Who is a Dalit?

Author Interview

“Who is a Dalit?”

“One who rebels against the caste system,” snap comes the answer from Sharankumar Limbale, Marathi writer and an icon of Dalit literature.

“And, how do you define Dalit literature?”

“Dalit literature uses the written word as a weapon against the inhuman oppression of Dalits by the Brahminical social order that denies them basic human rights and dignity.”

Dalit literature, Dr. Limbale told The Hindu, is the uprising of the written word against the millennia-old social injustice manifesting itself as brutalities committed on Dalits all over the country.

“The so-called mainstream literature is the product of the imagination of upper caste writers about middle-class issues, but Dalit literature is based on the lived experience of the writer.”

Dalit literature, Dr. Limbale told The Hindu, is the uprising of the written word against the millennia-old social injustice manifesting itself as brutalities committed on Dalits all over the country.

Through unbelievable poverty and inhuman caste brutalities all around him, he fought to get a decent education. On the way, he wrote poetry and stories, actively took part in the Dalit Panthers movement and worked at the grassroots for the uplift of Dalits. At age 22, he married an illiterate girl.

Akkarmaashi, written when he was just 25, tells his life in a Maharwada (the living space allotted to the untouchable Mahar community) on the outskirts of a Maharashtra village near Solapur. He was one of the 12 children of a Mahar woman, who was kept as a concubine by the upper-caste village heads.

Extract from the interview of Sharankumar Limbale which was published in The Hindu, Dec 28, 2009.

Sharankumar Limbale was a member of the Dalit Litrary Movement that took Maharashtra, and its capital Bombay, by storm in the late 1950s, continuing in strength to the 1970s.He has written 40 books, fiction and non-fiction, and is best known for his biography Akkarmashi. Currently, he is the Regional Director, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, Nashik.

He is the author of Hindu:a novel translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee  and published by Samya  Feb 2010.

For the entire interview visit: http://www.hindu.com/2009/12/28/stories/2009122853740400.htm

Talisman

Talisman: Extreme Emotions of Dalit Liberation

Thirumaavalavan

Translated from the Tamil by Meena Kandasamy

demy octavo pb 216pp Feb 2004 ISBN 81-85604-68-1 Rs 200

As the leader of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal, the Liberation Panthers, Thiumaavalavan brings the passion of his commitment to social justice to these speeches that have been translated from Tamil into English for the first time. Fighting for the basic rights of the people of the cheris, the slums, the humble folk who get trampled on, murdered or raped at will because of the caste system, now bolstered by the ideology of Hindutva, these speeches get to the heart of the prevailing injustice in India's democracy. Many of the atrocities have not been reported in the media, and thus the book provides a valuable record of what is taking place.

Thirumaavalavan is the General Secretary of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal and a member of the State Assembly, Tamil Nadu, and an MP, and editor of Thaaiman, a best-selling journal on Dalit affairs. Meena Kandasamy is an activist, writer and translator and the former editor of The Dalit.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

Journeys to Freedom

Journeys to Freedom: Dalit Narratives

Edited by Fernando Franco, Jyotsna Macwan and Suguna Ramanathan

demy octavo hb 400pp ISBN 81-85604-65-7 Rs 600 Jan 2004

A path-breaking book that presents subaltern voices offering lengthy interviews with fifty six dalits of Gujarat, both men and women who pinpoint experiences of discrimination and assertion that co-exist in India today, suggesting the complexities of social and political change. The respondents came from a variety of geographical areas of Gujarat.

Dalits in Gujarat face a society that has not experienced any social movements that challenged its traditional social arrangements in comparison to other states in India. The interviews reveal that dalits have undertaken journeys to self-respect. Many dalit women have been interviewed, and the authors suggest that they are the ‘base on which the future rests’.

