Saturday, January 2, 2010

Class action - India - The Times of India

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    • Avijit Ghosh,
    • On a summer night in 1992, life changed suddenly for Bhanwar Meghwanshi. Devoted to the Ramjanambhoomi movement, the Dalit teenager had prepared
    • kheer and puri for some VHP sadhus invited to his home in south Rajasthan's Bhilwara district. The sadhus arrived in a tearing hurry, didn't eat, but got the food packed. A day later, a friend took Meghwanshi to a place outside the village where they had thrown the food. "I learnt later that they ate their dinner at a brahmin's house, about 3 km from my village. And I realised that while I was ready to die for Ayodhya, they were not even willing to eat at my place," he recalls. He wrote an article in a local newspaper, 'Why I don't want to be a Hindu', and shut the Hindutva door forever.
    • Meghwanshi's first big battle as an activist happened at Suliya village, near Bhilwara. The 1,000-year-old Chamunda Mata temple was traditionally supervised by a Dalit priest, but in Oct 2006, Gujjars threw him out, and stopped Dalits from going in. The three month-long movement to reclaim the temple ended with 5,000 Dalits, including many women, entering its premises.

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