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Harsh Mander

Harsh Mander is an activist and author of several books including, Fractured Freedom: Chronicles from India’s Margins and Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India.

Articles by Harsh Mander

To resist the Right, create more Humans of Hindutva Facebook pages and Twitter accounts

The regime and its hordes have silenced one more voice of dissent, of rationality, of youth and of laughter. How many more will be silenced?

A screenshot of Humans of Hindutva Facebook page(File)
Published on Dec 29, 2017 04:48 PM IST

Gujarat election results 2017: Don’t blame BJP only; Congress too dumped the Muslims

The divisive campaign for Gujarat marks a low watershed in the lives of its five million Muslims

Never in any of his election speeches did Rahul Gandhi use the M word – Muslim. He did not touch once upon the gruesome massacre of 2002 under the watch of Modi. He expressed no solidarity or anguish that Muslims in Gujarat after 2002 have been reduced to second-class citizens, denied housing in colonies of Hindus and Jains, masking their Muslim identity as auto drivers or owners of roadside restaurants and bakeries, making no claims on the government.(PTI)
Updated on Dec 18, 2017 03:08 PM IST

Hadiya has been denied the right to choose her faith

It’s astounding that an adult woman has been denied the right to choose her faith and partner. This is contrary to every guarantee in the Constitution

Twenty-four-year-old Hadiya (in red) at the Supreme Court, New Delhi, India, November 27, 2017(Vipin Kumar/HT)
Published on Dec 07, 2017 11:12 AM IST

The death of 11-year-old Santoshi is a collective social and political shame

The law guarantees that around half a person’s calorie requirements would be provisioned nearly free through the PDS. But because of the demand that every ration card must be linked to Aadhaar, Santoshi’s family which was admittedly the poorest household in the village, became one among those that fell through the cracks. The law guarantees school meals to children in school, but poverty had led to the family pulling Santoshi out of school.

District administration officials with police visiting the family members of 11-year-old Santoshi who died of starvation(Saurav Roy/ Hindustan Times)
Published on Nov 10, 2017 12:14 PM IST

BJP can’t ignore new zeal in Dalit resistance against caste violence

The BJP can ignore India’s Muslims and still win power. But they can ignore mounting Dalit anger against upper-caste hate violence and injustice only at their own peril

A protest at Jantar Mantar against the injustice towards Dalits in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh (File Photo)(Ravi Choudhary/HT)
Updated on Oct 25, 2017 11:00 AM IST

Cash transfers instead of food rations is a bad idea

International research shows that decisions about cash tend to be made by men in a family. There is little guarantee that men will spend the cash transferred to the family on nutrition for the young child. Cash is also vulnerable to inflation, whereas food transfers are inflation-proof

Every third malnourished child in the world is Indian. Every third child in India is malnourished. They deserve much better from their governments than escape paths to the central duty of a caring state to ensure adequate nutritious food in their bellies(Satish Bate/HT PHOTO)
Updated on Oct 05, 2017 11:42 AM IST

Why Jharkhand’s anti-conversion bill is against Constitution and not necessary

Jharkhand’s Religious Freedom Bill, 2017, primarily targets Christians, and goes against the freedom of religious belief in India’s Constitution

Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das. Jharkhand will not be the first government to pass an anti-conversion law if this is voted for by the state assembly. Anti-conversion laws were passed in Orissa in 1967, in Madhya Pradesh in 1968, in Gujarat in 2003 and Chhattisgarh in 2006. The only Congress government to pass such a law was in Himachal Pradesh in 2006 (File Photo)(Manoj Kumar/HT)
Updated on Sep 12, 2017 06:15 PM IST

Let’s Talk About Hate | Lynching could become a national epidemic: Harsh Mander

In Part 7 of Let’s Talk About Hate, Harsh Mander explores if a new law against lynching could combat hate crimes

(Illustration: Malay Karmakar)
Updated on Aug 01, 2017 11:48 AM IST

Portland and Ballabhgarh hate attacks: Remarkable similarities but shameful differences

In Portland, US, white co-passengers heroically came to the rescue of the children, and paid for this with their lives. In India, not one passenger came forward when Junaid was lynched