Fernando Franco, S. J. is with the International Social Secretariate of the Society of Jesus; Jyotsna Macwan is with the Human Rights Cell at the Behavioural Science Centre, Ahmedabad; Suguna Ramanathan was formerly Dean of the Arts Faculty and Head of English Department at St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

Joothan: A Dalit’s Life

Joothan: A Dalit’s Life

Omprakash Valmiki

Translated from the Hindi by Arun Prabha Mukherjee

demy octavo pb 134pp ISBN 81-85604-63-3 Rs 260 2nd rpt 2010

Winner of the Best Book Prize of the New India Foundation 2004

Although Valmiki has devoted only a small part of his autobiographical narrative to ‘joothan’, it emerges as a very powerful metaphor encapsulating the pain, humiliation and poverty of his community, which not only had to rely on joothan but were forced by circumstances to relish it. ~Badri Narayan, Biblio.

For the first time, Dalits are writing about their lives themselves. They have been long written about by others, by anthropologists, historians and novelists––who have often portrayed them as tragic figures. Dalit writers challenge the hegemony of high caste Indians and give voice to their aspirations for achieving equality and justice. Very few texts have been translated into English.

'Joothan' refers to the scraps left on plates that are then given to Dalits to eat. In some ways it is a symbol of the demeaning existence imposed on the Dalits, for whom autobiography is the preferred genre since it enables them to write of themselves and their communities, of their lived reality. In this book, the second autobiography in Hindi by a Dalit, readers are drawn into world where cruelty and deprivation seem to be the only reality, and they become aware of the complexities of caste oppression. Omprakash Valmiki talks of growing up in a village in north India in an untouchable caste, Chuhra, well before the defiant term 'Dalit' was coined. It is a story of survival, of terrible grief and oppression, of surmounting great odds to emerge as a freer human being.

‘How come we were never mentioned in any epic? Why didn’t an epic poet ever write a word on our lives?’

Omprakash Valmiki is an established name in Hindi literature. He has put together two collections of poetry and two of short stories. He works at the Ordnance Factory, Dehradun; Arun Prabha Mukherjee is Professor, Dept of English, York University, Toronto. She is a well-known scholar of postcolonial studies and a literary critic.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

God as a Political Philosopher

God as Political Philosopher

Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism

Kancha Ilaiah

demy octavo pb 244pp ISBN 81-85604-77-0 Dec 2000,  4th rpt  Nov 2012 Rs 350

'This book is the first major research work that posits Gautama Buddha as a political thinker  . . .  It shows that Buddhist theorizing is as powerful as that of the ancient Greek thinkers . . .' ~~-Professor Gopal Guru, Poona University.

In this provocative and scholarly book, Kancha Ilaiah propounds a view of Gautama Buddha as India’s first social revolutionary…Buddha did his best to give the principles of tribal democracy and egalitarianism a sanctuary in his own sangha. In so doing he foreshadowed India’s experiment with parliamentary democracy.

Critical of the caste system and its attendant power structure, Buddha inducted low caste members into the sangha and made them his trusted advisors. He gave women an honoured place in the sangha. Dissent was permitted; even Buddha was not above the law. Pre-dating Socrates and Plato by some years, Buddha also foreshadowed key elements of their philosophy.

Kancha Ilaiah is professor and director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad and an activist in the Dalitbahujan and civil liberties movement. His other books also published by Samya: Untouchable God ; Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critic of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy; Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism

Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism

Kancha Ilaiah

demy octavo pb 206pp ISBN 978-81-85604-69-X/69-5  2004   3^rd rpt 2012 Rs 300

The buffalo [Ilaiah says] represents the oppressed and least affluent class in our society. ‘Buffalo is an apt metaphor for the long-suffering Dalit. It is a symbol that reminds us of extreme violence perpetrated against them.’ ~The Week

~~

‘O Mother Lachumamma, your blouse is torn,

Your hair is soiled, your sari in rags,

You have no money to buy new ones.

Even in that condition what have you done?

You planted saplings, walking backwards like a bull,

In order to produce food from the mud.’

