Her speeches, with clarity, have good communication abilities attracting masses and media. Though she was threatened to withdraw and her younger brother, a school going boy, was attacked, she is not deterred. Her commitment to the right to contest and tell the truth to voters is setting a new trend in the state, perhaps in the country itself. She tells a story of an election system giving a handle to harass the poor and vulnerable, as money and muscle power plays a critical role. Yes this needs to be fought by the future generation. This young Dalit girl fighting in a general constituency set aside the caste borders. Her supporters come from all castes, communities and more so women of different walks of life.

Barrelakka is a New hope.           

The most unfulfilled promise of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (earlier Telangana Rastra Samithi) partly controlled by one whole family is not providing jobs for millions of unemployed. The party that was said to have been formed only for Telangana now jumped that promise to become a BRS within ten years rule and spending a small state’s money for campaigns all over India. However, this young poor girl has put her weakest side on the election agenda. That seems to have turned the entire state’s unemployed youth against the ruling party. Except in that constituency in all other 118 constituencies, the fight may help the Congress because the unemployed youth in all over the state is glued to the anti-Government battle by this young girl.  The BRC leaders, though, are claiming that they put many welfare schemes in place, but their record on keeping the youth unemployed is quite visible in every house. This statehood was achieved by pushing 1500 youth into suicide net by former TRS now BRS leader, particularly the family members of KCR by repeatedly telling them that they would self-immolate if the state was not bifurcated.

She narrates her struggles of spending loaned money on coaching centers, living in un-accommodative Hyderabad city for rural youth. Several days, while preparing for Group I examination, she ate food around some free feeding centers on the roads or temples that dole prasandam. Yet she studied and wrote exams only to be cancelled afterwards on one pretext or the other. She repeatedly tells the masses that she would fight for 40,00,000 unemployed whose age and energies are running out, without getting married and living a secure life.  She explains their sorrows as victims of the negligence of the Government.

I was with her on 25 November 2023, just three days before the campaign ended on 27th. Scores of unemployed youth were in her campaign procession going through the richest Congress candidate, Jupalli Krishna Rao’s, former minister from earlier TRS Government and now shifted to the Congress, village Jupalli. Scores of cars reached there from all parts of two Telugu states, with hundreds of youth shouting slogans “Vote for Barrelakka, Vote for Whistle, Save the lives of Unemployed Youth” made me feel hopeful.

Dharani Took Away Her Small Piece of Land       

She is a graduate, with an innocent labour mother and two younger brothers. Her father became a drunkard and went away from home, after selling away just 10 gunta (1/4 acre) land they had without informing his wife. The Dharani portal allowed any owner to sell land without involving the family’s consent or signatures. She said my father handed over that land without telling my mother or children to somebody. There is no way now to retrieve the land. I went round begging and touching the people’s feet to get our land back. “Our land is swallowed by Dharani and Drunken father” says Barrelakka in a TV interview. This story infuriates people more and more.  The Dharni portal created huge problems for small farmers, who are unable to handle the software mafia.

She hoped for a job in the newly carved-out Telangana state. The KCR party promised jobs for youth once the state is bifurcated. When the state was formed Barrelakka was 15 and participated in the movement for statehood as a school student with a hope that she could help her mother with a Government job in the new state.

She wrote several state service examinations and got qualified from Group I, the top most state service, to other small job vacancies. But every time either selection was postponed or  already written exams were cancelled,  with a pretext of paper leakage and some other issue that state administration itself plotted.

The KCR Government remained indifferent to massively grown unemployment and totally collapsed the state education system. The education system remained dysfunctional during the T-state agitation and thereafter for the last ten years without any serious effort the Government killed the education system. When compared to the other bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, both in education and employment, Telangana remained the most unattended state. Barrelakka is a victim of the new method of administration of the new state administrators.

