South Asia Citizens Web

Inaugurating Mukesh Ambani’s new hospital in Mumbai on Saturday 25th October 2014, the Prime minister stunned the nation by claiming that the Mahabharat’s story of Karna, who was not born of his mother’s womb, was evidence of the fact that “genetic science” was prevalent at the time, and that worshippers of Lord Ganesh should reflect that there must have been some “plastic surgeon” who performed the “surgery” of affixing an elephant head on to a human body!

The violent events of 1984 signify the breakdown of consensual politics and the ideal of composite Indian nationhood. When communal animosity spreads across society, it corrodes the social conscience and (directly or subliminally) produces a genocidal consensus.

Ghulam Azam, the once all powerful leader of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, who died recently, might have brooded over this old dictum, in his last days in detention. It was only last year that he was sentenced to 90 years of imprisonment for his crimes against humanity which he committed when people of the then East Pakistan - todays Bangladesh - had risen up against the occupation army of Pakistan in the year 1971.

This is a pioneering (possibly the first such) pamphlet on the Tribals of Jharkand and the R.S.S. (the Hindutva right wing organisation). The author Vir Bharat Talwar is a Hindi scholar who has been active in left movements and has worked extensively among tribals in India. He has edited Philbal, Shalpatra and Jharkhand Varla, journals in Hindi. His published work includes research papers on labour, the national movement and the pamphlet, Jharkhand ke Adivasi aur R.S.S. [This document from the early 1980’s has long been out of print and has been digitised for the sacw.net document archive]

This report offers insights into the employment and labour conditions in the textile industry in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu.