Abstract
Noted Ambedkarite thinker and former Head of the Department of Marathi in Shivaji Vidyapeeth, Dr Krishna Kirwale, was found murdered at his residence in western Maharashtra’s Kolhapur city on 3 March 2017, sending shockwaves across Maharashtra. He was stabbed to death in his bungalow in the city’s MHADA colony. Known for his progressive thoughts, Dr Kirwale was chief of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Centre for Research and Development. His writings expounding Dr Ambedkar’s philosophy and the literature of the Dalit movement were widely respected and highly acclaimed. It may be recalled that over the past several years the state has witnessed the killing of a number of Dalit activists and whistle-blowers.
Within days of the murder of Dr Kirwale, on 13 March 2017, elsewhere in the country, in New Delhi, Muthukrishanan Jeevanantham (known as Rajini Krish) a Dalit M.Phil scholar of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University committed suicide. In his last Facebook post before his death—a post that went viral after his death—he had lamented ‘When equality is denied everything is denied.’
Caste-based violence in India is both overt and covert. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported a 44 per cent increase in violence against Dalits between 2010 to 2014, with the crime figures moving up from 32,712 to 47,064. The Una case, which has exposed extreme police negligence and complicity, had prompted the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) to issue a briefing on standards for investigation and protection of victims and witnesses in incidents of caste atrocities. As is more than evident, tackling the problem is not merely a matter of law and order, but is compounded with issues of political will and social perceptions.
The present number of the Journal includes a variety of articles attempting to unravel the conditions under which the marginal communities live and toil, state interventions and their own mobilizations for basic rights.
Last but not least, we remind our readers that the views expressed in the articles are those of the respective authors and the Editorial Board is in no way accountable for them.