Bhima Koregaon – free them all

Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste review: What led to Modi govt’s crackdown on intellectuals

14/07/2024 Asha

The Federal / by Binoo K John

Ajaz Ashraf underscores how Bhima Koregaon riots, and the subsequent clampdown on leftist leaders, was sparked by various interpretations of Shivaji’s role and his stature in the Marathi consciousnes
…
A voice of defiance against the state The 200th anniversary of Bhima Koregaon was the happy hunting ground of many such pro-Maratha organisations, waiting to confront the various Dalit organisations. Bhima Koregaon is the place where, in January 1818, the British army comprising Mahar Dalit soldiers won the battle against Peshwa ruler Baji Rao II.
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Also Read:
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)

▪ Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order

▪ The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon And The Search For Democracy In India

Author: Alpa Shah
Publishing Date: March 2024
Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher
Pages: 672
Read more / order

▪ Casting a Veil – What we miss by ignoring Maratha caste politics in the Bhima Koregaon case (The Caravan / Dec 2020)
▪ Let’s Remember the Lesson of Bhima Koregaon: Down with the New Peshwai (Sanhati│ by Sudhir Dhawale │ March 2018)
▪ The Myth of Bhima Koregaon Reinforces the Identities It Seeks to Transcend (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | Jan 2018)
▪ Why peoples’ coalitions are uniting against Hindutva — the ‘new Peshwai’ (Dailyo.in │ by Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves │ Jan 2018)

Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry further extends period for submitting final arguments

09/07/2024 Asha

Graphic by Arun Ferreira & Vernon Gonsalves

The Indian Express / by Express News Service

The Commission will compile its report after the final arguments are heard. Tenure of the commission expires on August 31, 2024.
The Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry has extended the period for submitting the final arguments before it till July 31.
The Commission had initially asked the lawyers appearing before it to submit their final arguments in writing by March 1, 2024. The period was later extended till June 30.
Read more

Also Read:
▪ Top Investigating Officer Admits Elgar Parishad Event ‘Had No Role’ in Bhima Koregaon Violence (The Wire / Dec 2022)
▪ Bhima Koregaon Violence: Four Different Theories, but No Justice in Sight (The Wire / Jan 2022)
▪ Let’s Remember the Lesson of Bhima Koregaon: Down with the New Peshwai (Sanhati│ by Sudhir Dhawale │ March 2018)
▪ The Myth of Bhima Koregaon Reinforces the Identities It Seeks to Transcend (The Wire | Anand Teltumbde | Jan 2018)
▪ Why peoples’ coalitions are uniting against Hindutva — the ‘new Peshwai’ (Dailyo.in │ by Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves │ Jan 2018)

PCI Conversations │ Ajaz Ashraf and Jenny Rowena discussing Bhima Koregaon

28/06/2024 Asha

by Press Club of India / @PCITweets (June 28):
As part of our #PCIConversation, a discussion on Ajaz Ashraf’s book “Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste” will be discussed
The guests are author himself and Miranda House College’s Jenny Rowena
29 June 2024 (Saturday), 5:30 PM onwards at Conference Hall, Press Club of India

Also read:
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)
▪Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order

Book Review | Ajaz Ashraf’s Account Is A ‘Museum Of Memories’ For The Dispossessed

25/06/2024 Asha

Kashmir Times / by Gowhar Geelani

“A powerful account that reminds us that all-powerful States possess the power to silence dissenters, normalise fear in society, and criminalise opinions of free-thinking individuals and dreamers of equality, and rely on institutional memory to settle scores with dissenters at the time of its choosing.“
While reading journalist-author Ajaz Ashraf’s latest book “Bhima Koregaon Challenging Caste”, I was instantaneously reminded of Lavrentiy Beria, the longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of oppression in Russia and Eastern Europe.
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Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order

Also read:
▪ Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion (The Wire │ by Ajaz Ashraf │ June 2024)

▪ “Salaakhon Mein Qaid Avaazein”

By Family Members and friends of BK16
Edition: June 2021
Language: Hindi
Pages: 69
Access a PDF copy of the book here (15MB)

Book Excerpt | How Bhima Koregaon Became a Trope for Dalit Pride and Assertion

15/06/2024 Asha

The Wire / by Ajaz Ashraf

The national media coverage of the violence at Bhima Koregaon enhanced the historical significance of the place. Until 2018, Bhima Koregaon was not embedded in the popular consciousness outside Maharashtra.

Below is an excerpt from the recent book of Ajaz Ashraf titled Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Publisher: AuthorsUpFront.

The story you are about to read does not begin with the beginning. It does not because it is difficult to identify precisely where and when the story began. The beginning is buried deep inside events that occurred centuries ago, recorded or remembered and passed down orally over generations, in what is now the state of Maharashtra in western India.
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Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste. Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496
Read more/order

Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste – Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality

12/06/2024 Asha

Challenging Caste reads the violence at Bhima Koregaon as a clash between two worldviews — one striving to flatten the social hierarchy, the other justifying and perpetuating it. This book rips apart the Maoist conspiracy theory and the Urban Naxal narrative. It points out the ironies underlying the State’s charges against the sixteen, and the flimsiness of the evidence that is said to have been planted on their hacked computers. The conspiracy against the sixteen that inflicted untold miseries on their families is retold here in their voices.

