Success is No Shield: The Case of Y Puran Kumar

One of the most harrowing proofs that socio-economic success provides no immunity from caste-based humiliation is the tragic death of Y Puran Kumar. A 52-year-old senior Dalit police officer in Haryana, Kumar ended his life, leaving behind an eight-page suicide note that named the Haryana Director-General of Police and the Rohtak Superintendent of Police as architects of a persistent culture of harassment.

Despite his high rank, Kumar detailed a "culture of scapegoating." His note described the denial of leave to attend his father’s final rites, the withdrawal of his official vehicle, and annual appraisals intentionally "loaded with biased comments." His case serves as a grim case study for policy analysts: professional rank cannot override the stigma of caste in a system that refuses to reform its internal social hierarchies

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Unveiling the "Real Majority" of India

Unveiling the "Real Majority": Divya Dwivedi’s Critique of the Hindu Majority Narrative * In contemporary Indian discourse, the notion of a "Hindu majority" is often taken as an unassailable fact, with official statistics frequently citing approximately 80% of India’s population as Hindu. This framing shapes political campaigns, cultural narratives, and even national identity. However, philosopher and professor at IIT Delhi, Divya Dwivedi, challenges this narrative in her provocative and incisive work, arguing that the "Hindu majority" is a constructed myth that obscures the true social composition of India. For Dwivedi, the "real majority" comprises the lower-caste communities—historically marginalized and oppressed under the caste system—who form the numerical and social backbone of the nation. Her critique, developed in collaboration with philosopher Shaj Mohan, offers a radical rethinking of Indian society, exposing the mechanisms of power t...

Nehru: Past, Present, and Future

Based on a speech/talk in Telugu by Dr. Devaraju Maharaju Some people say Nehru belongs to the past. Personally, I believe he belongs not only to the past but to the present and the future as well. Building a nation requires immense effort and sacrifice — and Nehru demonstrated both through his life. His life stands as an ideal not just for the older generation, but for today's youth and generations yet to come. I hold this belief firmly. He was a visionary, an atheist, a rationalist — but setting all of that aside, there is one thing that must be spoken of without fail: Scientific Temper . The man who coined the term "scientific temper" and gave it to the world was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. This phrase is now used globally, and people must remember that it was Nehru who gave us those words. The Roots of Scientific Thought in India Did scientific temper begin with Nehru? Not quite. India was actually home to the world's earliest materialists. It was India tha...

THE DRAVIDIAN PEOPLE OF SOUTH ASIA

Dravidians are the most ancient ethno-linguistic group of South Asia. The migrations of the Indo-Aryans pushed them deeper into the subcontinent. But a few isolated groups still remain to tell the tale. They may not have the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) of most of the Dravidian people, but the Brahui language still spoken in Balochistan in the areas around Quetta, is tell tale evidence of our history. The Brahui is an ethnic group residing in Balochistan and Sindh, in Pakistan. Their distant linguistic cousins reside in the states of Karnataka and Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana in India. The Brahui are an excellent example of this phenomenon. A Dravidian ethnic group residing in the deserts of Sindh and Balochistan in Pakistan, they share DNA with their Sindhi, Balochi and provincial neighbours of different ethnicities. But their nearest cousins are located in the states of Karnataka in India. Causal relationships between ethnic groups in the Indian Subcontinen...

Peoples Telangana

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