#Dalit community

[thehansindiaseo]

Aithabathula makes a triumphant return

Aithabathula Ananda Rao, a prominent leader from the Dalit community and an Ambedkarist, has made significant strides in his political career with the TDP. Starting from local politics, he advanced to district levels before contesting his first election for the Amalapuram constituency in 2009. Despite his initial defeat, Ananda Rao’s persistence paid off as he contested four elections, winning two and losing two.

[banglakhobor]

অর্ধশতক ধরে নিষেধাজ্ঞা ছিল ভারতের এই গ্রামে, পুলিশি নিরাপত্তায় অবশেষে মন্দিরে ঢুকলেন দলিতরা

চেন্নাই: এই ভারতেই রয়েছে আরও একটি ভারত। প্রায় নিত্যদিনই প্রমাণ মেলে তার। এবার প্রমাণ মিলল তামিলনাড়ুতে। প্রায় অর্ধশতক ধরে লড়াই চালিয়ে যাওয়ার পর, বুধবার সেখানে মন্দিরে প্রবেশের অধিকার পেলেন দলিত সম্প্রদায়ের মানুষজন। তবে খোলা মনে দর্শন হল না। পরিস্থিতি উদ্বেগজনক বুঝে পুলিশি নিরাপত্তা দিয়ে মন্দিরে প্রবেশ করতে হল তাঁদের। সেই খবর ছড়িয়ে পড়েছে মুখে মুখে। (Viral News) তামিলনাড়ুর তিরুআন্নামালাই জেলার…

[lilithism1848]

[dailyanarchistposts]

We have been debating tirelessly on different ways to abolish caste and other social evils which permeate the society that we have today. Raising voices against oppression, forming political parties and contesting in elections and also trying to force the government to form and implement policies which will give the Bahujans their fundamental rights. We have come a long way through decades of struggle in gaining rights, but the present political scenario of the country is not looking hopeful to the Bahujan aspirations for breaking away the shackles of caste.

With the diluting of labour laws and enabling state sanctioned exploitation of Bahujan labour, implementation of NEP which further marginalize the Bahujan children and extinguish their hopes of upward social and economic mobility, a proposed EIA which will rob the Bahujans and Adivasis of their land and livelihood, implementation of CAA and NRC to deprive the status of citizenship, privatization of key public utilities and destroying the already weakened public healthcare system, the government is openly showing its motives as a corporate stooge which dances to the whims of Adani, Ambani and other Brahmin Bania masters.

Armed with a grass roots organization like RSS and corporate funded media outlets, they have complete dominance in creating narratives they want the public to believe and they also have a well-oiled IT cell to spread fake news against any dissenters who dare to raise voice against them. Even though there are voices in the society which are raising against these government policies, there is a lack of grass root organization and common vision is sometimes lacking. This doesn’t mean that all the opposing forces against the fascist regime, which is murdering our democracy, should be centralized under one political entity. Instead it is time to think about exactly the opposite, the expansion of the idea of democracy from merely being a political tool used while casting vote once every 5 years to inculcating an idea of democracy in all aspects of life — political, social and economical and decentralization of all aspects of society.

Anarchism is a political philosophy which rejects all coercive and oppressive forms of hierarchy, be it caste, class, color, creed, clan, gender, age, orientation or country. It says that every system of power hierarchy should be scrutinized and made to justify its existence, and any system which fails to justify itself and is trampling the freedom of the individual will have to be abolished. The idea of questioning oppressive power structures is inherent to the idea of anarchism. It prohibits a system where even a party or a few leaders decide on how the society will function. Instead it focuses on decentralizing power to local bodies and communities so that decisions are made at the lowest level possible, thus eliminating the concentration of power into a few hands. It also shares the view that people who are most impacted by policies and decisions are the ones who are most capable of making them.