She Bought Buffalos and became Barrealakka    

She was clueless about her family’s future. She learnt making videos on her phone and started posting them on her Instagram @ barrelakka “Hi friends I am your Barrelakka. However hard we study and whatever degrees we acquire we will not be given jobs in Telangana. That is the reason why I bought four buffaloes with the struggle of my mother. Now I am with my buffalos in the fields”.  That video went viral. The police obviously with the eye-wink of the higher ups booked a case against her under the IPC section 505 (2) that she was defaming the Government. She was made to run around the court and her life became more miserable.

In this struggle came the election of 2023 for the State Assembly. As a last attempt in the struggle for survival, she filed for the nomination for Kollapur constituency. No major politician expected her nomination would survive the scrutiny. They thought that like her answer papers were rendered useless in the job examinations, her nomination would become useless. But it was not rejected. She was given a whistle symbol.

As I am writing this article her campaign began to shake with supporters with small amounts in their hands to donate and willing to stay with her sleeping on the roadside. Youtube channels follow her, songwriters and singers making quite powerful music videos and uploading on Youtube. The atmosphere around her campaign with several cars behind her bannered campaign vehicles showed a newborn moral force in this election. She is certainly a moral political fighter who created a new atmosphere in Telangana elections. Whether she wins or loses is a different issue. But she shows a direction to the youth which is the way forward.

Lawyers approached the Telangana high court asking for protection as the state and election commission were looking the other way about her and her family’s safety. There is fear all around that the rich can do anything against such a vulnerable young poor girl, as she has shown unusual courage and confidence.

The moral nation still surviving in the civil society of India must protect Barrelakka as she is a great hope for future life like her namesake the buffalo milk for this country for millennia.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is The Clash of Cultures—Productive Masses Vs Hindutva—Mullah Conflicting Ethics.

Courtesy: CounterCurrent

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Delhi University had recommended removal of books of Dalit writer-activist Kancha Ilaiah from its political science syllabus over the “controversial content” in the books, while also suggesting discontinuation of the use of the word ‘Dalit’ in academic discourse. Kancha Ilaiah spoke in Delhi University on the same.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The post If You Remove my Book From Syllabus, Thousands Will Read it On Road: Kancha Ilaiah appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 

 
The Nair Service Society (NSS) is supporting the most destructive anti-women anti-Shudra Manuvad in the name of Sabarimala temple’s sanctity. The Nair men for centuries surrendered the Nair women’s self-respect to the Brahmin males in the worst Manuvadi system called Sambandam. The Brahmin men exploited the Nair women worse than the slave masters exploited the African American women for centuries. The Brahmin men procreated children in Sambandam and left them to their own fate.
 
The Nairs are considered to be Savarna in the Kerala society but they do not have any spiritual rights within the temple system. They are the fourth Varna called Shudra, who were slaves for a long time in history, right from the days of Rigveda. They cannot become priests and they cannot interpret the Hindu scriptures called Vedas and Bhagavad Gita. There are no Hindu theological schools, colleges that allow Nairs to study theology, leave alone the lower Shudras (who consider themselves as Avarnas in the Kerala context). Yet Nairs, particularly Nair men, after establishing the Nair Service Society (NSS), remain so backward that they almost live at the feet of Brahmins as spiritual slaves. Such a tendency of the Shudras has done great damage to the Shudra social and spiritual culture of equality.
 
This spiritual slavery of the NSS has come out very clearly on the event of the Ayyappa temple entry for women.
 
Ayyappa is a Shudra God like Beerappa of two Telugu states. Both Ayyappa and Beerappa have the Indo-African roots and they are the descendants of the famous Harappa in whose name the first city of the world was built at the Indus basin. After the Aryan migrants of the Brahmin ancestry invaded India and destroyed that civilization, several of Harappa’s descendants migrated to the South. Ayyappa, Beerappa (the shepherd Gods of Telugu region) and many others who bear such names like Veerappa, Mallappa and so on, must have migrated to the South and done great service to society. Hence, they became Godheads.
 
Thus, Ayyappa in his black dress represents the Shudra-Dravidian culture which has its roots in the Indo-African heritage against the Indo-Aryan Brahminic Vedic saffron dress code. There is no saffron dress code there. Ayyappa like Shirdi Sai Baba has become a secular Shudra God who is mostly visited by Shudra-Dalit devotees in black dresses.
 