             

Kancha Ilaiah translates these words of the Telugu poet, singer, activist Gaddar to emphasize the  productivity of the ordinary people, the Dalitbahujans of India, who receive so little in return, deprived of the gains of development and globalization but not of the losses in their wake. Arguing forcefully for social justice, this book contains a selection from Kancha Ilaiah’s columns  in popular newspapers like The Hindu, the Deccan Chronicle, the Deccan Herald, the Hindustan Times among others, and journals like Mainstream and the Economic and Political Weekly.

Strongly advocating the Dalitization of Indian society that will undo its moorings in spiritual fascism, which refuses equality or freedom to the majority, he commends the positive values of the buffalo as a productive animal that epitomizes the qualities of the Dalitbahujans. Among the many issues he tackles are the right to conversion, the role of the OBCs as providing muscle power to the Hindutva forces, the imperative need for the spread of English amongst all castes, for reservation quotas in education and employment, on globalization and gender. Combative, heartfelt, intellectually rigorous, these pieces present his vision of a more just society.

                   

Kancha Ilaiah is professor and director, Centre for the Study of social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, and an activist in the Dalit-Bahujan and civil liberties movement.

He is the author of Untouchable God published by Samya in 2012,God as a Political Philosopher:Buddha's Challenge to Brahminism and Why I am not a Hindu.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

Mai Hindu Kyun Nahi

Mai Hindu Kyun Nahi: Hindutva Darshan, Sanskriti Aur Rajnitik Arthashashtra ka Ek Shudravadi Vishleshan

Why I am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

Kancha Ilaiah

Translated from the English by Omprakash Valmiki

demy octavo pb 154pp ISBN 81-85604-91-6 Rs 120 Sep 2006

This is the authorized translation of the revised edition, as true to the original as is possible in a translation. Translated and edited meticulously, the book is presented to the Hindi-speaking public in the hope that it may be of use to Dalitbahujan activists as well as awaken the interest of the wider society.

In this revised edition, Kancha Ilaiah presents an Afterword that discusses the history of this book, often seen as the manifesto of the downtrodden Dalitbahujans. He talks of its reviews as well as the abuses he has received from its detractors, and his analysis of the text that was first published in 1996 and has been reprinted eight times before the appearance of the new edition. He reminds us of the need for an ongoing dialogue.

Kancha Ilaiah is professor and director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. Omprakash Valmiki is an established name in Hindi literature. He has put together two collections of poetry and two of short stories. He works at Ordnance Factory, Dehradun.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

Why I am not a Hindu

Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

Kancha Ilaiah

demy octavo pb 3rd rpt 2009 163pp ISBN 81-85604-82-7

rev. ed. with Afterword Rs 300

‘In Kancha Ilaiah’s conceptual universe, you feel the pain of life. In his ideas, you sense the vulnerability of battling unpredicatable waters. But in his intellectual adventurousness, you also sense the gaiety of robust combat and the fun in the fight.’~~Sagarika Ghose, Outlook

Kancha Ilaiah writes with passionate anger, laced with sarcasm on the caste system and Indian society. He looks at the socio-economic and cultural differences between the Dalitbahujans and Hindus in the contexts of childhood, family life, market relations, power relations, Gods and Goddesses, death and, not least, Hindutva. Synthesizing many of the ideas of Bahujans, he presents their vision of a more just society.

In this second edition, he presents an Afterword that discusses the history of this book, often seen as the manifesto of the downtrodden Dalitbahujans. He talks of its reviews as well of the abuse he has received from its detractors. He reminds us of the need of an ongoing dialogue. As he says, he wrote the book ‘for all who have open minds. My request to Brahmins, Baniya and Neo-Kshatriyas [upper class Sudras] is this; you learnt only what to teach others: the Dalitbahujans. Now in your own interest and in the interest of this great country you must learn to listen and to read what we have to say.’

‘The most gratifying thing for me was that it [this book] was listed as a millennium book [by The Pioneer] along with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s Annihilaion of Caste. Moreover, it has been translated into several Indian languages. In a way it has become a weapon in the hands of Dalitbahujan activists.’ [Afterword]

Kancha Ilaiah is professor and director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad and an activist in the Dalitbahujan and civil liberties movement.