Historically, humans have developed to live in societies which didn’t have the kind of huge inequalities as it exists today. There is an intrinsic instinct to cooperate and help each other which is visible when a disaster strikes or the self-organization that appears out of nowhere in organic movements against oppression. Solidarity and mutual aid are the foundations of an anarchist society. The “right to well-being” of all human beings, meaning “the possibility of living like human beings, and of bringing up children to be members of a society better than ours” (Kropotkin, 1892). Two of the examples of societies which function close to anarchist principles today are Zapatistas of Mexico (Nacional, 2002) and Rojava in Syria (Democracy, 2018). Extreme corruption, colonization and environmental exploitation forced the indigenous people of Mexico to form an autonomous region where people directly form communities and decide the policies. Similarly, the people of Rojava, battered by the civil war, have formed an autonomous region with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchist and libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity based on democratic confederalism. One of the principles of direct democracy is that there are no elected representatives for a fixed term, any member who is elected will just be a spokesperson of the community and can be withdrawn immediately if he goes against the decision taken by discussion and deliberations. The means of production will be owned by workers and run by worker councils. Conflict resolution mechanism and alternative systems of judiciary exists within the community run by the members. There won’t be police or other systems which grant power to one person or group to take away the life and liberty of an individual, rather power will be distributed equally or rotationally which is controlled by the community. During the current times of BLM protests all over the world, it is clear that the police institution is just a tool employed by the ruling and propertied class to control the lower class and there is mass class for defunding the police and transferring the resources to community welfare projects.

We need to look at how these communities organize themselves in the face of an oppressive regime and come up with innovative ways to decentralize and create institutions which we are brainwashed to assume will work only if they are centralized. Decentralized community gardens provide food for the community which is maintained by them. Systems of education, community defense, criminal justice systems, industry and healthcare can be decentralized and we need to focus our efforts in building such grassroot level communities which function along the principles solidarity and mutual aid. We already have systems of mutual aid in our communities, all we need to do is to transfer these tendencies to all the systems we live by.

The Indian social mentality of following a leader or waiting for a savior needs to change. Any system which can consolidate power in the hands of the few can change into authoritarianism. Even if the leaders are benevolent and have the will to serve the people, there are systems of coercion which exist in our society, where economic, political and social power resides in the hands of the few, that they will bind the leaders from doing their duty to the Bahujans. The leaders and parties we look up to keep failing and disappointing us time and again. Now, action needs to be taken directly at grass root level by the Bahujans by creating communities and networks of solidarity and mutual aid and practicing decision making and direct participatory democracy. The culture of outsourcing decision making to politicians or other ruling class needs to stop. This has to start at all sectors of industry, agriculture and services too, and also within family.

We can’t turn to the state for protection anymore as it the state apparatus which is being systematically abused by the ruling castes to exploit Bahujan labour to create their wealth. Along with the efforts to educate Bahujans through social media and other means to sensitize them of their exploitation, effort needs to be focused at the bottom most level to inculcate the habit of participatory democracy at individual, family and community levels, respecting the liberty of the individual. The fight for annihilation of caste cannot be won, unless all unjust power structures in the society cease to exist and power is decentralized and distributed to the people directly, where individuals themselves can organize and make decisions about their life without being coerced or exploited to create wealth for others.

References

Democracy, N. (2018, July 6 ). The Communes of Rojava: A Model In Societal Self Direction. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDnenjIdnnE

Kropotkin, P. (1892). The Conquest of Bread. Paris.

Nacional, E. Z. ( 2002). A Zapatista Response to “The EZLN Is NOT Anarchist”. Retrieved from The Anarchist Library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ejercito-zapatista-de-liberacion-nacional-a-zapatista-response-to-the-ezln-is-not-anarchist

[indizombie]

When knowledge becomes an exclusive product under savarna domination, it creates an unjust system of power hierarchy where knowledge produced and communicated by DBA communities are either discarded or delegitimized without a second thought. The injustice done to a person in their capacity as a knower (producer and communicator of knowledge) is called Epistemic Injustice. This is a concept in social epistemology that refers to the unfair distribution of knowledge, credibility, or intellectual resources when someone is denied access to knowledge or is not believed, despite having relevant knowledge or expertise, because of their social identity, such as their race, caste, gender, class, or disability. The term was coined by a British philosopher, Miranda Fricker.