The anti-women code of this Ayyappa God was imposed by the Namboothiri Brahmins only in the recent years when they took over the temple priesthood, as it was mobilizing huge finances. The Nair men are involved only in the temple management committee. The real pooja work is done by the Brahmin priests and they are the ones who wrote this code that women between 10 and 50 should not enter the temple. In fact, the Brahmin priest should be expelled from there and only the Shudras should perform the priestly functions.
 
No Shudra temple in the country has a norm where women’s entry is barred. In fact, many Shudra goddesses like Pochamma, Kali, Durga don’t follow man-woman segregation. All kinds of people visit these temples and Brahmins were never poojaris in those temples.
 
After the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) got strengthened, as it is a Brahmin headed organization, they started imposing Brahmin priests by displacing the Shudra priests in many Shudra temples. The Ayyappa temple is a classic example, how Brahmins took over this temple and women were denied of the right to enter, imposing the theory that menstruation blood is pollution. They do not consider male sexual discharge as pollution. This is mainly a Brahmin theory. This was never a Shudra theory.
 
The Shudra culture of India, which is the culture of majority people, does not believe in this theory of sexual discharge of female or male being spiritually pollutant. All productive communities world over never believed this kind of anti-production and procreational theories.
 
The Shudra belief is that female and male sexual discharges are sources of human birth. They are never the source of human death. Thus, woman’s menstrual blood is seen as sacred and source of human regeneration.
 
The Aryan Brahminism, which never involved in production believed that all production work is pollution. They never realized that ‘without mud, there cannot be food’. Food is produced only out of the mud. Hence mud is not anti-God as God himself or herself gets involved in all forms of production.
 
Today Mohan Bhagwat, the head priest from Nagpur, declared a war on the Supreme Court judgment of man-woman equality at Hindu temples. They actually want restrictions on women’s entry at all temples.
 
A Shudra productive community like Nair community joining hands with RSS Brahminism has caused historical damage to the Shudra values of India that were nurtured as egalitarian values from the days of Harappa. The equality battle at Ayyappa temple is going to be a battle between Shudraism and Brahminism.
 
The Shudras of India including Kammas, Reddys, Patels, Jats, Gujjars, Yadavs, Marathas, Kumbhis, Kurmis (of Bihar), Lingayats, Vakkalingas, Modaliyars, Nayakars and so on along with other OBCs must oppose the Brahmin conspiracy of taking back our women to pre-Independence status. All the OBCs in the reserved category must understand the conspiracy of these Brahmin-Bania forces from Delhi to Galli. They want to create conditions against equality which slowly will lead to taking away reservations.
 
Mohan Bhagwat is driving the country to see that all the Shudras/OBCs/Dalits/Adivasis do not even think about equality in the future.
 
The progressive Nairs, wherever they are, must force the leadership of the NSS to get out of this Brahmin trap. Otherwise, the poor agrarian productive Nairs will suffer hugely in the future. Particularly the Nair women must be saved from the danger of getting destroyed. The Army of Mohan Bhagwat will drive them to suicide once they start believing that their own bodies are full of pollution.
 
I call upon the progressive Nair women to save the great community women for whom I have great respect as they suffered more than any other Shudra women in Indian history.
 
Prof. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is Chairman T-MASS and political theorist. He is the Director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.
 

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Representational image

With the debate on the Arya-Vysya attack against me was taking place at the national and international level two things have happened. One, the Chandrababu Naidu government in alliance with BJP in Andhra Pradesh confined me in my home on October 28 so that I would not go to Vijayawada (Amaravathi) and attend a public meeting being held by the Samajika Joint Action Committee of Andhra Pradesh.