He is the author of Untouchable God published by Samya in 2012,God as a Political Philosopher:Buddha's Challenge to Brahminism, and Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

A Prattler's Tale

A Prattler’s Tale: Bengal, Marxism, Governance

Ashok Mitra

Translated from the Bengali by Sipra Bhattacharjya

royal hb 473pp ISBN 81-85605-80-0 Jan 2007 Rs 595

For the readers, A Prattler’s Tale is a fascinating experience, funny and sad at times. What marks out the book from the pedestrian autobiographies of ex-bureaucrats and politicians which flood the market, is the absence of an abrasive tone of self-righteousness and the swagger of ‘I-serve-the people’ type of hogwash which usually mar their narrative. Ashok Mitra bares himself, warts and all. –Sumanta Banerjee, Seminar

Offering a thought-provoking, incisive analysis of Bengal and India, Ashok Mitra’s memoirs, translated for the first time into English from the Bengali original, Apila Chapila (Ananda, 2003), brings contemporary India alive. Growing up in British India, in old East Bengal, as a member of the middle class, the bhadralok, he dissects its ideals, foibles, prejudices and flaws. The Partition of India found him and his family in the new country of East Pakistan, that they were to leave, like millions of other refugees, to a new India where they had to re-build lives. He goes on to analyse the fledgling democracy of India, taking readers through the heady days of the five year plans, with which he was involved in the 1950s.

Always taking the view of a maverick, Mitra held considerable positions of power within the establishment, especially when he was the economic adviser. At this time the political crisis in East Pakistan turned into the war of liberation and he provides much insider information.

The book also highlights a different aspect of his life, as an intellectual. He talks of his close friendship with Sachin Chaudhuri, the founder of the Economic and Political Weekly. Throughout the book he weaves in the cultural and literary history of Bengal.

Ashok Mitra is an economist, political activist and essayist who writes in both Bengali and English. He was at various times chairman, Agricultural Prices Commission, chief economic adviser to the Government of India, minister of finance and planning in the Left Front Government of West Bengal, and a member of the Rajya Sabha. 

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

A Question of Community

A Question of Community

Religious Groups and Colonial Law

Amrita Shodhan

demy octavo hb 222 pp ISBN 978-81-85604-43-6 Jan 2001 Rs 350

What happens to the losers in history? What changes can we expect when we examine the defeat of the Khojas and the Pushtimargis who went to court because of internal dissent and found they lost some of their autonomy as self-functioning polities? The law court in the mid-nineteenth century presented them with interpretations of a homogenized Islam and Hinduism. The author presents two famous and popular legal trials in Bombay, the Aga Khan Case and The Maharaj Libel Case, where decisions were taken on the the construction of unitary religious community, and offers a discussion on its political and social implications. As the colonial judiciary started to establish its jurisdiction over the Indians, it began to redefine the individual polities, which these religious groups were said to resemble. Using its Orientalist knowledge and the new reforming ideas of the Western-educated Indian elite, it defined the different polities as belonging either to Islam or Hinduism, obscuring the great divergences within them.

Amrita Shodhan is an independent scholar. She received her PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilization from the University of Chicago.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth:A Dalit’s Life

The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth
A Dalit’s Life

B. Kesharshivam

Translated from the Gujarati by Gita Chaudhuri

demy octavo pb 342pp  ISBN 978-81-85604-87-9 Rs 350 Jan 2008 rpt 2011

 “If you were to knock on the words of pain, you would hear the sound of truth . . .

if you were to dig into them, you would find blood streaking out.”

This is how B. Kesharshivam describes the quintessential experiences of the life of a dalit. In the sixty years after independence, many believe that much has changed for dalits. The author himself, born and raised in poverty in the dalit moholla of Kalol in north Gujarat, passed the Gujarat Public Service Examinations to become a mamlatdar, a revenue officer, and finally a Class 1 officer who held many significant postings including comptroller of the household to the governor of Gujarat. Yet as he says, ‘At every step in life I was made aware of being a dalit.’

