attack
RANA PLAZA
over 1,000 dead in Bangladesh factory collapse
DHULE communal riot
anti-Muslim attack led by police
DELHI RAPE protests
TAZREEN FASHIONS fire
industrial murder of 112 Bangladeshi garment workers
DHARMAPURI mob attack
268 untouchable households torched
RANVIR SENA leader assassinated
“Butcher of Bihar” gets his
BATHANI TOLA verdict
uppercaste landlord militia acquitted in 1996 massacre of untouchable laborers and their families
OSMANIA BEEF FESTIVAL
untouchable students attacked for protesting caste-based dietary code on campus
JAIPUR LITERARY FESTIVAL
Salman Rushdie not welcome
LATHOR atrocity
arson attack leaves assertive untouchable community homeless
COW SLAUGHTER LAWS
target Muslims, Christians, tribals, untouchables
MAADE SNANA
protests against degrading caste-based ritual
THREE HUNDRED RAMAYANAS
scholarly essay dropped by leading university
MARUTI SUZUKI strikes
class battle at Japanese-owned plant in Haryana
ANNA HAZARE
sinister “anti-corruption” campaigner
police rampage in DANTEWADA
tribal villages attacked as part of Operation Green Hunt
MIRCHPUR massacre
deadly arson attack against entire untouchable community in a Haryana village
FLOODS in Pakistan
leave a social crisis in their aftermath
OPERATION GREEN HUNT
Indian government targets tribals and guerillaist leftists
SWAT
What is the class nature of the conflict in Swat, Pakistan?
SECTION 377
reactionary law criminalizing consensual sex acts is “read down” by Delhi High Court
LAW COLLEGE clash
untouchable students attacked on campus
ORISSA: another mass atrocity
led by Hindu right against untouchable Christians
ORISSA
Hindu right leads mass atrocity against untouchable Christians
TASLIMA NASRIN
forced out of Calcutta
NANDIGRAM
CPI(M) retakes rebellious village
AGRARIAN CRISIS
and peasant suicides in India
SINGUR
CPI(M) cadres raped and killed peasant girl resisting land seizure
TASLIMA NASRIN
attacked by fundamentalist Muslim party in Hyderabad
MAYAWATI
untouchable female leader of capitalist party is elected chief minister of major state
SACHAR committee report
on deprivation of Indian Muslims
NANDIGRAM massacre
state terror against poor peasants resisting land seizure
MUKHTAR MAI
a low-caste Pakistani woman who stood up
KHAIRLANJI massacre
lynching of untouchable family sparks mass protests in Maharashtra
BANGLADESHI GARMENT WORKERS
organize mass wildcat strikes
RESERVATIONS
(affirmative action) bill proposed
KALINGANAGAR
repression of tribals resisting seizure of their land
GURGAON
police repression of striking Honda workers
TSUNAMI relief
a case of state-sponsored caste discrimination

articles

notes on the Delhi rape protests
(2013)
What is caste?
(2009)
Marxism vs. petty-bourgeois dalit politics
(2009)
why Marxists must fight special oppression
(2009)
notes on the history of Pakistan
(2009)
towards a materialist analysis of caste in India
(2008)
reply to n+1 in defense of the revolutionary tradition
(2008)
Maharasthra burning: mass outrage after an untouchable lynching in Khairlanji
(2006)
reply to Jared Diamond on the social function of caste
(2005)
on the police repression of striking workers in Haryana
(2005)
on the Muslim question in India
(2005)
on caste discrimination against survivors of the South Asian tsunami
(2005)
on Godhra and the Gujarat massacre
(2004)
on the Indian elections
(2004)
on some recent atrocities against untouchables
(2002)

Marxists on India

Marx on caste
and the village community
Marx and Engels
on India and colonialism
Karl Kautsky and the Second International
on colonialism
Lenin and the early Communist International
on India and colonialism
Marxists on the perspective of permanent revolution
in countries of belated capitalist development
Leon Trotsky
on India and permanent revolution
The (Trotskyist) Fourth International
on India
The Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India:
documents (1941-44)
The International Communist League
on South Asia

The International Communist League on South Asia

Bangladesh in turmoil
Islamist upsurge threatens women, workers and minorities: For a socialist federation of South Asia!
Australia’s War on Tamil Refugees
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!
Capitalist Profit Drive Kills: Texas, Bangladesh Disasters
On Caste and Women’s Oppression in India
(Letter)
India: Deadly Rape Sparks Mass Protests
For Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!
Imperialism, the Cold War and the Creation of Pakistan
West Bengal After the Elections:
The Political Bankruptcy of Indian Stalinism–Forge a Leninist-Trotskyist Party!
Barbaric Mutilation of Bangladeshi Woman
The Fight for Trotskyism in South Asia
Edmund Samarakkody and the Legacy of the Ceylonese LSSP
No to Public Silence on LSSP Betrayal
1960 Letter by James Robertson to SWP Political Committee
M.N. Roy: Nationalist Menshevik
Bangladesh:
Women Garment Workers Fight Starvation Wages
An Exchange on M.N. Roy
Sri Lanka:
Asylum Now for All Refugees! Stop Persecution of Tamils!
Down With India’s Bloody Repression in Kashmir!
All Indian and Pakistani Troops Out Now!
On Nepal and Caste Oppression
(Letter)
India: Down With Government War on Maoists, Tribal Peoples!
Only Workers Revolution Can Liberate the Indian Masses
Defend the Tamil People!
Army Bloodbath in Sri Lanka
India: The Nandigram Massacre
“Left Front” Government’s State Repression in West Bengal
The “Honour” Killing of Aqsa Parvez
Women’s Oppression and Racist Reaction
Pakistan in Crisis After Bhutto Assassination
Down With Bush, Democrats’ “War on Terror”–U.S. Out of Afghanistan, Iraq!
India: Hindu Fascists Whip Up Religious Slaughter
The 1940s “Quit India” Movement:
Stalinist Alliance with Churchill Betrayed Indian Revolution