Author: Ajaz Ashraf
Publisher: AuthorsUpFront
Publishing Date: June 2024
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 496

Podcasts: What does the death of a jailed priest say about India’s democracy? / ‘India’s Watergate’

02/06/2024 Asha

What does the death of a jailed Jesuit priest say about India’s democracy under Modi?

02/06/2024

npr / by Lauren Frayer

MUMBAI, India — Two days before police finally came to arrest him, the Rev. Stan Swamy recorded a video of himself speaking directly into the camera.
“They want to put me out of the way,” the ailing 83-year-old Jesuit priest said.
His voice sounded frail. But what he was saying was explosive.

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, was targeting him in retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Indigenous people in Indian jails.
Read more / 33-Minute Listen

‘India’s Watergate’: A tale of political manipulation, disinformation and nationalism

29/05/2024

Npr / by Lauren Frayer

It started with a civil rights rally, and ended in riots. NPR investigates how 16 of India’s most famous human rights activists were jailed for an alleged terror plot. They say they were framed.
India is wrapping up elections this week. We’re going to take you back to the last Indian elections five years ago, to a scandal that some call India’s Watergate. It has not brought down Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. In fact, he is expected to win a third term. The scandal started with a civil rights campaign that led to hundreds of arrests, allegations of computer hacking and the death of an elderly priest behind bars. NPR’s Lauren Frayer has our story.
Read more / 8-Minute Listen

Video | Modi’s India a modern Indian fascism: Alpa Shah / Book excerpt: The Incarcerations

19/04/2024 Asha

Modi’s India a modern Indian fascism: Alpa Shah, Professor of Social Anthropology

19/04/2024

The Wire / by Karan Thapar

en | 44:51 | 2024
One of British academias most highly regarded anthropologists has said “we need to call Modi’s India a modern Indian fascism”. Alpa Shah says: “Indian fascism may not be of the classic kind, whatever that is, but it’s fascism nevertheless.”
In a 40-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, to mark the launch of her book, ‘The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon and the Search for Democracy in India’, Alpa Shah, who is presently Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics but has just been announced as the new Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford University and a fellow of All Souls College, identified seven key characteristics of fascism each of which, it seems, applies almost fully to India under Narendra Modi. She, therefore, argues that terms like “majoritarianism or ethnic democracy or cultural nationalism” do not “convey the gravity of threat to democracy under way in India”.
Watch video

The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon And The Search For Democracy In India by Alpa Shah

19/04/2024

Article14 / by Alpa Shah

… In The Incarcerations, professor of social anthropology at the London School of Economics Alpa Shah now tells the chilling story of the Bhima-Koregaon case that transformed the 16 human rights defenders who were professors, lawyers, journalists and poets into alleged Maoist terrorists accused of waging a war against the Indian state and plotting to kill prime minister Narendra Modi.

Book excerpt
Only when the streets in Mumbai were deserted because of the Dalit protestors, did the conflict over the Bhima Koregaon British war memorial make it into international news, at The Guardian. In fact, the Indian broadsheets and mainstream TV mainly covered the events only when there was disruption in Mumbai, and then the focus of reporting was on mobs holding the city to ransom, not the casteist violence in Koregaon that they were protesting.
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A new book recounts how 16 activists were imprisoned as terrorists, without trial

27/03/2024

Scroll.in / by Alpa Shah

An excerpt from ‘The Incarcerations: Bhima Koregaon and the Search for Democracy in India’
Amnesty International India and Oxfam India released a joint response the day Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves and Varavara Rao were arrested. “The nationwide crackdown on activists, advocates and human rights defenders is disturbing and threatens core human rights values.”
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Koregaon Bhima inquiry commission gets 14th extension, told to submit final report by August 31

02/03/2024 Maya

The Indian Express / by Express News Service

The Maharashtra government has granted yet another extension to the Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry till August 31.
As per the order issued in this regard by the home department recently, the commission has been given an extension of another four months. This is the 14th time that an extension has been granted to the commission since it was formed.
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Prakash Ambedkar walks out of Bhima Koregaon Commission probe

13/02/2024 Maya

National Herald / Nadeem Inamdar

Alleging govt lawyers are diverting the probe, the VBA chief said the Commission is “helpless” without judicial powers
Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi chief Prakash Ambedkar on Monday, 13 February, walked out of the witness box of the Bhima Koregaon Commission, announcing that he quit the cross-examination.
Read more

Also read:
▪ Bhima Koregaon Violence: Four Different Theories, but No Justice in Sight (The Wire / Jan 2022)