Translated from the Gujarati original, Purnasatya, this is the first autobiography of a dalit in Gujarati. Beginning with his life as a child who plays in the dust of the bone meal factory, where he later works, going on to labour with his parents in the ‘cotter mill’, the book presents a non-sentimental account of a childhood where friendships exist, sometimes across castes, and discrimination and abuse are constants. The second part of his story relates to his working life, his struggles on behalf of the dalits and the tribal populations against a backdrop of continuous discrimination. As the author questions accepted norms and verities, he forces readers to confront themselves.

B. Kesharshivam is the pen name of B. S. Jadav, which he coined by combining his parents names and placing Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s first initial in front. He has written many novels and short stories, getting published while he was in school. His autobiography won the Dasi Jivan award of the Government of Gujarat, 2003. Gita Chaudhuri is associated with Katha’s Translation Centre at St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad, and has recently translated M. K. Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth from Gujarati to Bengali. 

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar

Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium
From Iyothee Thass to Periyar

V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai

demy octavo hb 538pp ISBN 81-85604-37-1 Rs 650 rev ed with Afterword 2008

'The manner in which we read a book like this exposes our own cultural locations..'

--- The Indian Review of Books

The revised edition of the history of non-brahmin assertion to brahmin hegemony in the old Madras Presidency argues that this complex and layered past has to be critically re-claimed for our times. An analytical study of the gestation of the movement, of its forebears like Iyothee Thass and his contemporaries, the book also provides an incisive discussion on the contributions of Periyar E. V. Ramasami, the path-breaking founder of the Self-Respect movement and offers a textured history of a crucial decade – the 1920s to the 1930s – which witnessed important achievements at building a historic bloc that knit together the interests of non-brahmins and dalits. It goes on to analyse the Justice Party, the first non-brahmin political initiative in government, revealing its successes and significant limitations, and where the interests of the non-brahmins and that of the adi dravidas diverged.

The Self-Respect movement is discussed in detail, and translations from the writings of Periyar give readers in English a glimpse of his humour and scathing insights. The book demonstrates how the movement ‘conceptualized the relationship between caste, gender and sexuality’ and includes the wonderfully carnivalesque denunciations of caste, brahmin priesthood and the nation by youthful Self-Respecters. It ends with a critical account of the anti-Hindi agitations that inaugurated a new era of Dravidian nationalism.

The Afterword discusses various reactions to the book as well as current political developments that have influenced the way some critics have viewed the Non-Brahmin movement. Revisiting the debates of the 1930s can be ‘exciting as well as sobering’.

V. Geetha writes in Tamil and in English on contemporary Tamil history, culture and society and on gender. Among her books published by Stree-Samya are Gender ; and Patriarchy. S. V. Rajadurai (pseudonym for K. Manoharan) is a well-known Tamil writer and translator who has long been involved with the radical Left and the civil liberties movement.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

Writing Indian History: A View from Below

Writing Indian History: A View from Below

Achuthan M. Kandyil

demy octavo  hb ISBN 978-81-85604-72-5/81-85604-72-X  Rs 700.00

This comprehensive history of India, from ancient to modern times, presents an alternative, even iconoclastic, view. Arguing that the history written by professional historians has been strongly influenced by their concept of Hinduism, caste and its implications, or by an over-dependence on Marxism, and their upper caste status, Achuthan M. Kandyil urges that it is time that the counter view of the lower castes be considered.

Declaring that he is not a historian, the author also states that he has not used primary sources. A major reason for the perpetuation of the caste system, he suggests, was identified by the Mandal Commission Report, 1987: the unquestioning adherence to irrational, anachronistic ideas and beliefs that conditioned ‘the consciousness of the lower castes in accepting their inferior status in the ritual hierarchy as a part of the natural order of things’. He sets out to lay bare historical truths in an accessible way for those who have acquiesced in this discrimination. Achuthan deconstructs the intellectual labour of iconic scholars and personalities like S. Radhakrishnan, M. N. Srinivas, Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, among others, to show how they supported the caste system, albeit condemning its excesses.

