Ajaz Ashraf

1 week ago | mid-day.com | Ajaz Ashraf

A still from Ananth Mahadevan’s Phule, starring Pratik Gandhi and Patralekhaa as social reformers Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule Director Ananth Mahadevan believes he has mollified Brahmin organisations upset over the trailer of his film Phule, a biopic of Jyotirao Phule (his first name is spelt variously), India’s foremost crusader against caste discrimination in the 19th century. After meeting the representatives of the Akhil Bhartiya Brahmin Samaj, Mahadevan claimed they were happy when he...

2 weeks ago | mid-day.com | Ajaz Ashraf

Social Democratic Party of India workers raise slogans during a protest against the passage of the Waqf (Amendment) Bill in Parliament, in Bengaluru, on April 4.

1 month ago | frontline.thehindu.com | Ajaz Ashraf |Tanvir Aeijaz |Vaishna Roy

Hannah Arendt’s canonical exhortation for the persecuted Jew that “...if one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew” finds resonance in the Dalit’s resistance against Brahminism and caste atrocities in India. Articulating the political contestation, imbued with the concept of social justice, Dalits look forward not to a continued endurance of historical, or even day-to-day, injustice but to pursue both normative and strategic vindication of their rights and dignity.

Jul 29, 2024 | scroll.in | Ajaz Ashraf

Maharashtrian academic Amarnath Chandaliya founded the Kabir Kala Manch in the wake of the 2002 pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat. The troupe’s avowed mission was to use songs and skits to inoculate the lower classes and castes against the virus of communalism concocted by the votaries of Hindutva, or militant Hindu nationalism.

Jul 7, 2024 | livemint.com | Ajaz Ashraf

We tend to recall vividly the moment life changes tack. And so Minal will never forget that on 17 April, at 6.30 am, she left her house at Misal Layout, in Nagpur, for a walk in nearby Dayanand Park with her friends. She will remember that her children were still asleep and her husband, Surendra Gadling, the Nagpur-based lawyer, was in the toilet. She will remember that a little after the group of friends entered the park, the phone of one rang.