Critical Thoughts: A postcolonial reading of the casteism in everyday India

Echoing Malcom

Reading Malcolm X's speeches, it is clear that he points to a historical trend in the process of obtaining independence from tyranny. In other words, history shows that people must be committed to overhauling the system and prepared to sacrifice for a great cause. The trouble comes in overcoming the anesthetization of the natural impulse that people have to change their surroundings. I feel that this is incredibly difficult in the modern world when entire industries have been created for the sole purpose of distraction and self-indulgence. Has that impulse changed? Is it still there? Sometimes I think that when people become so self-absorbed and ignorant of rampant injustice, they will only react when its too late. For instance, there have always been economic disparities but public anger only sets in when their houses are foreclosed and savings wiped out. Revolution then becomes the last refuge of the hopeless. Is there any point to calling for revolution when the only precursor t...

Purdue's Professional Revolutionary

In light of the discussion we had during our advisee meeting on Friday about being strategic in our means as critical scholars I was struck by the words of Lenin who emphasizes the role of the intellectual. He says, "The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., it may itself realize the necessity for combining in unions, for fighting against the employers and for striving to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals." (pg. 74) This idea of the bourgeois socialist intelligentsia as an instrument of raising consciousness and fomenting dissent is an ideal one I am sure but in contemporary times we, the academics, forming a substantial part of the "intellectual elite", occupy a unique position which forces us into ...

Is participation just a rhetoric?

Participation and participatory strategies are used in different spaces globally to involve communities and ensure their voices in the discursive space. The culture centered approach foregrounds active participation of community members in the construction of shared meanings and experience (Dutta, 2008). Basu and Dutta (2009) underline the importance of participation of community members in the enunciation of health problems as a step toward achieving meaningful change. My experience with participatory projects involving children and community members also bears testimony to the importance of participation in impacting society; effecting a sustainable social change. But at the same time, this question looms large in my reflexive spaces that "Is it all just a co-optive process as the structural issues have remain untouched?" Basu and Dutta (2009) discuss different approaches of participation, critique the top down participatory campaigns and provide an alternative theorizing o...

Mohan J. Dutta: Critical Insights on Culture and Society

Search This Blog