ambedkar
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16MayLetter to Our LeftWord Community (May 2017)
Dear Comrades and Friends, We are now in the midst of 2017 – the centenary year of the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Union, which was built after the Revolution, lasted a mere seventy years. This is far too short a time in the span of human history to make any kind of judgment about either socialism or communism. Great strides were made, certainly, but there were also grievous wrongs. Two of our new books offer a sense of the Revolution and of the USSR: Cecilia Bobrovskaya’s Rank and [...] -
14AprDr. Ambedkar and Communism
Today, April 14, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar's birthday is a monumental day for India. It is the day when we celebrate the movement to break the bonds of caste and of social hierarchy. The point of Dr. Ambedkar's movement - as he said in 1927 during the Mahad Satyagraha - was to fight to ensure that our society 'treats human beings like human beings'. In 1944, Dr. Ambedkar was most explicit at a Depressed Classes Conference, 'The root of untouchability is the caste system; the root [...] -
Letter from the Editors, November 2016
3 November 2016 Dear LeftWord Community, As you read this letter, you should know that across India kisans are on the march. Organised by the All-India Kisan Sabha, they are part of an immense Jatha that will descend on Delhi on 24 November for a large rally. At our LeftWord Blog, there is a short note on the Kisan Sangharsh Jatha. We hope you will go and read it. The blog post on the rally is only our most recent offering. At our LeftWord Books Blog, you will find posts on the work of our a[...] -
22SepBlue and Red Flags for a New Era of Struggle
September 16 was an important day in the attempts by the Communist Parties to forge closer links of solidarity and joint struggle with important Dalit leaders and movements. The two-and-a-half years of the BJP-led Government have been witness to unprecedented attacks on the people of our country, on their livelihood, their jobs, their security, their access to education and health services and to their right to eat, think, speak and write as they choose within the parameters of civilized behavio[...] -
09SepDalit Resistance and the Role of the Left
A fundamental and core feature of India’s socio-economic structures is its caste system. Birth and descent determine positions in immutable social hierarchies. When Rohith Vemula penned his tragic yet passionate suicide note he described his Dalit identity as a ‘fatal accident’. And it is true. Had he been born into another caste, he would not as a child has had to witness his mother Radhika facing caste based indignities. Nor would Rohith and his sibling Raja have faced discrimination in [...]