Mahnisagar:

Gujarat Congress MLA Jignesh Mevani on Wednesday demanded the suspension of Mahisagar District Collector Neha Kumari, accusing her of making anti-Dalit comments, a charge the bureaucrat rejected.

Mr Mevani’s demand comes a week after he sought similar action against senior IPS officer Rajkumar Pandian for allegedly misbehaving with him and one of his party colleagues.

The MLA targeted Kumari citing a purported video in which she was heard saying that 90 per cent of cases registered under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, or the Atrocities Act, are used for blackmailing.

The IAS officer termed the lawmaker’s claims “baseless” and an unsuccessful attempt to get political mileage.

Mr Mevani visited Lunawada, the district headquarters, and demanded that an FIR be registered against the collector under the Atrocities Act and that she was suspended over her “insensitive” remarks and “unparliamentary” words.

When one Vijay Parmar went to meet the collector with his grievance at the SWAGAT programme on October 23, she used “unparliamentary” words against him and also insulted the lawyer community by saying they should be “slapped with slippers”, the Vadgam MLA told reporters.

SWAGAT is an initiative of the Gujarat government for the redressal of people’s grievances.

According to Mevani, the collector’s claim that 90 per cent of cases under the Atrocities Act are misused for blackmailing is an insult to the SC and ST communities and amounts to an offence under the Atrocities Act and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

“We demand Kumari’s suspension and that a case be registered against her,” he said.

The district collector called the MLA’s allegations a “political stunt”.

“The man whom the MLA called poor, innocent young friend (Vijay Parmar) has a police case against him, and his brother has more than one case of rape, kidnapping and assault against him,” Kumari said, adding that they keep visiting the collector’s office with grievances.

At the SWAGAT programme on October 23, he pressured the collector to file a case against police officers. When the collector told him that she did not have the power to file a case and that he should approach the superintendent of police (SP) or the court, he continued to pester her over his issue, she said.

He even threatened the officers and told the collector that she was a Brahmin and he would let her know what “section 4 of the Atrocities Act entailed”, she said.

“You can understand the direction in which this MLA wants to take law and order by keeping a person with a criminal history along with him even when the state government is sensitive about children and women,” she said.

The collector said that the way Vijay Parmar is “blackmailing” government employees in the name of the Atrocities Act is not at all right. “The MLA’s support to such people makes it difficult for the real complainants and the real victims to get justice,” she said.

Last week, Congress leaders and Dalit community members gathered outside the office of the Director General of Police in the state capital Gandhinagar demanding the suspension of senior IPS officer Rajkumar Pandian over his alleged misbehaviour with Mevani and his party colleague. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Rahul Gandhi visited a “Dalit kitchen” during his recent visit to Maharashtra’s Kolhapur. His discovery of the Dalit cuisine came about due to his curiosity about “what they eat, how they cook and its social and political significance”.

During his visit to the home of a Dalit farmer, Ajay Tukaram Sanade, at Unchaon village in Kolhapur on Saturday, he not only enjoyed a hearty and “spicy” meal with the family but also helped prepare it. The Leader of the Opposition was also accompanied by Shahu Patole, the author of the book ‘Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada’.

“No one knows what we (Dalits) eat,” said Mr Patole.

“You said an interesting thing that no one knows what you eat, how you cook it. Which is why I have come here today,” said Mr Gandhi.

The 54-year-old heads to the kitchen and tells the author, “I don’t eat a lot of spice”.

The conversation then moves to the discrimination faced by the Dalits. “In my village, they (the upper caste village) won’t even have water or a cup of tea at my home,” said Mr Patole.

“They respect my rank now, but not my caste,” he said, adding, “People hide their caste and surname (due to the discrimination).”

Mr Gandhi and Mr Patole cooked ‘harbharyanchi bhaji’ – a vegetable of chickpea greens – ‘tuvar dal’ with brinjals and a dish made from spring onions for lunch. They paired the vegetables and lentil with Maharashtrian-style jowar bhakris (bread made with sorghum flour).

दलित किचन के बारे में आज भी बहुत कम लोग जानते हैं। जैसा शाहू पटोले जी ने कहा, “दलित क्या खाते हैं, कोई नहीं जानता।”

वो क्या खाते हैं, कैसे पकाते हैं, और इसका सामाजिक और राजनीतिक महत्व क्या है, इस जिज्ञासा के साथ, मैंने अजय तुकाराम सनदे जी और अंजना तुकाराम सनदे जी के साथ एक दोपहर… pic.twitter.com/yPjXUQt9te

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 7, 2024

The Sanade family said they “were totally unprepared for his sudden arrival”. “First, we offered him water and tea, and later he said he was feeling hungry and volunteered to prepare something for all of us in our kitchen,” they told IANS.

“Drawing on Patole and the Sanade family’s personal experiences with caste and discrimination, we discussed the lack of awareness about Dalit cuisine and the importance of documenting this culture,” the Congress leader posted on X today.

The Constitution gives Bahujans a share and rights, and we will protect that Constitution, he asserted.

But true inclusion and equality for all in the society will be possible only when every Indian strives with the spirit of brotherhood in their hearts, Mr Gandhi said.

New York:

An Indian-American professor, Shailaja Paik, conducting research on and writing about Dalit women has received a $800,000 “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation which gives out awards every year to people with extraordinary achievements or potential.

Announcing her fellowship, the Foundation said, “Through her focus on the multifaceted experiences of Dalit women, Paik elucidates the enduring nature of caste discrimination and the forces that perpetuate untouchability.”

Ms Paik is a distinguished research professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, where she is also an affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Asian Studies.

“Paik provides new insight into the history of caste domination and traces the ways in which gender and sexuality are used to deny Dalit women dignity and personhood,” the Foundation said.

The MacArthur Fellowships, popularly known as “genius” grants, are given to people across a spectrum from academia and science to arts and activism, who according to the Foundation are “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential”.

The selections are made anonymously based on recommendations received and it does not allow applications or lobbying for the grants, which come without any strings and are spread over five years.

The Foundation said that her recent project focused “on the lives of women performers of Tamasha, a popular form of bawdy folk theatre that has been practised predominantly by Dalits in Maharashtra for centuries”.

“Despite the state’s efforts to reframe Tamasha as an honourable and quintessentially Marathi cultural practice, ashlil (the mark of vulgarity) sticks to Dalit Tamasha women,” it said.

Based on the project, she published a book, “The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India”.

It said, “Paik also critiques the narrative of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the twentieth century’s most influential caste abolitionist” and the architect of India’s Constitution.

In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), the US government-subsidised broadcaster, she said that she was herself a member of the Dalit community who grew up in Pune in a slum area and was inspired by her father’s dedication to education.

After getting her masters’ degree from the Savitribai Phule University in Pune, she went to the University of Warwick in the UK for her PhD.

She did a stint as a visiting assistant professor of South Asian history at Yale University.

Since the programme began in 1981, fellowships have been granted to 1,153 people.

Previous MacArthur Fellows include writers Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Ved Mehta, poet A.K. Ramanujam, economists Raj Chetty and Sendhil Mullainathan, mathematician L Mahadevan, computer scientists Subhash Khot and Shwetak Patel, physical biologist Manu Prakash, musician Vijay Gupta, community organiser Raj Jayadev, and lawyer and activist Sujatha Baliga.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)