They also arrested thousands of people from all over Andhra Pradesh. All those detained are from productive communities, including Kammas, Kapus and Reddys. The Banias and Brahmins were opposed to that meeting irrespective of their parities. The SJAC was headed by Y Koteshwar Rao (80) with a spirit of young man who worked tirelessly. The police arrested him and several hundred others. At several places lathi-charges were made. From Karnool — the town where TDP MP TG Venkatesh owns massive properties and lives in a mansion –, hundreds of men and women reached Vijayawada. There were more women in that team than men. They were all arrested at Vijayawada and taken to various distant police stations.

At Hyderabad, when more than 150 people belonging to T-MASS and other organizations started for Vijayawada from my residence they were all arrested. U Smabashiva Rao, well-known social activist, Vimalakka, a well-known folk singer, were arrested in Hyderabad city itself and and taken to different police stations. Why did the Hyderabad police take this step when the meeting was in Vijayawada? Obviously the Centre was involved in the whole issue. Since Naidu functions under the direction of Delhi he had no option but do this. The Hindutva government at Delhi is hostile towards the right to freedom of expression. Unfortunately Naidu followed their dictate.   

All this brutal suppression exposed the Arya-Vysya community to more scrutiny of the SC/ST/OBC and the Sudra producers from village shops. Checking and mass auditing of their businesses across Andhra Pradesh more than in Telangana is now being done by the village youth. This conflict between the producer-sellers and the buying Vysyas in the Telugu states is going to be a long term issue. This will have huge impact on the seller-buyer relations for long time to go.

In the political domain every party has its own concerns as the Vysyas are the richest cash donors for elections. The most worried party is the BJP. The BJP gets highest amount of donations. After the attempt to subvert the public meeting by arrests, as that itself exposed the role of social smuggling in business, the same forces started another ploy of plastering ‘Jai Sriram’ posters around my apartment. On November 4, they put a poster, Moorkudaina Ilaiahnu Skamiddam, Hinduisanni Kapadudam—Jai Sriram! It roughly translates as “Let us excuse idiot Ilaiah and save Hinduism—Jai Sriram’’. One can easily understand what its actual meaning is.  As I said in my police complaint at Osmania University police station on November 6, 2017 on this poster issue:    
   
“When they use the slogan ‘Jai Sriram’ it has a serious attack connotation. If they were to say ‘Jai Srikrishna’, that would have connoted peace and love. In the whole country, the Yadava community (to which I am a part) uses ‘Jai Srikrishna’ as god of animal grazing and production, but not as war hero. My community is the one which grazes sheep, goat, buffaloes and cows. In this context ‘Jai Sriram’ has a dangerous warning signal to me”.

According to Bheenaveni Ram Shepherd a young and upcoming social anthropology scholar, who teaches at Osmania University: “Krishna was born in a prison and later shifted to Gokulam, a place of cattle-raisers. He was brought-up by his foster parents Nanda and Yashoda as a cow and buffalo boy.  Raja Ravivarma has shown only white cows around him. But Yadavs in the post-Harappa period grazed both animals… It is crystal clear that Krishna is not a strict follower of Varnadharma as he himself married a Kshatriya (Rukhmini), Adivasi mountaineer (Jambavati), Naga (Nagajithni), and Satyabhama (Ahir/Yadav). Krishna was always an independent thinker and doer whereas Rama was dependent and loyal to Manu dharma. Krishna possessed the courage to disturb the Varnadharmic structures.  This is why, Sangh Parivar took Rama as their icon and they made Krishna as a playboy”.

This is a significant narrative that tells why the Yadavs adore Krishna but not Rama. This is amply clear in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar political battles, where the Yadavs stood up against these ‘Jai Sriram’ forces. 

However, why do hate mongers or murder strategists use divine images to communicate their plan to attack someone? The ISIS forces use the name of “Allah” to communicate similar game plans. The Hindutva forces use the name Ram to communicate their nefarious designs. They have used this slogan just before every communal riot.

Why did the Arya-Vysya community which is said to follow the Gandhian tradition get into this vertex? Look at the big business and the capitalist immorality that sinks to the level of using the Nathuram Godse kind of strategy against me for writing a book, a book that was cleared by a three-member bench of the Supreme Court. The love for money and luxury of community can take it to any level, as against a movement of anti-caste and anti-exploitative order.

