A blogging site carries an interesting article, "4 African Kings Who Ruled India That Have Been Erased From History". Two Ghana bloggers ( Koby PI and MR Eris ), apparently, are owners of the site, which calls itself “Mind Builders Fellowship", which, it says, is an organization that helps each and everyone to liberate oneself by "renewing of the mind and flashing out the unwanted elements out of the mind.” Interestingly, the bloggers are from a country which shot into prominence for India last year after several scholars from the country called Gandhiji “racist”, leading to removal of the his statue from the University of Ghana. Now, Ghana bloggers seek to suggest how India has “ignored” African kings. Reproduced below is the blog: ***  “…The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as s...

Counterview Desk  A blogging site carries an interesting article, "4 African Kings Who Ruled India That Have Been Erased From History". Two Ghana bloggers ( Koby PI and MR Eris ), apparently, are owners of the site, which calls itself “Mind Builders Fellowship", which, it says, is an organization that helps each and everyone to liberate oneself by "renewing of the mind and flashing out the unwanted elements out of the mind.” Interestingly, the bloggers are from a country which shot into prominence for India last year after several scholars from the country called Gandhiji “racist”, leading to removal of the his statue from the University of Ghana. Now, Ghana bloggers seek to suggest how India has “ignored” African kings. Reproduced below is the blog: ***  “…The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their...

Chief minister Vijay Rupani in Abdasa  By A Representative The Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), a well-known elite NGO monitoring political processes, especially elections, in India, has said that despite a Supreme Court order, political parties, including BJP and Congress, fighting eight by-elections in Gujarat, scheduled for November 3, have chosen candidates with criminal cases.

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ*  It is more than three weeks now: On the night of October 8, 2020, the 83-year-old Jesuit Fr Stan Swamy was taken into custody by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) from his residence in Ranchi to an undisclosed destination. According to his colleagues, the NIA did not serve a warrant on Fr. Stan and that their behaviour was absolutely arrogant and rude.

By A Representative A rapid telephonic survey of the Human Rights Commissions, Women’s Commissions, Child Rights Commissions, Minorities Commissions and Lokayuktas at state as well as Central level has suggested that a large number of them have not functioned during the Covid-19 pandemic, even though it is their job to “intervene and uphold the fundamental rights of the stranded workers and provide them with basic amenities.” Carried out by Rini Kothari, a final year law student at the Jindal Global Law School (Sonipat) during her internship at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), under the guidance of Venkatesh Nayak, an eminent social activist in order to update the Lockdown Performance Database, a CHRI document, the survey found that 69% of Human Rights Commissions were functioning, and as for the remaining 31%, no records existed. Pointing out that this was particularly “appalling” as it was the time when overnight tens of thousands of daily-wage migrant workers turned ...

Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis: Sept 25 to Oct 25, 2020  Counterview Desk The India Civil Watch International, a multinational organization claiming to be committed to uphold democratic rights in India, even as condemning the horrific case of the rape and murder of a Dalit woman in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh (UP) by four dominant caste men, has said that the “brutality” exposes “the Indian police” in the aftermath of the incident.

Shabnam Hashmi By A Representative To mark one month of the “alleged gang rape and brutalization by upper caste men” of a young Dalit woman from Hathras, a Delhi-based human rights organization Anhad (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy) led by senior activist Shabnam Hashmi, has held a nationwide campaign, #IfWeDoNotRise, on October 29 to give “voice to the cumulative outrage of citizens” against such incidents across India.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* A young aspiring Nikita Tomar was murdered by Tauseef, who happened to be stalking her since here college days, as both studied in the same institution in Faridabad, a North Indian town. Nikita, it is reported, had turned down Tauseef’s proposal in the past. The young man could not take the rejection and killed her.

By A Representative Even as Adani Australia, subsidiary of India’s powerful industrial group, Adanis, welcomed the Minerals Council of Australia’s economic report from the Commodity Insights, which projects that thermal coal imports to the Asia Pacific region rising by 275 million tonnes through to 2030, climate protesters stepped up #StopAdani campaign, including online, in different parts of the world against insurance companies insuring the Adani coal project in Australia.

By Rajiv Shah A US think-tank study has said that even though Prime Minister Narendra Modi still enjoys considerable support among Indian diaspora in the country – 48% of Indian Americans approve of Modi’s performance, 32 percent disapprove, while 20% have “no opinion” – the man often dubbed as American Modi, Donald Trump, is unlikely to get more than 22% of their votes in the November 3 US polls, with his rival, Joseph Biden, likely to get 72% of the votes.

By A Representative In a major revelation, top Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan has said that between 75 and 80 per cent girls, who come to study at the Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK), founded by Macwan about two decades ago off Ahmedabad to offer alternative training options to manual scavenging and other caste based occupations, have experienced sexual violence or harassment.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* India is facing its worst crisis in its recent history. The Hindutva forces shaped by RSS and politically led by BJP are accelerating the crisis to undo liberal constitutional democracy in India. The political opposition is withering everyday with the help of media, puppet police, investigative agencies and judiciary.

