Week 2 - Maitrey Singh


Week 2
Submission 2/10
This week’s readings mainly focus on a point which was had a translucent or no visibility at all in media. Whenever there was coverage on protests against the CAA and NRC I for one saw the Muslim protests in the majority and I was so carried away by it that the situation of the Dalit community with respect to these legislations never crossed my mind.
In a YouTube video by “The Policy Times” we see an interview of Ms Bina Pallical who is the General Secretary of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights; She starts off by stating facts about the status of the Dalit community, such as the intersection which a Dalit woman has to face due to her class, caste and gender and how Dalit men are murdered if they marry someone in the higher caste. She then takes on the CAA and NRC approach to the status of Dalits and she says that the people belonging to the Dalit community often does not have their documents with them and as they are a part of the marginalized community neither do they have any land of their own and owing to the fact that a good number of Dalits moved into India from Bangladesh will fail to past the Citizenship test.
The article on the wire by Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan also talks about a similar “misdiagnosis” of the protests as I mentioned in the beginning. The article goes on to talk about how the Dalit community has less access to the legal system and state welfare policies and that the movement of the BJP Sangh uses the word “Hindu” to hide the truth that their movement is all about the upper caste Hindus.
Ms. Pallical suggested in order to overcome these issues the leaders of the communities should come together and then tale steps to fight against such issues. I believe it important is to sensitise the public which remains unaffected by these acts of the government so they can achieve a louder voice, increasing the chances of it to reach the ears of the people sitting high up.

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