Lawmakers and human rights campaigners on Monday called for taking collective efforts by all concerned to root out all sorts of discriminations against downtrodden (Dalit) people in the subcontinent.
Ranikumari Khokar is campaigning to end a caste-based practice that condemns women to cleaning human waste by hand
Founder President of Feminist Dalit Organisation Durga Sob today said that despite the promulgation of the new statute, women were still unable to exercise their rights.
MUMBAI, May 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India's worst drought in decades is hurting women and lower-caste Dalits disproportionately, with impacts ranging from malnutrition to early marriage to prostitution, activists say.
Lenin takes us through the sordid and macabre accounts of contemporary slavery in brick kilns, based on actual accounts of the hapless victims. Driven by hunger and starvation, many children die of malnutrition. When the bonded labourers ask for money for the treatment of sick children, they are beaten up, blue-black. Children die, young girls and women are sexually exploited. People cannot escape the debt traps and clutches of the brick kiln owners. They are hounded. Police are hand-in- gloves with the brick kiln owners. Against all odds, his organisation, Peoples’ Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), has stood up for the cause of the Dalit and Musahar victims. There is a new dawn of dignity and identity for hopeless victims. Here’s a special story, an in-depth report to combat and resolve the problems, on the occasion of May Day by Different Truths (DT) and PVCHR.
Despite robust laws, violence against India’s most oppressed people continues to rise.
To meet the demands of global markets, Indian manufacturers have replaced adult workers with teenaged, mostly female, workers drawn from agriculturally impoverished regions and disadvantaged castes.
A new campaign is taking on caste violence, though, and they’ve been reaching out to activist movements like Black Lives Matter in the US. The Delhi-based All India Dalit Women’s Rights Forum has just wrapped up a two month tour of college campuses and other venues, where they exchanged strategies and told some harrowing stories of people they’ve tried to help back home.
“We realize this is a battle that we cannot win by ourselves,” said Asha Kowtal, General Secretary of AIDMAM, explaining the reason for the tour. “The movement needs global solidarity from oppressed communities across the world and allies who will stand with us in this struggle to overhaul institutions reeking of caste and patriarchy.”
Kowtal links the Dalits’ message to the message of American activists fighting for racial justice, explains that “the failure of the Indian government, not only their failure to protect us [in India], but their continual process of blocking our advocacy at the national and international level in the UN has forced us to seek out solidarity with other communities impacted by state violence. In this tour we have met with folks from #SayHerName #BLM, Dreamers, Incite Women of Color Against Violence, Afi3rm, Youth Incarcerated by Police, Trans activists and others.”