How caste matters and doesn’t matter by Surinder S. Jodhka
Punjabi Subaltern Summit – 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012, 11:00 AM to 05:00 PM
ICSSR Seminar Hall, Panjab University, Chandigarh
Agenda
The Punjabi Subaltern Summit is a one-of-its-kind conclave where politicians, thinkers, change agents, writers, artists, academicians and media professionals will try to find a common ground on the pressing problems that plague our state. An attempt to break free from the parochial structures that have suppressed the social narrative on lesser-known issues like caste, religion, representation and federalism. By harnessing the spirit and dialect of new media, it strives to infuse the intellectual mainstream with a sense of purpose and direction, bringing back the long-lost ebullience into its ethos. This non-partisan forum is a bold attempt reclaim the mantle of Punjabiyat.
One of its immediate aims is to influence the pre-poll debate in Punjab. We plan to organize this event every year in a bigger and better format, expecting that it will become a fixture or an annual pilgrimage for the regional intelligentsia.
For detailed information on the agenda and issues to be discussed, please visit: www.subaltern.in.
Waiting for Spring by Nirupama Dutt
The emergence of a Dalit identity in East Punjab is a recent development, spurred in part by the failure of Sikhism to abandon caste discrimination as it initially averred to do.
For us trees do not bear fruits
For us flowers do not bloom
For us there is no Spring
For us there is no Revolution …
– Lal Singh Dil –
These are lines from the last poem of Lal Singh Dil, hailed as the foremost revolutionary poet of Punjab. He passed away in 2007. The despondent note of the poem is both surprising and telling, for a poet who had once declared that the song and dance in his heart would not die, no matter how dire the circumstance. It took Dil a lifetime to discover this sad yet provocative truth, against the backdrop of the complexities of caste in Punjab. Yet centuries before Dil’s birth, the same frustration with caste was intricately linked to the emergence of the Sikh religion.
Read full article: Waiting for Spring. Punjabi Dalit Poets. Nirupama Dutt. Apr 10
Dalit Chetna : Sarot te Saruup by Ronki Ram
Ronki Ram’s Dalit Chetna : Sarot te Saruup (Dalit Consciousness: Sources and Form) in Punjabi is out. This book is a detailed account of how Dalit consciousness emerged in Punjab, what turns it has taken over the last nine decades since the beginning of glorious Ad Dharm movement led by Babu Mangu Ram Mugowal and the rise of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar movement in Punjab spearheaded by Seth Kishan Dass of Bootan Mandi. The Book also provides an exhaustive account of some of the pioneer Dalit poets, prose writers and Dalit autobiographies as well as activists. Dalit Deras and the question of emerging Dalit identity figures prominantly in this field study based book in Punjabi.
The book is published by Lokgeet Parkashan, S.C.O. 26-27, Sector 34 A, Chandigarh-160022 (India) Ph. +911725077427, 5077428 e-mail and is very reasonably priced Rs. 200. Total Pages: 264.
Seminar on Religion and Social Identity in Punjab
International Seminar on Religion and Social Identity In Punjab
Organised by Department of Sociology, Panjab University, Chandigarh in collaboration with the University of Manchester, UK
FEBRUARY 18-19, 2010
Venue: ICSSR, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
See attached programme: Punjab University Programme
PRG Meeting – 31 October 2009
The next Punjab Research Group meeting will take place on 31st October 2009 at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Speakers include:
Kathryn Lum, (European University Institute, Florence) ‘A community at a crossroads: a case study of the Ravidassia Sangat in Barcelona’
Navtej Purewal, (University of Manchester) ‘Articulations of Caste through Religion: Codes of Hegemony and Invisibility in West Punjab’
In the past few months, the issue of caste in Punjab has been making the headlines for a number of reasons. Therefore, it seems that this would be a good opportunity to discuss the issue of caste in contemporary/historical Punjab(s). If you are currently working in this area and would like to share your research findings with the PRG then please contact me. Please could you also circulate this note to anyone else you think might be interested in presenting a paper.
If you would like to attend please email me: pvirdee@dmu.ac.uk
Of Babas and Deras by Surinder S. Jodhka
India Seminar, January 2008
IN the second week of December 2007 three Sikh organizations met in Chandigarh to deliberate on the challenges confronting the Sikh community and the state of Punjab. They identified three social problems needing immediate attention of the community: drug addiction among youth, degradation of the environment, and discrimination against Dalits in rural areas.
Citing the findings of an NGO, it was reported that between 40 to 60 per cent of all youth in the state were addicted to one or the other drugs. Suicides by farmers and crisis of agriculture were a direct outcome of the rapid degradation of environment due to indiscriminate use of modern technology and chemical fertilizers. Similarly it was acknowledged that in some villages Dalits were being denied entry into gurdwaras and access to the Guru Granth Sahib for religious ceremonies such as anand karaj (marriage rituals) and antim ardas (prayer service for the departed). Given its potential to create a rift among the rural Sikh masses this needed to be stopped. It was underlined that ‘the Sikh Gurus were for a casteless and classless society.’
