A bouquet of powerful essays by #Dalit women writers. All of them wrote from the trenches, from an embattled zone. A whole experiential domain opening up, always enlightening, disturbing the received opinion, challenging the old discourse, enriching, humbling.

#DalitLivesMatter
That striking cover art, deeply personal, contemporary, yet adorned by the old nature motifs, is by Dalit artist Malvika Raj. She works with, breaks and extends the Madhubani idiom, giving us powerful art. Some iconic images -- Savitribai, Ambedkar, Buddha -- partner the essays.
Malvika's art offers a perfect visual realisation of the world the essays weave: bustling with moral urgency, coping with trauma with a deeply introspective wisdom, and most off all a desire and commitment to write an as-yet unwritten history. @caselchris1 writes the lead essay.
An eloquent personal reflection and razor-keen critique at once, she opens up this bizarre world as it is for Dalit women, an inherently hostile one in which they must learn to survive and thrive. One where even the platforms for speaking are controlled at the whims of caste.
Jeyarani takes that forward with a calm, yet the most complete deconstruction of Indian media attitudes you will ever see. And @kirubamunusamy takes the lens to the judiciary. Our institutions emerge, stripped off their grand metaphors, as simply extensions of caste power.
Meera Velayudhan walks us through the difficult terrain of representative politics. Why are our Dalit MPs, together a bloc almost as big as the combined opposition, unable to act as a bloc? She offers no easy answers, but points to Ambedkar's insistence on social/economic equity.
And Swati Kamble, a truly fine voice, gives us a classic on intersectionality, the heart of the feminism debate. Locating the genesis of Indian feminist thought in 19th c voices coming out of Phule's circle, she offers Dalit feminism as a creative, redemptive force for everyone.
Other voices too spoke to us, all courageous, tireless people who craft an alternative, ethical vision in the face of tremendous odds...@cynstepin, @Dalit_Swag, @Datlitwriter, Ramya Haridas, only the second Dalit woman MP ever from Kerala. This issue is a grateful tribute to all.
This is one of Malvika Raj's artworks accompanying the essays! In a diary piece for us, she speaks of how her art evolved, the social experiences that went into it, how she broke from tradition to place Dalit icons at the centre of Madhubani canvases.

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More from @kazhugan

2 Sep
@TIinExile @neha_aks Yes, but it finally does, does it not, somewhere during what can be called the classical phase, leaving not much of a trace in the post phase. What we see is clearly a very interesting transition to total patronymy.
@TIinExile @neha_aks Yes, there's clearly a widespread tendency attestable -- often the figure of the father is more fleeting, and it's also matrilocal. In this case, you also marry that against the overall tendency and attitudes from the devas, despite being kin.

@TIinExile @neha_aks There are two separate strands here. One is the higher degree of variety before codification, which is general. In this specific case, one sees a kind of classing on that basis, and conflict, which the higher deities try to adjudicate over.
Read 8 tweets
31 Aug
@TIinExile Hi TN, okay, this is how I would offer my response. It comes not from any hasty perusal of literature, I did not do it then, and I did not it now -- in fact, took your words at face value and issued a corrigendum on that factual point on my post. But they come from a deeply...
@TIinExile ...considered view of things over decades of knowing/living a reality, just like millions of others, and you could spare some space in your mind and heart for it, if you do have that space. There exist multiple tracks here, in plain view. Tying them up is the lore related to...
@TIinExile ...Vishnu, which provides the primary mythic material here. Now, in Vaishnavite lore, it is natural that the deity's ineffable primacy is what is centralised...and hence Bali (and his Daitya lineage...before him Virochana, AND Prahlad) are shown in aspects of total devotion.
Read 19 tweets
30 Aug
This has got to be the most unintentionally hilarious one ever :)) utter innocence on three counts:

a) whether a stable form of Bali iconography exists (it doesn't)

b) how a "Christian saint like Jesus" (!) is depicted

c) most cripplingly, what native Indians really look like! Image
Here's a small sample of Bali iconography picked from Wikipedia. This is from Badami, Karnataka, 7th c AD, with the Bali figure highlighted on the right. Doesn't look very much like a member of the "choti and thread" club :))) ImageImage
Here's another. Choti-thread? Why on earth (or sky or pataal) would they at all want to turn a Daitya king into that? Image
Read 7 tweets
6 Aug
It's not just physical structures or social, constitutional niceties that are being dismantled. The Handicrafts Board is now history. Yes, you heard that right.

Laila Tyabji writes: "Strange things happen quietly in COVID times - without even a whisper of warning....

1/n
"The news that the almost 70-year-old All India Handicrafts Board, established in 1952 by Pupul Jayakar and nurtured by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, has been abolished came as a complete surprise. All these years on, it remained the one official forum, however watered down...

2/n
"where the voices and views of weavers and craftspeople could be expressed directly. One place where representatives of the sector were present in considerable numbers, and were actually empowered to advise the Government in policy and sectorial spending...

3/n
Read 6 tweets
28 Mar
Why are the police bestialising us? Why are humans trying to get home, with no other means to do it except on their feet, being brought to their KNEES? Crawl, duck-walk, frog-march? The symbolism is unmistakable. My column.
outlookindia.com/website/story/…
"The physical evacuation of our streets has produced a strange kind of vacuum. A voiding of citizenship and its rights. And into that void flows only one thing: the State and its absolute writ. And that of the police, the advance guard of the State."

""The sight of migrant labour walking back to distant villages already produced a historic sense of pathos.... But even among such millenarian visions, there were a few that truly stood out as the harbinger of a new age of sadism."
Read 20 tweets
2 Feb
Many of his points of critique on the Left/Nehru/Gandhi are valid in ways but hyper-exaggerated. He's plain wrong on the Constitution. And his idea of "hamara ilaaka" is as bad as Hindutva.

#SharjeelImam is a cocky, hot-headed scholar with a hero complex.

But a seditionist? No.
His right to be free from the outrageous sedition charge has to be defended against the fact that it was #SharjeelImam who first wanted #ShaheenBagh wound up. When he pulled out in early Jan, he declared in a cock-sure tone that the movement would "die a natural death tonight".
Why? Only because it was not going according to some grand plan cooking in his head. A self-imagined vanguard, Sharjeel couldn't quite countenance the idea that the women at the centre of Shaheen Bagh had will, desire, agency and sense-making capacity of their own.
Read 14 tweets

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