Insult to Ambedkar's legacy: Political activists on order to arrest Teltumbde, Navlakha

Dr Teltumbde, Navlakha

Counterview Desk
Several well-known Dalit rights leaders and politicians have taken strong exception to the March 16 Supreme Court bench comprising judges Arun Mishra and Mukeshkumar Rasikbhai Shah rejecting the anticipatory bail pleas of the civil-rights activist Gautam Navlakha and writer Dr Anand Teltumbde, stating their arrest on April 14, which happens to be Ambedkar Jayanti, would be “a national shame”.
Implicated in the violence at Bhima Koregaon in January 2018, Navlakha and Teltumbde were booked by the Pune Police under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for alleged Maoist links. The Supreme Court asked Navlakha and Dr Teltumbde to surrender on April 6. On April 8, the Supreme Court granted both of them a week to surrender in the Bhima Koregaon case, registered under the draconian UAPA.
Particularly condemning the Supreme Court order to arrest of Dr Teltumbde, who is married to Ambedkar’s granddaughter, the statement said, he is one of India’s “foremost public intellectuals and the strongest legatee of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s tradition of struggling for a truly democratic India”, declaring, he will “comply with the apex court order to surrender to the jail authorities.”
“He will be surrendering on the April 14, 2020, between 12 noon and 2 pm at the Sessions Court in Mumbai”, the statement said, adding, “This is both tragic and shameful for all Dalits, Adivasis, OBC, and minorities on many counts for all of India.”
The statement continues, “It marks a day on which this country will celebrate the 129th birth anniversary of one of its greatest minds and hearts, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, and on which the mighty nationalist machinery seeks to crush the spirit that kept the flame of democracy alive in our midst.”
The surrender would take place, says the statement, “when even very repressive regimes around the world are releasing political prisoners in the face of the corona virus”, adding, incarceration of great minds like Dr Teltumbde would take place allowing his Constitutional rights of such a person to be “sidelined.”

Dr Teltumbde will surrender on Babasaheb Ambedkar's birth anniversary, April 14, between 12 noon and 2 pm in Mumbai

Describing the arrest of Dr Teltumbde “an obnoxious warning of the casteist Manuvadi regime to Dalit, Adivasi, OBC and minority intellectuals not to raise their voices of protest”, the statement says, “This arrest reveals India’s deeply entrenched casteism for a ‘crime’ Dr Teltumbde has not committed and for which no proof has been produced.”

Asking Dalit, Adivasi, OBC, and minority leadership to “stand up and seek justice in the finest of traditions that Babasaheb”, the statement quotes Dr Teltumbde in his latest book ‘The Republic of Caste’, saying, “The wrath of the wretched scares the world."
“It becomes our duty to come together at this hour and demand that the Indian authorities allow Dr Teltumbde to live and write, to be a free spirit that enlivens our democratic selves, and remain the beacon that he is for educating, organizing, and agitating for a better India and a better world”, it adds.
---
Signatories: Dr Thol Thirumavalavan, MP, founder-president, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi; D Raja, MP (Rajya Sabha), general secretary, Communist Party of India, Gujarat Dalit rights leader Jignesh Mevani, Independent MLA; Dr Udit Raj, ex-MP, Indian National Congress; Prakash Ambedkar, ex-MP, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi; D Ravikumar, MP, general secretary, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi; Vinay Ratan Singh, national president, Bhim Army Bharat Ekta Mission; Gujarat Dalit MLA Nausad Solanki (Congress); Prof Dr Sujatha Surepally, convenor, Bahujan Resistance Forum, Telangana; and Dr Rajkumar Chabbewal, Congress MLA (Hoshiyarpur, Punjab)

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...

Would breaking idols, burning books annihilate caste? Recalling a 1972 Dalit protest

By Rajiv Shah A few days ago, I received an email alert from a veteran human rights leader who has fought many battles in Gujarat for the Dalit cause — both through ground-level campaigns and courtroom struggles. The alert, sent in Gujarati by Valjibhai Patel, who heads the Council for Social Justice, stated: “In 1935, Babasaheb Ambedkar burnt the Manusmriti . In 1972, we broke the idol of Krishna , whom we regarded as the creator of the varna (caste) system.”

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

'Restructuring' Sahitya Akademi: Is the ‘Gujarat model’ reaching Delhi?

By Prakash N. Shah* A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards .

Search This Blog