Read full article: http://www.india-seminar.com/2008/581/581_surinder_jodhka.htm
Is caste prejudice still an issue? By John McManus
BBC News
Groups who say they face discrimination within their religions because of their ranking in society are gathering for a conference in London on the theme of “untouchability”. But is the caste system still used as means of excluding people within some religious groups in Britain?
The first world conference on “untouchability” aims to draw together the experiences of people from as far afield as Nigeria, Britain, and Japan.
Such “untouchability” or social exclusion, based on membership of certain groups, is a continuing problem for sections of the population worldwide, say the conference organisers.
Harish K. Puri, ‘The Scheduled Castes in the Sikh Community – A Historical Perspective’
East Punjab is a Sikh majority state. After its re-organisation in 1966, (when the Hindi speaking areas were separated to constitute the new state of Haryana and some of the hill areas were transferred to Himachal Pradesh), the religious composition of the state was radically altered. The Sikhs constituted 63 per cent of the state’s population at present. Their share in the rural population is higher; about 72 per cent. The Dalits or the Scheduled Castes have a high proportion of population in the state, 28.3 percent in 1991 which is projected to have increased to over 30 percent in 2001, the highest among the states in India. Over 80 per cent of them lived in the rural areas. Punjab’s villages are, therefore, predominantly Sikh and Dalit. An understanding of the status of the Scheduled Castes in the Sikh community in particular, and the impact of Sikhism on dalits in Punjab in general, should help us in appreciation of the regional specificity of the status and conditions of life of the Scheduled Castes in the state as also the limitations of the book view of caste.
Read full article: Puri scheduled castes in sikh community
The Ravidassia movement could help to bring about the end of the caste system in India, says Kathryn Lum
Kathryn Lum guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 May 2009
Each year thousands of pilgrims from all over India as well as abroad converge on the city of Varanasi, site of the holy Ganges river. However, this is no ordinary pilgrimage. What distinguishes these pilgrims from the hundreds of thousands that regularly embark on a yatra (pilgrimage) in India is their low caste, and the fact that they worship a formerly untouchable guru (Guru Ravidass Ji), who dared to challenge caste oppression and prejudice in the 14th century, at a time when low-caste slavery was at its height. Although untouchability has since been formally outlawed and laws passed to counteract centuries of discrimination, the social stigma attached to being low caste has not been erased.
Read full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/08/kathryn-lum-face-to-faith
Casteism: alive and well in Pakistan by Raza Rumi
Originally published in the Friday Times magazine
What do you expect of a country where the aboriginals are known as janglis, asks Raza Rumi
Who says casteism is extinct in Pakistan? My friends have not been allowed to marry outside their caste or sect, Christian servants in Pakistani households are not permitted to touch kitchen utensils, and the word ‘choora’ is the ultimate insult
It is a cliché now to say that Pakistan is a country in transition – on a highway to somewhere. The direction remains unclear but the speed of transformation is visibly defying its traditionally overbearing, and now cracking postcolonial state. Globalisation, the communications revolution and a growing middle class have altered the contours of a society beset by the baggage and layers of confusing history.
What has however emerged despite the affinity with jeans, FM radios and McDonalds is the visible trumpeting of caste-based identities. In Lahore, one finds hundreds of cars with the owner’s caste or tribe displayed as a marker of pride and distinctiveness. As an urbanite, I always found it difficult to comprehend the relevance of zaat-paat (casteism) until I experienced living in the peri-urban and sometimes rural areas of the Punjab as a public servant.
To read full article: http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/casteism-alive-and-well-in-pakistan/
People’s history of the Punjab: Caste oppression, conversions and Sufism
The enigma of the ruled converting en masse to the religion of the rulers is best depicted by the following joke: in the last days of British rule, after a demonstration in Lahore, a desi garbage handling lady, Laveezan, asked her friend Mary what the demonstration was all about. Mary replied, “They are demanding freedom from us.”
Like Laveezan and Mary, Punjabi Muslims identify themselves with the Islamic rulers of India: being followers of the same religion as the ruling community, they consider themselves a part of it. However, the economic status of lower-caste converts to Islam remained the same throughout the nine centuries of Muslim rule in India. The same holds true for the British period: converts to Christianity didn’t find themselves any better for it.
Conversions to Islam in India have been the subject of furious debate. Hindu fundamentalists assert that the conversions were obtained by force, while many Muslims argue that they were voluntary; that lower-caste Hindus were attracted to Islam by the Sufis of Punjab. The truth probably lies somewhere in between these two extreme views. The controversy however makes the examination of the dynamics which made Muslims a majority in Punjab no less important.
To read the full article: http://www.wichaar.com/news/315/ARTICLE/11994/2009-02-05.html
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