Profiles – Page 28 – free them all

The Making of Varavara Rao: Part One

21/08/2020 Rani

Newsclick / by N Venugopal Rao

Varavara Rao’s life as a man of letters started at a very early age.
Varavara Rao is someone I have known ever since I opened my eyes to the world around me. In the 80 years of his life, he has lived around 21 years more than me. I came to know of his life in the years I missed through our conversations, family-legends, his writings and speeches. Initially, he was only an uncle who played with me; my mother’s youngest brother and just that. However, over the 50 years from then, I grew up in the kaleidoscopic shadow of his thoughts-praxis — conversations, writings, speeches, rebuttals, inspiration, rage, consolation and reconciliation.
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Video: Sudha Bharadwaj (Part 1 – Arrested Series)

16/08/2020 Maya

Solidarity program in Chhattisgarh, 2019

hindi | 4:29min | 2020

By #InBetweenNews

Sudha Bharadwaj was arrested by the Pune Police on suspicion of being involved in Maoist terror activities in August 2018, along with five other accused across the country.
An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Bharadwaj has been living in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh for the last 29 years and has worked as trade unionist and civil rights activist for most of her life.
Having been exposed to horrific working conditions of labourers during her time as a student at IIT, she moved to work with the late Shankar Guha Niyogi’s Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha in 1986.
She fought passionately against corrupt bureaucrats to ensure proper wages were paid to the workers in the mines and plants located in Bhilai. She also engaged in issues of Dalit and Adivasi rights, specifically the right to land, the right to education, health and for security against corrupt landlords.
Here is #InBetweenNews ‘s special report on Sudha Bharadwaj’s overtly political arrest and her life as an activist.
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Mahesh Raut: The Beloved Brother of Adivasis in Gadchiroli

16/08/2020 Maya

Gauri Lankesh News / By Gauri Lanksh News Desk

Mahesh’s incarceration is a standing testament of the State’s repression of Rights’ activists who protect the values of the Constitution which the same State is trampling upon.
Hailing from Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, Mahesh Raut is a young prominent activist working for the rights of Adivasi communities in his district … He has tirelessly advocated for laws like The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act and Forest Rights Act which protect the democratic rights of indigenous communities against unlawful land grabbing by large corporations.
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Surendra Gadling: One who gave Legal Aid Even When In jail

16/08/2020 Maya

Gauri Lankesh News / by Gauri Lankesh News Desk

Gadling had conducted fact-finding in Chhattisgarh and brought out a report about persecution and harassment of lawyers who take up cases pertaining to tribals trapped in UAPA cases.
Surendra Gadling holds significant knowledge in special laws such as MCOCA, POTA, TADA, UAPA has handled many cases before various forums, including before hon’ble high court for the last 24 years. His professional work, which is his fundamental duty and is part of ensuring the fundamental rights of the accused person has brought him many enemies within the Police Machineries.
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Gautam Navlakha: India’s Inspiration to Demand Civil Liberties in Kashmir

16/08/2020 Maya

Gauri Lankesh News / by Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty

Gautam was among the very few who had grasped the issues, personally investigated the ground situation in Jammu and Kashmir, produced many fact-finding reports which shaped the thinking in the civil liberty movement in India.
Gautam Navlakha launched an Independent Initiative on Kashmir in the 1980s and that was when we had some serious discussion on the Kashmir question at Delhi University. Many of us were so far confused about the way to formulate the J&K issue and most people were unaware of the historical facts. Gautam, then with the Economic and Political Weekly, was among the few who clearly underlined the political question of self-determination that was at the center of the debate.
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What keeps professor Shoma Sen going / A profile of Shoma Sen

10/08/2020 Rani

Solidarity poster by AI

Of 2 min phone calls and three birthdays in prison: What keeps professor Shoma Sen going

10/08/2020

Edex Live / by Parvathi Benu

How much information can two people exchange during a two-minute-long phone call? The call doesn’t extend even a second beyond two minutes. The people at both ends of the call were professor Shoma Sen and her daughter Koel Sen. The call happened on May 7 and this was the only piece of conversation in two months.
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Women’s trajectories towards social equality and liberation – A profile of Shoma Sen

10/08/2020

The Polis Project / by The Polis Project and maraa

The profile features Shoma Sen, an assistant professor and head of the English literature department of Nagpur University, and a Dalit and women’s rights activist. Sen has been charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and among other things has been accused of inciting violence in Bhima-Koregaon in 2018.
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Sudha Bharadwaj: The lawyer for poor and labourers

09/08/2020 Maya

Solidarity march in Chhattisgarh, 2019

National Herald / by NHS Bureau

She was a lawyer for the poor, a thorn in the side of big industry. Is that the reason why she has been implicated?
The noted human rights lawyer was born in Massachusetts in the United States but gave up her US citizenship at the age of 18 and returned to India. She studied at IIT-Kanpur and horrified at the condition of labourers in UP, Bihar and West Bengal, she decided to work for them and joined the Chhattisgarh Liberation Front in 1986 when it was still a part of Madhya Pradesh.
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Shoma Sen spends birthday in jail for third consecutive year

02/08/2020 Rani

The Hindu / by Sonam Saigal

Prof. Shoma Sen, former head of department, English, at the Nagpur University, and one of the accused in the Elgaar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon cases, turned 63 on Saturday. She has been lodged in Byculla jail in Mumbai since February this year, when the case was transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Ms. Sen was in Yerwada jail in Pune since her arrest on June 6, 2018, and this was her third birthday in jail.
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Shoma Sen has turned 62 in Byculla Women’s Jail

01/08/2020

By Amnesty India

Today, Professor Shoma Sen has turned 62. She is spending yet another birthday away from her family, detained in Byculla Women’s Jail – where a medical officer & another prisoner have tested positive for #COVID19.

Who Is DU Professor Hany Babu M.T. Arrested Unexpectedly During Witness Summon?

01/08/2020 Rani

Edimes.in / by Aditi Gupta

Co-operate and get arrested!
Hany Babu M.T., Associate Professor of English at the University of Delhi, Major in Language Ideology, Politics and Policy, Linguistic Identity, Marginalised Languages and Social Justice, was arrested by NIA (National Investigation Agency) on, Tuesday, July 28, for connection with the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad case. A total of 12 people – all activists, lawyers, and academics – have been arrested in the case.
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Who Is Anand Teltumbde?

29/07/2020 Rani

The Struggle Against Dalit Oppression in India

31/07/2020

Jacobin / by Kunal Chattopadhyay

The Indian state has imprisoned the Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde on trumped-up charges of terrorism and subversion. His activism and writing on caste and class are needed more than ever in the struggle against both casteism and capitalism.
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Who’s Afraid of Anand Teltumbde?

24/01/2020

The Wire / by N. Balmurli

Teltumbde’s writing has exposed the hypocrisy of the votaries of neo-liberal capitalism, caste deniers and Hindutva triumphalists. It is they who seek to silence him today.
… A consummate polymath, Anand Teltumbde is at once comfortable with hard-nosed political-economic analyses of globalisation, as with the cultural-politics of caste identities and caste-class dialectics, or with the techno-business strategic policy formulations that figure in trade journals.
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