What was the motto of the dalit movement what was th
Answers
TN Dalit Movement organises slogan shouting demo
Written by: Staff
Published:December 5 2006, 9:05 [IST]
Chennai, Dec 4 (UNI) Members of the Tamil Nadu Dalit Women Movement staged a slogan shouting demonstration here today, protesting against the brutal murder of four persons of a dalit family by the upper caste people at a village in Maharashtra recently.
The protestors also demanded that the culprits should be arrested.
Dalit, meaning "broken/scattered" in Sanskrit and Hindi, is a term mostly used for the ethnic groups in India that have been kept depressed by subjecting them to untouchability (often termed backward castes).[1] Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and were seen as forming a fifth varna, also known by the name of Panchama. Dalits now profess various religious beliefs, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Christianity. As per the latest census, they comprise 16% of India's population (200 million people).[2]
The term dalits was in use as a translation for the British Raj census classification of Depressed Classes prior to 1935. It was popularised by the economist and reformer B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), who included all depressed people irrespective of their caste into the definition of dalits.[3] Hence the first group he made was called the "Labour Party" and included as its members all people of the society who were kept depressed, including women, small scale farmers and people from backward castes. New leaders like Kanhaiya Kumar subscribe to this definition of "dalits", thus a Brahmin marginal farmer trying to eke out a living, but unable to do so also falls in the "dalit" category.[4][5] Ambedkar himself was a Mahar, and in the 1970s the use of the word "dalit" was invigorated when it was adopted by the Dalit Panthers activist group. Gradually, political parties used it to gain mileage.