Floods in north Chennai through the lens of its youngsters
“For others, photos are for news. But for us, it is a documentation of life with all its struggles and no filters,” say Nandhini and Rasiya, two young women photographers who documented the floods as it unfolded in north Chennai.
Malaiyaha Tamils’ long march to equality in Sri Lanka
Retracing the journey that first brought them to the country 200 years ago, Malaiyaha Tamils reflect on their history and struggle as one of Sri Lanka’s most marginalised communities.
New Report Reveals Stark Disparities in India's Labour Market Based on Caste, Gender, and Religion
The largest earnings gap is based on gender, with women reporting earnings at only 40% of those of men in self-employment, followed by 64% of men in casual wage jobs, and 76% of men in regular wage jobs.
Read: Manoj Mitta on Why Caste-Based Violence Continues With Impunity in India
Discussing his latest book with Sravasti Dasgupta, Manoj Mitta says that whenever there is an instance of mass violence, one arm or another of the Indian state has betrayed caste prejudice.
The reality of scholarship schemes for religious minorities in India
What is the status of educational empowerment schemes for religious minorities? Why did the government scrap some of these programmes? How will it widen the gap between minorities and the rest of the population?
Watch: 'Violence Against Dalits in Post-Independent India Not Seen in Gandhi or Ambedkar's Lifetime'
Manoj Mitta speaks to The Wire's Sravasti Dasgupta to unpack these legal battles to provide a wider lens to understand why caste based inequality endures and caste-based violence continues with impunity, despite the Constitutional guarantee of equality.
Assam Delimitation Proposals That Sparked Fears of Muslim Marginalisation Are Now Final
The Election Commission of India did not further change constituency boundaries from its June draft order, which was criticised as an attempt to reduce the representation of the state's Muslim community.
@evan I’m ‘somewhat unsatisfied’ with the state of the fediverse
I can’t be satisfied when:
• the fediverse fails to attract huge swathes of people (not necessarily a problem with the fediverse per se)
• we miss out on things like academic discussions (and other good forms of ‘engagement’), which still happen in other, mostly awful places
• marginalised people, especially people of colour, find it uncomfortable to be here (despite potentially excellent human-scale moderation)
• almost everyone seems to be a (white) computer geek – hardly reflective of the wider population
• it can be hard if not impossible to find your community here
• the dominance of Mastodon™ masks the potential of the fediverse to host (non-micro) blog posts, photographs, music, videos, scrapbooks, you name it
• Mastodon gGmbH effectively dictates how microblogging happens in the fediverse by controlling the software most instances run
• Mastodon gGmbH also operates two of the largest instances, mastodon.social and mastodon.online (both of them, imo, a couple of orders of magnitude too big to form a reasonable ‘home’ community or to be moderated effectively)
I’ll leave it there for now. It’s nice here, but it could be so much better
"I see and remember the face of Faizan’s mother. I see and remember the horror and the plea for mercy in the eyes of Qutbuddin Ansari from 2002; the tears in the eyes of the lady in Karnataka, who was forced to take off her burqa to enter the school where she had been teaching for years; the faces of the Muslims who have spent their entire youth in prison because of wrongful incarceration; and the pain in the eyes of fellow Muslims, every time I see them raise their hands in supplication." Salik Ahmad writes. (Article from March 2022)
339 Lives Lost to Manual Scavenging in the Last Five Years, Govt Data Reveals
Although manual scavenging is an outlawed practice under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation (PEMSR) Act, 2013, several die every year cleaning sewers and septic tanks.
Kerala: Mosque panel’s ban on youth from public meeting expose casteism
A Muslim youth belonging to the Ossan community, a marginalised group among Muslims, was subjected to discrimination by the ruling council of the historical Puthoorppally Mosque, Changanassery, Kerala’s Kottayam District.
Discrimination against Muslims permitted through law in India, says Aakar Patel
India has developed a nationalism that is fierce, but essentially inward-focused, and of late there is discrimination against Muslims that is permitted through law, Aakar Patel, Chair of the Board of Amnesty International in India, has said.