Pranav Jeevan, ‘Epistemic Injustice: Does Knowledge have Caste?’, Round Table India

[purple-worm]

I meant lawyer idk why I said judge 🤦🏻‍♀️ and thank you so much for the details!!! I’ve had a bit of a week so I haven’t had time to read up on the details of what’s been going on. Im literally going off things family members or co workers have told me. Thanks for summarising it! Fingers crossed and hoping for a good ruling

Don’t worry about it! I just mentioned it because it’s v telling of how uneducated the side of the government is. ofc we were all expecting it, but it just exposes them for having zero understanding of sex and gender. and it’s so unfair that they even get to say a word in the supreme court, let alone be responsible for decisions that affect us.

also dont worry friend, we’re all having interesting and busy times in our lives and im happy that my rundown of the events helped💕

i've listed some of my fav parts from vrinda grover's statement here, and in other happy Indian queer news: Ramakka, a transwoman, is officially contesting for the Karnataka state elections from her constituency Kampli. She'd be the only one of 2500 candidates to be (openly) queer 💕

Good luck to her and good luck to all of us! 💕

[makingcontact]

The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation

Book cover for “The Trauma of Caste” Credit: Penguin Random House Caste—one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world—is thriving. Despite the ban on Untouchability 70 years ago, caste impacts 1.9 billion people in the world. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in…

[timetravellingkitty]

I saw something on Twitter about how vegetarian (and specifically UC I think) condemning non-vegetarians for eating meat is casteist but I don't see how? I'm genuinely confused, please explain if possible 😭

because upper caste elites have attached moral purity to consuming only vegetarian food and shaming dalit communities for eating meat (especially beef) cause it makes them impure/dirty. dalits and muslims (who also eat beef) are regularly lynched on the mere SUSPICION of eating or handling beef

[mauveliptint]

At the end of the day, men - regardless of their religion, caste, or sexuality - remain oppressors of women within and outside their own identities. Brahmin men oppress Brahmin women (and women from marginalized communities), Dalit men oppress Dalit women, Muslim men oppress Muslim women, Atheist men oppress Atheist women and Queer men oppress Queer women. This oppression transcends ideologies and identities.

[metamatar]

October 10, 2022

Amit Kumar had everything going for him. After graduating in engineering and landing a decent job, Amit wanted to settle down with his childhood sweetheart Renu. The couple had known each other since Class IX and dreamt of a life together. The only difficulty was that Renu belonged to a Brahmin family and Amit was a Dalit.

With their homes barely a kilometre apart in Garhwa district of Jharkhand, Renu knew her family would never approve of the match. The couple decided to run away and tie the knot in another State. And thus began their tale of unending harassment and tragedy.

The couple married at a temple in Dehradun and got their marriage registered there. They had just about settled down at Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh when, in a midnight raid, the Uttar Pradesh police took away Renu, claiming that she had been abducted. Amit and Renu have not seen or spoken to each other since that fateful night of August 13, 2021.

Amit’s life has been a quagmire of legal battles and dismissed habeas corpus petitions since then. “I fear my wife is no more,” he told The Hindu.

Activists say such tragic situations can be avoided if couples like Amit and Renu are provided safe houses and special protection by the State governments as mandated by the Supreme Court.

According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the number of “honour killings” in the country was 24, 25 and 33 in 2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively. Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand topped the list in 2021 and 2020, while Manipur was on top in 2019.

The government in 2021 informed Parliament that there were 145 “honour killing” incidents in the country between 2017 and 2019.

Interestingly, though the NCRB report attributed only 25 deaths to “honour killings” in 2020, it said there were 27 deaths due to casteism and 1,558 due to “illicit relationship”. Similarly, in 2021, 33 deaths were listed under “honour killings”, but 1,544 and 1,532 under “illicit relationship” and “love affairs”, respectively.

So far, only Delhi, Haryana and Punjab have safe houses for inter-faith and inter-religious couples. Kerala has only announced the setting up of a safe house.

In fact, only 21 States have said that they have complied with the Supreme Court directives, which means that they have asked the police officers concerned of a State for strict compliance, according to Dhanak for Humanity, a non-governmental organisation which works with such couples, helping them solemnise their marriages and providing legal support.

The Supreme Court had in 2018 directed that safe houses be set up in every district as well as a special cell in States for couples facing opposition from families and community.

Gaurav Yadav, an engineer from IIT Chennai, said he was working with survivors of “honour crimes” and couples who are in hiding to petition the government for more safe houses across the country.

“Soon we will form an official grouping and petition the government to follow the Supreme Court directives on safe houses and special cells,” Mr. Yadav said, adding that he had organised a convention regarding the same in Delhi recently.

He said though couples had been demanding that safe houses be set up, the State administrations had looked the other way.

An example is of Ravikant Chandrawanshi and Alisha, who had a harrowing time getting married under the Special Marriage Act in Chhattisgarh.