The International Communist League on Roma/Gypsies

The Russian Revolution
and the Roma
Proletarian Power Opened Road to Social Emancipation
European Gypsies Under Siege
French Government Crackdown on Roma, Immigrants
France: Down With Racist
Anti-Roma Campaign!
No Deportations! For Full Citizenship Rights!

sources hosted on anti-caste

1855—“About the Griefs of the Mangs and the Mahars”
by Mukthabai, aged 14, a untouchable pupil of Jotiba Phule
1867—Karl Marx on the Indian village community
1928—“What Is the Permanent Revolution?”
by Leon Trotsky
1930—“Historic References on the Theory of ‘Permanent Revolution’”
by Leon Trotsky
1930—“The Revolution in India: Its Tasks and Dangers”
by Leon Trotsky
1939—“India Faced with Imperialist War: An Open Letter to the Workers of India”
by Leon Trotsky
1939—“Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution”
by Leon Trotsky
1942—“The Classes of India and Their Political Roles”
A Thesis of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India
1984–“Marx on India”
by Suniti Kumar Ghosh
1993—“India: Hindu Fascists Whip Up Religious Slaughter”
(Workers Hammer)
1996–from “Social Stratification Among Muslims in India”
by Zarina Bhatty
1996–“Hijra” by Serena Nanda
(Encyclopedia of World Cultures)
2009–“Alienation of Tribal and Dalits Lands”
from the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. Volume 1 (Draft Report)

selected links (for information’s sake)

Aspects of India’s Economy
journal with online archive
Bhagat Singh Internet Archive
(marxists.org)
Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s Untouchables
(Human Rights Watch)
Caste Discrimination: A Global Concern
(Human Rights Watch)
Caste or Colony? Indianizing Race in the United States
by David Immerwahr
Communalism Combat
archives
Communalism Watch
“Resources for all concerned by the rise of the far right in India”
Dalit exclusion: The empirical evidence
by Sukhadeo Thorat
Dalit Fact Sheets
(Vikas Adhyayan Kendra)
Dalits and labour in Nepal: discrimination and forced labour
International Labour Organization
Digital Himalaya
Digital South Asian Library
Economic and Political Weekly
journal
Evidence
a Madurai-based NGO active on the caste question
For Separation of Religion and State: No to Ontario’s “Sharia Courts”!
Down With Anti-Muslim Racism! (Spartacist Canada)
Ford Foundation, CIA and the Social Forums
(Workers Vanguard)
Gandhi Centre Stage
by Perry Anderson
Harsh Realities of Dalits in India [4-minute video]
at India Unheard
Hindu social order and the human rights of dalits
by Sukhadeo Thorat (Combat Law)
Imperialism, the “Global Economy” and Labor Reformism
A Spartacist Pamphlet (International Communist League)
Marx on India
by Suniti Kumar Ghosh
Marx on India: A Clarification
by Aijaz Ahmad
Nayavana
“India’s first and only publishing house to focus on the issue of caste from an anticaste perspective”
on Bhagat Singh’s writings against communalism and untouchability
by Irfan Habib
South Asia Citizens Web
The Asian Human Rights Commission
news
Taslima Nasrin
The Annihilation of Caste
by B.R. Ambedkar
The Development and Extension of Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution
(Workers Vanguard)
Threatened Existence
A Feminist Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat
(International Initiative for Justice)
Three Essays Collective
independent publisher based in India, specializes in social science and South Asian topics
Trotskyism in India
by Wesley Ervin
Understanding Untouchability
A Comprehensive Study of Practices and Conditions in 1589 Villages (Navsarjan Trust)
Who Are the Guilty ?
Report of a joint inquiry into the causes and impact of the riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November 1984
Why I Am an Atheist
by Bhagat Singh
ZestCaste mailing list
now defunct, but see archives
“We Have No Orders to Save You”: State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat
(Human Rights Watch)

from the U.S. Army’s Country Studies series

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anti-caste

on caste, women's oppression, communalism, and class struggle in South Asia from a Marxist perspective

May 26, 2006

RESERVATIONS CONTROVERSY

Comments

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anti-caste

contact

Categories

major stories

articles

Marxists on India

The International Communist League on South Asia

The International Communist League on Roma/Gypsies

sources hosted on anti-caste

selected links (for information’s sake)

from the U.S. Army’s Country Studies series