The BJP owns all these strategies quite unabashedly. It is the ruling party in the nation. If a dissenting voice is threatened with this kind of violence, we all must stand up and say, “this nation will not allow this, death or no death”. If the capitalist ethic gets into a communal garb and threatens every working class voice with this slogan, I am sure that nation is on the way of moral and ethical death.

The capitalist exploiters have to be exposed in terms of their nefarious day-to-day designs, whether casteist or not. Exploitation is exploitation. If the ruling party goes to the rescue of exploiters using religion or caste comfort zone, the left liberals should not remain silent as they are doing now. Do they think that what I have coined as ‘social smuggling’ does not apply to the Indian mode of caste-class exploitation? Let us join hands to ensure that the ‘Jai Sriram’ slogan does not intimidate us put into putting our pens down. 

(The author is a member of T-MASS that works for SC/ST/OBC and poor people’s rights).         
 

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The Sangh Parivar elements that worked hand in glove with Arya Vysyas, who wanted to lynch me at Parkal on September 23, after the TDP Parliament member T.G Venkatesh issued a threat on September 17, have shown their true colours. They caught hold of a 22 year old Dalit boy, sporting a big saffron tilak on his forehead. This boy said, “Kancha Ilaiah is dog! He criticized Hindu Dalits by writing Smajika Smugglerlu: Komatollu’’. They got case registered against me for atrocities against SC/STs. The media including the Business Standard felt this is a rare case of SC/ST atrocity so far registered. But this is yet another type of lynch-mob politics. They have filed several cases in several different places against me. As I have utmost respect for judiciary I am willing to go through the judicial processes.

I have fought the RSS, ABVP network in Osmania University and outside for thirty five years and now they think, they have a chance to lynch me in one form or the other. These forces never fight for the rights of Dalits/Adivasis/OBCs but whenever the Baniyas or Brahmins are in trouble they deploy all their forces including SC/ST/OBCs. Even the OBC/SC/STs are not allowed to go to the support of their own communities, whenever they face atrocities and humiliation. But their upper caste members—mainly the Brahmin-Bania members rush to the aid of any so called spiritual force, or cow related issues or in defense of their own upper caste networks. They do every possible thing to defame any Dalit-bahujan intellectual writing on Indian history, the labour related issues, wages, atrocities and so on. But they would never speak about increasing the agrarian wages, protecting the farmers from suicides.

They accuse all such defenders as Left and Anti-national. The defenders of rich, religious gurus (whatever could be their role in the society), they rush to their defense and proclaim that is nationalist act. So their nation constitutes the rich people, big business forces, religious gurus (whose contribution to production is zero) and cows. They never treat buffalo as Indian animal at all! I need to be lynched because I stand by the SC/ST/OBCs, buffaloes, soldiers serving on the borders and lowest rung of the police force, who again come from the lowest castes and communities. Anybody who speaks of human rights is anti-national. This is bizarre democracy they are running from Delhi now.

After they failed at Parkal, they think this atrocity case would kill me on my own ground, as I wrote extensively about Dalitisation of the Indian society as a process of de-casting and de-classing of it. I strongly defended their beef food culture (in the recent cow centered vegetarian campaign of the Hindutva). This only shows that they stoop down to any level to protect their funding Vysya coffers. My ‘Buffalo Nationalism’ has put them in fix, as it keeps on fighting their ‘Cow Nationalism’ politics.

The Two Dramas      
When the Bharatiya Janta Party came to power 2014, it started enacting two dramas on the national stage. These elaborate charades, related to defense and glorification of India internationally, were aimed at ensuring the the BJP’s survival by showcasing them as the most nationalist party. Their approach was two pronged; they used cow protection — the so called Gaumata of the nation, and Yoga – the nation’s source of health and power, to further their own agenda.

Around these two dramas, it deployed its upper caste leisure centered Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh activists and retired officials from cozy jobs mainly coming from non-agrarian social background. More than all these forces the whole Peethadhipathi, Sadhu Sanyasi, yogi network, which mainly comes from the non-agrarian caste cultural, and non-productive backgrounds are deployed, to attack anybody who talks about cow as economic animal.