The inter-faith couple at first decided to elope and marry in Bilaspur. However, a lack of support system and security, including finances, saw them return home in Kawardha within four days.

“As my wife’s family were well to do and politically connected, they kept up the pressure on us. Finally, we had to take legal recourse and approached the High Court asking them to direct the State administration to provide the mandated safe house and police protection.

“However, we were informed that there was no safe house and Alisha had to go to a sakhi centre or a women’s safe house,” Mr. Chandravanshi said.

Though the couple approached the highest of authorities, they were not given any police protection either and had to go into hiding for around six months after their marriage.

According to Asif Iqbal of Dhanak for Humanity, most States send the girl to a Nari Niketan after couples approach them. “It is here that the girl is the most insecure as her family mostly approaches her and puts pressure to go back. Many a time, this also leads to what is known as honour killing of the girl”.

Sanjay Sachadev of Love Commandoes, an organisation which rescues and shelters such couples, said, “The need of the hour is safe houses across the country. In almost every case, the police try and send the girl to a women’s shelter and the boy is left to fend for himself.”

A couple who are staying in a Delhi safe house and did not wish to be identified said that they could not have thought of living together had it not been for the security of the safe house.

Mr. Iqbal, whose organisation has helped many couples seek legal recourse to stay together and get married, said that of the distress calls he receives, the most were from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.

[thozhar]

Indian tea production has been in severe crisis since the mid nineties largely due to neo-liberal structural adjustments in the Indian economy. The size of the tea industry, which is second only to China and accounts for 25 percent of global tea production, has made this a huge blow to the country’s agrarian economy. The industry employs 1.26 million people on tea plantations and two million additional people indirectly. As such, the economic crisis has had an enormous impact on the lives of local residents. In Kerala where I have been conducting research, there have been eight cases of suicide and twelve deaths due to starvation on tea plantations since 2001. Along with utter poverty and famine, tea plantation workers have faced increasingly unhygienic work environments, shattered social life/community relations, and withdrawal of the welfare measures previously enjoyed. The crisis punctured the isolated environments of the plantations and precipitated neoliberal reforms that closed down production in many areas either partially or completely. While many families remained on the plantations, large numbers of workers who had lived there for more than five generations were now compelled to seek work outside. Some went with their families to either their ancestral villages or regional industrial townships such as Coimbatore and Tirupur in Tamil Nadu. These plantation workers have now joined the ranks of the massive Dalit workforce powering India’s unorganised and informal sectors. In joining that pool of workers, Tamil Dalit labourers are exposed to aspects of a caste-ridden society from which they had previously been shielded. The situation of Saraswathi, a female retired worker in her early sixties, illustrates the dilemma and struggles of the workers who moved out the plantations.

— The hidden injuries of caste: south Indian tea workers and economic crisis by Jayaseelan Raj

[hindulivesmatter]

Why Gandhi is a piece of shit and you should hate him.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been established in our history as a "Mahatma" which means "great soul"

This man is anything but that.

He is EVERYWHERE. He's on our currency, he's revered as a hero who saved India, and we have a mandatory holiday on October 2nd in honor of him.

If you didn't know, now you're going to get to know why he was a horrible human being. Let's begin.

This man managed to fool people Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela (among many others) into thinking he was a good person.

Here is some of the shit he's done:

In 1903, when Gandhi was in South Africa, he wrote that white people there should be "the predominating race." He also said black people "are troublesome, very dirty, and live like animals."

 Refused to have sex with his wife for the last 38 years of their marriage. He felt that in order to test his commitment to celibacy, he would have beautiful young women (including his own great niece) lie next to him naked through the night. His wife, whom he described as looking like a "meek cow" was no longer desirable enough to be a solid test.

Believed that Indian women who were raped lost their value as a human.

During Gandhi's time as a dissident in South Africa, he discovered a male youth had been harassing two of his female followers. Gandhi responded by personally cutting the girls' hair off, to ensure the "sinner's eye" was "sterilised". Gandhi boasted of the incident in his writings, pushing the message to all Indians that women should carry responsibility for sexual attacks upon them.

He argued that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community honour. 

Gandhi also waged a war against contraceptives, labelling Indian women who used them as whores.

He believed menstruation was a "manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality".

On 6th April 1947, he gave a speech where he said, “ If the Muslims are out there slicing through Hindu masses to wipe out the Hindu race, the Hindus should say nothing and peacefully accept death”.

