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Annup Sonii, Bezwada Wilson, Amitabh Bacchan Yesterday, Bezwada Wilson, a well-known Dalit rights activist who has for long been campaigning for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers, was on superstar Amitabh Bacchan’s “popular” Kaun Banega Crorepati show on Sony TV. I was a little surprised, but thought it was indeed a good opportunity for him to put across the plight of the most disadvantaged section of Dalits, Valmikis, before an audience which largely happens to be from dominant castes.  I decided to watch the show and listen to what all Wilson had to say. I also thought it was good of Bacchan to give Wilson, who heads the Safai Karmachari Andolan and is a Magsaysay awardee, an opportunity to tell Crorepati audience on issues that bog this most oppressed community. The level of ignorance that exists on the law banning manual scavenging in any form was revealed, during the show, by none other than the man who accompanied Wilson, top TV actor Annup Sonii. After Wilson gave deta...

Keshubhai Patel, former chief minister of Gujarat, has passed away at the ripe old age of 92. Known to be an opponent (I would call him bete noire in my stories for the Times of India) of Narendra Modi, I am reproducing below a blog on him, “Simply Keshubhai”, I wrote way on June 30, 2012 for the TOI blogging site around the time he was about to dissociate his decades old association with BJP and form Gujarat Parivartan Party, which didn’t last after the December 2012 Gujarat state assembly polls.  Always critical of Modi, going so far as to call political atmosphere of Gujarat under him “mini-emergency”, Keshubhai withdrew from active politics thereafter, “accepting” Modi’s leadership. His activity ever since was confined to remaining chairman of the Somnath Temple Trust. I am tempted to reproduce the blog in lieu of a tribute to the grand old man. Read on: ***  He was addressed as “dinosaur” by late Congress chief minister Amarsinh Chaudhury, but Gujarat government official...

  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.

  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.

A top Gujarat government insider phoned me up the other day, reminding me of a story we carried in Counterview early this year regarding how a Gujarat government public sector undertaking (PSU), Gujarat State Fertilisers and Chemicals (GSFC), “transferred” Rs 250 crore to a Canadian firm Karnalyte for a potash mining project in Canada, but the project never took off, hence whole money has “gone waste.”  Written by by AK Luke, a retired IAS bureaucrat and a former MD of GSFC, referring to my article, this insider phoned me up to inform me that the Counterview story was copy-pasted in a little-known site called Kractivism. On looking up, I found, indeed, Luke’s story had been copy-pasted, but the site, run by a rights activist, did not have the courtesy to acknowledge the original source. Be that as it may, the state insider wondered why such a big news, involving Rs 250 crore “scam” had skipped top newspapers in Gujarat, forget about India. He said, normally, when such “exposures”...

Shukleshwar Mahadev temple in Anaval village The other day, I was informally talking with a younger friend on caste situation in Gujarat. In order to explain how caste has taken shape, he told me his own example. “I am supposed to be Anavil Brahmin”, as he said this, I wondered where these Brahmins are placed in the Brahmin caste hierarchy, which is known to be pretty rigid, and has many sub-castes.  This friend – whom I don’t want to name in order not to embarrass him (I know he does not believe in casteism in either traditional sense of the term) – said, “Well, I don’t think they are among the top of the caste ladder.” Then, he went to explain to be me the myth that is prevailing about the origin of the Anavils. Pointing out that all Anavil Brahmins belong to a village called Anaval in the Mahuva taluka of Surat district of South Gujarat, he said, “We were all said to tribals. According to this story, when Lord Ram reached Gujarat after he was wandering around in forests during h...

Abuzar with Shabnam Hashmi 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.