The recent unfortunate, highly deplorable, brutal and heinous incident of rape, body mutilation, murder and burning of a young Dalit girl in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh reveals the sickening neglect of the political community as well as of the society to reinforce caste, gender and power dynamics in the country. In light of this, the Gender Impact Studies Center (GISC) at Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI), Counterview, GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation, City Makers Mission International and Delhi Post News organized a Special Talk with Mr Martin Macwan, an eminent Dalit Rights Activist as part of its #WebPolicyTalk – The State of Gender Equality: #GenderGaps on October 21, 2020, titled “The Heinousness of many Hathras amid the Pandemic – Voluntarism, the Way Ahead for Combating Caste and Gender-based Violence”. An IMPRI note: *** Mr Macwan raised pertinent points that the victim of sexual violence was deprived of her right to be respectfully cremated. Her body was instead...

By Pramod Ranjan*  It is said that had the spread of the Novel Coronavirus not been contained by imposing lockdowns, by now, it would have consumed a substantial chunk of the human residents of the earth. But is the truth as one-sided as is being claimed? Lockdown killed lakhs of persons the world over and its after-effects have ruined the economies of scores of low- and middle-income countries like India. Crores of persons have been condemned to a life of poverty and misery. What is going to change Offices and educational institutions were a gift of the modern age. By bringing human minds together, the places of work and the centres of education not only scripted a new chapter in the development of the human race but also brought diverse communities on common platforms. It is almost certain that in the post-Covid world, schools and offices would not exist as we know them today. A new law for bringing about changes in educational institutions has come into force in India. Labour...

By Pankti Jog* If a reply received under the Right to Information (RTI) Act is to be believed, a whopping 3.96 lakh ration cards have been deleted from the National Food Security Act (NFSA) benefit in Gujarat. This comes to over 15 lakh people, all of them belonging to tribal and backwards areas. They have been thrown out of the subsided ration cover despite the current Covid situation.

By Anand K Sahay* Media and facile opinion polls appear to have overlooked two somewhat related perspectives with regard to the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections when the first votes will be cast on coming Wednesday. They have partly relied on the 2015 polling data on caste arithmetic as if this was the sacred “gayatri mantra” itself, besides strongly hinting that the presumed Modi magic could safely take the ruling alliance home.

Counterview Desk As many as 134 citizens, mainly from Gujarat, condemning the closure of “Kashmir Times” office in Srinagar, have said that entire effort is to silence freedom of expression in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and teach its editor Anuradha Bhasin a lesson for opposing “repressive measures” of the Government of India following the abrogation of Article 370.

In August 2020, Global March Against Child Labour released an evidence-based report , providing an overview of the situation of child labour with a gender lens in sugarcane harvesting in India. The report highlights that children are pushed into hazardous child labour due to structural poverty among harvesters, most of whom are from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, also referred to as DBA (Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi/Tribal) in this article, because of exploitative hiring practices resulting in debt bondage. It was found that traditional gender-based norms contributed significantly to child labour by normalising unequal wages and unpaid family work. This article by Gazal Malik and Kratika Choubey* is an extension to the report, focusing on the facets of gender and caste as cross-cutting issues to be kept in mind while addressing the problem of child labour in sugarcane supply chain and in other agricultural crops in India: *** Caste, Poverty and Child Marriage...

By Dr Prem Singh*  In the new National Education Policy 2020 (NEP), there has been a quantum leap towards neo-colonization of Indian education via privatization to further corporatization of education. There is a crucial need to understand this new dimension of the NEP. Significantly, under the NEP, foreign universities and foreign direct investment (FDI) have been allowed entry in the realm of higher education.

By A Representative Education activists and civil society organizations (CSOs) across Odisha have opposed the state government’s move to close schools with low student strength as it will increase dropouts among children, especially in the tribal and backward regions of the state, where children mostly depend on government schools for their education. Due to the government's move, around 14,339 primary and upper primary schools in the state will face imminent closure.

Family members of the victim  Counterview Desk A fact-finding team of the All-India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch comprising of Utkarsha Tomar, Kusum Lata, Cand Asha, has alleged that the family of Neetu, a member of the Other Backward Caste (OBC), who was found dead on October 4 at a residence in Model Town, Delhi, was treated treated in the same way as the family of the Hathras gangrape victim.

Abuzar with Shabnam Hashmi By A Representative In a shocking incident, a social activist, Mohd Abuzar, woke up to find on September 13, 2020 that his Facebook account had been suspended. He came to know of this after he received numerous calls from friends and relatives, who, wanting to communicate with him, received a strange message that he had died, asking them to pay their tributes Abuzar.

Janet Rice, David Shoebrodge, Lee Rhiannon  Counterview Desk A roundtable organised by Australian Greens, which is the third biggest political group in the country, held to discuss human rights situation in India at the New South Wales Parliament in Sydney has insisted that parliamentarians, human rights activists and lawyers should play a more active role “standing up for human rights not just in their own places but also in India.”

Counterview Desk  A report , based on an evidence-based study by a multinational NGO, Global March Against Child, which headquarters in the Hague, providing an overview of child labour with a gender lens in sugarcane harvesting in India, has said that large number of children are pushed into hazardous child labour due to structural poverty among harvesters, most of whom are from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes.

Wall writing to propagate nutritional value of dal  By A Representative An Odisha civil society report has revealed that despite the fact that the state government has been offering 1 kg of dal (pulses) per month to each family as a "covid elevation measure", 63% of the families families surveyed said the dal lasted between one and five days, while 27% of families consumed dal between six and 10 days.