He hated the great Hindu rulers, especially Shivaji Maharaj. To please the Muslims, he banned the book named ShivBhaavani which correctly depicted Islam’s intolerance and fierce fundamentalism spread by it.

Refused his wife life-saving medication (for religious reasons), but those religious reasons all of a sudden no longer applied to him when he was in a similar position.

Started a fast unto death when Ambedkar asked for separate electorates for Dalits.

Gandhi left his ailing father on his deathbed, to sleep with his wife. The child born out of this copulation died in infancy. According to Gandhi, the death of this infant was the result of this evil karma.

Gandhi, even when he claimed to be the angel of non-violence, made no efforts to prevent the British from deploying Indian troops at various locations during World War II.

Kashmir was invaded by Pakistan in 1947, the brutal Pakistani army committed heinous crimes against Kashmiri Pandits including mass rape and mass killings consequently many Pandits were forced to flee to Delhi and other places. In one incident Pandits took refuge in an abandoned mosque in Delhi. Infuriated, Gandhi threatened to fast to death if the Pandits didn't leave. The Pandits were slaughtered in a communal riot as soon as they abandoned the mosques.

Criticized the Jews for defending themselves against the Holocaust because he insisted that they should have committed public mass suicide in order to "shame" the Germans instead of fighting back. His exact words were, "But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from the cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions."

And this is all from a simple Internet search compiled here. I wonder what else is hiding if I do a deep dive.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[lilithism1848]

[whippersnappersbookworm]

I love reading how upper class Brahmins adapted the culture of so called dalit communities during the middle ages. I love how they bramhinized the culture of the people whom they discarded from their society to save their religion during the Islamic Invasion. The lower class communities created their own gods to fulfill their needs as they were not allowed to worship the gods of the upper class. They created god like Manasa(the godess of snakes), Chandi(a localised version of Durga), Dharma ,Annoda or Annapurna. Even the Radha whom the desiblr adores and worships was primarily a local goddess a local myth, she was not a part of the veda purana tradition of upper class Hindus. The only reason they decided to adopt these local, small deities is because the bramhins felt threatened by the rise of Islam in India . Therefore they decided to include these gods in their upper class stories by creating new tales so they could appeal to the common mass.

[mariacallous]

On August 27, Sabir Malik, a migrant worker in the Indian state of Haryana, was lured from his home and beaten to death by a mob of at least 10 Hindu men. They suspected that Malik, a Muslim, had eaten beef. Lab tests run by local police would later find that he hadn’t. But it didn’t matter: The attack was led by “cow vigilantes,” the name for Hindu nationalist militias and mobs that take it upon themselves to violently enforce Hindu supremacy on India’s minority communities, particularly Muslims.

A new report from the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) shared exclusively with WIRED found that Instagram, which is owned by Meta, is becoming a key avenue for cow vigilantes to share their violent exploits with a wider audience, and even raise money.

“It's clear that Meta is complicit in the proliferation or the flourishing of cow vigilantism in India,” says Raqib Hameed Naik, founder and executive director of CSOH. These practices, Naik says, are likely in violation of Meta’s own policies around hateful and violent content.

Between February and August 2024, CSOH identified and analyzed 1,023 Instagram accounts run by users involved in cow vigilantism. Researchers found that 30 percent of the accounts shared content showing physical violence against Muslims involved in the cattle business. Some videos flagged by CSOH show high-speed car chases down India’s highways, where cow vigilantes tail and try to pull over trucks carrying cows. Others are more graphic, showing vigilantes beating men who they claim are engaging in cow slaughter or the cattle trade. One video, which garnered 5,200 likes, showed three frightened Muslim men in the trunk of a car. Another video shows a cow vigilante beating an older Muslim man with a wooden bat. That video received more than 1,200 likes.

The 121 Instagram Reels analyzed by CSOH showing physical violence against people transporting cattle garnered over 8.3 million views, and most were not labeled with the Meta filter that warns users of graphic content. CSOH found 53 accounts that had posted violent content were eligible for Instagram’s “Send Gift” function, which allows approved creators to earn money directly from donations from their followers. Other accounts would post bank details in their Reels or comments sections. “That means anyone on Instagram who likes their work can send them money to continue doing that violent extremist activity,” says Naik.