Arguing against the prevalent distortions, the author talks of how the destruction of non-brahminic literatures has been the key to wrongful interpretations of ancient India, and to the way Dravidian culture was undervalued until the discovery of the Indus Valley civilization in the early twentieth century. Similarly, Buddhism had flourished for a millennium, BC 250-AD 800, bringing forth astonishing cultural achievements that travelled beyond India to the rest of the world. Yet this has not received its due; instead the glories of a golden age that mirrored Buddhism’s decline at the hands of a violent resurgent Brahminism were emphasized. The latter with its rigid caste system and orthodoxy maintained by the Dharmashastras, reinterpreted extremely narrowly, led to India’s long-term decline, its absence of unity, its vulnerability to invasions and its loss of creativity. The first glimmers of modernity based on equality before the law with attendant social reforms appeared only under British rule.

Challenging orthodox interpretations, and more radical ones, Achuthan raises many key questions on what is history and how it is written. 

Achuthan M. Kandyil served as an engineer with All India Radio for 18 years until 1972 when he joined the faculty at Grambling State University, Louisiana. He lives in the USA.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

Minorities in Europe and South Asia: A New Agenda

Minorities in South Asia and Europe: A New Agenda

Edited by Samir Kumar Das

demy octavo hb 326 pp ISBN 81-906760-3-8  Mar 2010 Rs 700

This book studies minorities of South Asia and Europe in a comparative and transnational perspective. While country-specific studies in minorities are not rare, their comparisons within a region (like South Asia and Europe) or across them are almost non-existent. This is so because the history of the formation of minorities in many ways coincides with that of the formation of nation-states. As modern states emerge and their boundaries are drawn precisely, minorities are created––if not ‘trapped’ and ‘colonized’––within them. Comparisons among minorities are often regarded as to politically volatile a subject to be encouraged by nation-states. Today it is imperative to undertake this task as the forces and processes of globalization flush the minorities out of their respective state boundaries.

Caught in the whirlpool of global politics, minorities sometimes do not know how to retain the autonomy of their social and political agendas. Modern minorities are the product of nationalist discourse. It suggests a new agenda in minority discourse.

Samir Kumar Das is a member of the Calcutta Research Group and Professor of Political Science, University of Calcutta.

The contributors are well-known academics and activists from South Asia and Europe:

Paula Banerjee, Thomas Benedikter, Bojan Brezigar, Andreas Eisendle,Benedikt Harzl, Harriet Hoffler, Emma Lantschner, Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Javaid Rehman and Ranabir Samaddar.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com

In Search of a Better World: Memoirs

In Search of a Better World: Memoirs

Jolly Mohan Kaul

Foreword by Amlan Dutta

Afterword by Aditi Roy Ghatak

demy octavo hb ISBN 81-85604-99-1 Feb 2010 Rs 550

‘I had joined the Communist Party in pursuit of an ideal, the building of a new society… a new and better human being would evolve.’ Thus propelled, aged 19, Kaul goes underground in 1941. He works with the Calcutta Port union, helping to organize a successful strike for 80 days; he spends 1951-53 in jail and becomes the secretary of the District Committee. He marries a fellow communist, Manikuntala Sen. The corruption and lowering of ideals of the Party made both Kaul and Sen leave in 1963, without a career, income or savings. He built a new career in PR with Indian Oxygen to help in corporate social responsibility, to committed economic journalism with his stint as editor of Capital, and returns to the education of workers in the Gandhi Labour. Kaul provides an insider’s view of the communist movement and the Communist Party, invaluable for understanding their trajectories and history. He presents path-breaking memoirs, showing what an individual can do to induce meaningful change.

Jolly Mohan Kaul is a social activist.Professor Amlan Dutta, the distinguished economist and Gandhian, has served as Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati and University of North Bengal.Aditi Roy Ghatak is a well-known journalist who has known the author for thirty years.

Published By:Samya

Enquiries: 16 Southern Ave, Calcutta 700026  tel:033 2466 0812/ 033 6519 5737

email streesamya.manager@gmail.com website: www.stree-samyabooks.com