Even Prime Minster Narendra Modi also must have sold tea in his childhood but, never grazed cattle in the fields. Selling tea is also a business activity not a productive activity, like grazing cattle, tilling land, pottery, carpentry… manufacturing a plough to till or forging a wheel for transport. Mohan Bhagawat and Amit Shah have much less to do with grazing cows, leave alone buffaloes. Yet all of them made the cow protection, not cow grazing, as the national legal problem causing huge problem of food, employment, and law and order.

The question of yoga is a much more serious issue. Though Ramdev, a Yadav by birth, made it a big method of health protection among the middle class. The brahmnic thinkers, who never got involved in tilling the land or grazing the cattle, and supposed to be the authors of all funny theories, projected Yoga as the most useful nation saving body exercise. The BJP owned it as if that is the most suitable exercise for armed forces that need to fight mighty powers like China in the East and not so powerful Pakistan in the West.

The sports like running, high jump, long jump, the body exercise by working the productive fields have no TV shows. Their existence is now seen as anti-national. But the most serious question is should army recruitment adopt Yoga that is being promoted by the Prime Minister, his entire Government and the Sangh Parivar all over the nation as the measure of selection. Should police institution also adopt that sport, as a daily exercise to maintain their body?

National Icons   
The great Sadguru who constructs an imaginary Yoga Guru (of black Shiva image) got it inaugurated by the PM. But they never talk about the first ever Indian city builder called Harappa (which name resembles the popular cattle grazer God called Beerappa about whom there is narrative in my book Why I am Not a Hindu) as great Indian. It was during Harappa period that the division of labour took place. Different sections of the Harappa society specialized in different things of city building. Brick making, carpentry, pot making, animal grazing, canal constructing, tank bund making, road laying and so on. It is this ancient labour centred Indian that would be an iconic model. But not an imaginary Yogi, who sits like dead stone in Coimbatore that would be a iconic model for developing nation.

The BJP does not have interest in projecting dignity of labour, peasant economic hard work, the labouring masses as the essence of Indian being. Instead they project un-productive saint as the sole symbol of nation. The worst is that they hate those who talk about production, people’s philosophy of equality. They hang around mythological texts as essence of the nation. But to me the nation lives in the labour of people, which the BJP never wants celebrate.

The farmers and other productive mass of India have seen the two dramas—the drama of Cow and Yoga—that the BJP has been playing as just onlookers. Alongside these two dramas the more serious actions of De-monitization and GST imposition are having telling impact on their life. Let us wait and see how it unfolds in future.

(The author is Member, T-MASS, an organization that works for social Justice, dignity of labour and English education in Government schools in Telangana)   

The post Kancha Ilaiah: The government’s elaborate nationalist charade appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I requested this organisation to establish such schools in late the 1990s where, the poor can study English medium within in the village across the nation. I interact with my village students, parents  and see that they are taught reasonably good English, mathematics and also the Dignity of Labour.

For this purpose I wrote “Dignity of Labour in Our Times’’, a book around their own parental tasks. There are 376 kids are studying there this current academic year. This organisation runs 107 such schools with an intake about 27,000 kids from SC/ST/OBC and minority background in very remote villages in the country.

From my village school four kids have got into medicine, few got into NITs, and many are in good engineering colleges. But for that school they would not have dreamt of accomplishing and completing such courses and neither they could have studied with a confidence. The society charges a fee ranging from Rs 3,220 per year for LKG and Rs 5,260 for Class X per year. The SC students of the village pay only Rs 1000 per year. Hence they need help from outside. They mobilise such financial help. I have nothing to do with it or its management. I only give academic advice.    