To test Meta’s systems, CSOH reported 167 posts that depicted violence using Instagram’s on-platform reporting systems. None of the posts had been removed as of October.

According to Meta’s policies, it does not allow “content that glorifies, supports, or represents events that Meta designates as violating violent events,” including “hate events” and “hate crimes.” Meta spokesperson Erin Logan told WIRED that Meta has “strict policies against violent or graphic content on our platforms, and we enforce these rules impartially. We will review this report once we are provided it and will remove any violating content and disable accounts of repeated offenders.” Logan declined to answer questions about whether Meta considers cow vigilantes as part of “violent or hateful groups.” Last year, the company removed profiles associated with Monu Manesar, a cow vigilante who was arrested and accused of instigating violence in Haryana.

Cow protection is not new in India, where Hinduism holds cows sacred. But the country also has a substantial minority population that includes Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Adivasis, or indigenous people, that have no religious prohibition against eating beef. Dalits, the group at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, also sometimes consume beef. Due to their marginalized status, Muslims and Dalits in particular have long relied economically on the cattle industry.

Since India prime minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party swept into power in 2014, several states have passed stricter laws when it comes to cow protection. A Congressional Research Service report released last week noted that cow vigilantism was one of several types of “religiously motivated repression and violence” used by Hindus and supported by the country’s Hindu nationalist government against minority communities. According to an April report from Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, cow vigilantism was the motivator for 22 percent of all communal violence by Hindus targeting Muslims between 2019 and 2024.

“Vigilantes organize their targeting to disburse punishment to minorities through extrajudicial means,” says Angana Chatterji, chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at UC Berkeley. “Hindu nationalist leaders in government have aligned with these militias, and their speeches often function as dog whistles to rally people, reportedly stirring them to commit these extrajudicial acts that have included home invasion, theft, and lynching.”

Chatterji says that making the violence public on a place like Instagram allows cow vigilantes to recruit new members and rally other Hindu nationalists in different parts of the country. “For Muslims and minorities and their allies, Instagram messaging is calculated to spread terror with impunity,” she says. “To indicate, ‘Stop protesting. We are going to come for you and there will be nothing to stop us,’ especially as law enforcement is often either absent or in collusion.”

Naik worries that the problem is much deeper than just the accounts he and his team were able to identify. Earlier this year, Meta shuttered CrowdTangle, its tool that allowed researchers to track content across its platforms. “I would say it's the tip of the iceberg,” says Naik, because there is no public access to Meta’s data for journalists and civil society organizations.

India is an important market for Meta—it accounts for more than 362 million users on Instagram alone—and in the past, the company has been hesitant to take action on content that could put it in the crosshairs of the Indian government. In 2022, The The Washington Post reported that Facebook allowed hate speech and propaganda to stay on the platform under pressure from India’s government. (Meta’s shareholders later voted against an inquiry into the issue.) In 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that employees in India worried that Meta’s then-head of public policy for India was unevenly applying the company’s hate speech policies to allow violent rhetoric from Bharatiya Janata Party politicians to stay up on the platform.

“It is interesting to note what is stopped by social media platforms—because some messaging is stopped immediately—and what is allowed to grow,” says Chatterji. “Just the extent of violence in the images requires that they should be taken down.”

[ptseti]

The "Untouchables" in India, also known as Dalits. The Dalits and Siddis are members of communities that have historically been marginalized and subjected to social discrimination and exclusion. This social stratification originates from the traditional Hindu caste system, where society is divided into hierarchical groups. The Untouchables were placed at the lowest rung of this hierarchy and faced significant discrimination.

Types of Prejudice Faced by the Untouchables:

Social Exclusion: Dalits have often been excluded from mainstream society, facing restrictions in accessing public spaces, temples, and even water sources.

Discrimination in Employment: Many Dalits are limited to low-paying, menial jobs and are often discriminated against in employment opportunities, facing barriers even in education and skills development.

Violence and Atrocities: Dalits are frequently victims of violence, including physical assaults, sexual violence, and even murder, often with little recourse to justice.

Caste-Based Stereotypes: Negative stereotypes perpetuate the belief that Dalits are unclean or inferior, leading to discrimination and social stigmatization.

Educational Barriers: Access to quality education has historically been limited for Dalit communities, contributing to a cycle of poverty and marginalization.

Political Underrepresentation: Despite efforts to improve political representation, Dalits often remain underrepresented in governance and decision-making processes.