One Mr.Albert Lael, who worked with this organisation established one such school in his own village, Kaukuntla, Devarkandra Mandal Mahabub Nagar (dist) and managed to put his own mother as principle. It appears that he wanted take over the school for himself and thereafter developed some problems within the organization. Anyone can compare both Papaiahpet and Kaukuntla schools. Lael and Jerusalem Mattiah who mediated the vote for note (Revanth Reddy case) started a campaign in association with Paripurnanada,  who attacked St. Mother Theresa as a person of ‘low’ or ‘loose’ character (women’s trafficking character), and who was also anti-Dalitbahujan and anti-English education for the SC/ST/OBCs in the villages. This is a dangerous trend.  English Education for the SC/ST/OBCs is my long term commitment.  

These forces which educate their children in urban Christian schools in English medium have no right to accuse me. Any harm unleashed on these village children’s English medium education is nothing but crime against humanity.    

 (The author is also Member T-MASS)      

The post My Association with Christians, A Clarification: Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Photo credit: Hindustan Times

TG Venaktesh, an extremist Arya Vysya leader held a press conference on September 18 in a luxury hotel in Hyderabad with an extremist, conspiratorial Arya Vysya team and declared a ‘fatwa’ that he would kill or hang me in the streets as they do in the Middle East. This person is an MP from the TDP and supposed to be the richest man after Gandi Madhava Rao (GMR) from that community in the two Telugu states. Can a Parliament member who issues a fatwa against a citizen — that too a globally known writer and thinker — continue in Parliament as member? It is for the BJP and TDP to decide.

The myth that the Arya Vysya community is a peace-loving, non-violent community proved to be wrong. This is clear from the violent statements that their leaders are issuing. It is also clear from their abusive and vulgar behavior on the streets from village to cities up to the state capitals, Amaravati and Hyderabad. They are indulging in vandalism. Both the states are freely allowing them to the point of creating a law and order situation. They seem to have no respect for judiciary also.
The Arya Vysya are the most organized caste in India holding 46 per cent of the total wealth and 48 per cent of company directors’ posts. The Ambani group, Adani group, Laxmi Mittal, Vedanta and so on are all part of this community. This is the only community that has a bank called Vysya Bank in their caste name in India.

For writing a chapter in my book Post-Hindu India with a chapter titled ‘Social Smugglers’ — a concept I coined to capture caste cultural and economic exploitation in India — and translating it into Telugu they are attacking me. I have been fighting for reservation in the private sector for long time as there are no jobs in the state sector at all.

We are now demanding in the T-MASS (Telanga all peoples) meetings an organization formed three months ago, jobs for all the kith and kin of the lowest level soldiers serving on the borders of Pakistan, and China and also in the internal security sectors. We are asking for at least one job for each family in their private firms, a token of their nationalism, without going into the merit question that they have been raising all the time.

We are also demanding that as part of their corporate social responsibility, at least one percent of their total profit be set aside for farmers’ fund for the survival of the dying farmers across the country. This is necessary because the state and central governments say they are not in a position to protect farmers because of paucity of funds. Farmer suicides are taking place all over India.

Issuing a Middle East type of fatwa by the Parliament member with a backing of the ruling establishments both at the state and the national level is a dangerous trend. This fatwa is issued under the very nose of Telangana government. I am living in Telangana state. The government is silent giving an impression of complicity. Since September 10 till date I have been receiving numerous orchestrated phone calls with abuses and vulgar SMSs. This is only to drive me crazy. Everyone knows that Airtel and Reliance companies are in their hands.

Any intellectual who stands by the Dalit bahujans and the poor and asks for some jobs in their private companies gets fatwas of killing and hanging in the streets of India by one of the richest persons and a parliament member. The country and its very democracy and freedom of speech that the constitution guarantees are in real danger. Perhaps I may be the first person to die like that.

I demand to know why the Telangana, Andhra and central governments are silent in the face of this public call for me to be killed.

Based on this fatwa I can seek asylum in any country. But I am a nationalist with reverence to Buddha and Ambedkar. I would like to live and die here only. I hope the nation responds. Though filing a case seems to have no effect but I will file a case in the local police station on this fatwa soon.         
 

The post “A TDP MP issues a fatwa to kill me and the Telangana, Andhra and central governments say nothing”: Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd appeared first on SabrangIndia.