Protestors at a ‘Not in my name’ rally, Mumbai, June 28, 2017(AFP)
Updated on Jul 06, 2017 06:25 PM IST

These senior IPS officers are examples of a different kind of courage in uniform

It is important to acknowledge the contributions of IPS officers like Rajnish Rai and Satish Verma, who are willing to stake their careers for truth and justice

The investigations by senior police officers Satish Varma and Rajnish Rai led ultimately to the charge-sheeting and arrest of the then Home Minister of Gujarat and several senior police officers involved in the ‘purported encounter’ killing of 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan
Updated on Jun 16, 2017 12:16 AM IST

Job creation in high-growth India should be a top priority

There are almost no jobs available in India’s high-growth economy. Job creation has plummeted to levels even below those of preceding UPA governments. Of the one million new people who join the workforce every month, only 0.01% of new workers added to the work force actually found work.

Employment in the formal sector has fallen since 1997. More and more people are being pushed into either lowest-end self-employment; or the most unprotected and casualised wage employment.(Indranil Bhoumik/Mint)
Updated on May 23, 2017 09:47 PM IST

BJP must not invoke Gandhi to seek death for those who kill a cow

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat may have called for a nationwide ban on cow slaughter only now, but the rot had set in much earlier

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath feeding cows at Gorakhpur. One of the private member’s bills that Yogi Adityanath had introduced in Parliament includes one seeking a nationwide ban on the slaughter of the ‘cow and its entire progeny’.(HT file photo)
Updated on May 31, 2017 04:58 PM IST

Don’t look away from stories of oppression and exclusion around us

Rohith Vemula’s is one of the most damning and painful indictments of the India and the world today which we have crafted together.

Rohith Vemula's mother Radhika Vemula detained by Delhi Police during the candle march in New Delhi, February 24(Ravi Choudhary/HT Photo)
Updated on Apr 03, 2017 09:48 PM IST

15 years after Godhra riots: The politics of hate still divides us

What is less recognised of the so-called Gujarat Model is the systematic reduction of India’s religious minorities to second-class citizenship... The second-class citizenship of Muslims extends also to Christians, Dalits and tribal people in Gujarat as well

Survivors look at the pictures of the Godhra riots victims at a photo-exhibition held to commemorate its 10th anniversary in Ahmedabad, February 27, 2012.(REUTERS)
Updated on Feb 27, 2017 08:08 PM IST

In real terms, the government is providing less expenditure for NREGA

Do not expect this government to muster the moral and political resolve required to undertake large redistributive expenditures for India’s poor masses

Villagers working at pond construction project under a NREGA at Niredh village in Latehar district. The seismic distress created by demonetisation is likely to result in a continuing surge for wage work in NREGA.(Manoj Patil/HT Photo)
Published on Feb 02, 2017 11:30 AM IST

Can Mayawati stop the BJP-RSS rath in Uttar Pradesh?

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-RSS combine is using its usual communal card. The Samajwadi Party is complicit. Rahul Gandhi has tried to raise some relevant issues, but it’s not backed by credible evidence of sustained ground-level engagement. That leaves the BSP-led Mayawati. If indeed the Dalit and Muslim voters across UP heed Mayawati’s call, it is she who will form the next government in Lucknow

BJP national president Amit Shah with supporters during an election rally, Saharanpur, November 5(PTI)
Updated on Nov 08, 2016 10:56 PM IST

Mr Khattar, this is not a ‘small issue’

HT Image
Published on Sep 29, 2016 08:39 AM IST

The Mewat Biryani raids have permanently damaged livelihoods of poor Muslims

Apart from the long shadows that the Haryana police biryani raids cast on Eid festivities, the even more permanent damage they inflicted was on the livelihoods of thousands of poor Muslims

The biryani stalls of Mewat were a source of decent livelihood to 15,000 people. It is estimated that around 3,000 such stalls operated across the district.(HT Photo)
Updated on Sep 29, 2016 01:19 AM IST

Where fear is still a reality

HT Image
Published on Sep 15, 2016 07:19 AM IST

Eight years after Kandhamal violence, justice still evades many

The Kandhamal communal violence should not be forgotten because for many of its victims justice has been denied

A vehicle burns inside a church in Nuagoan village in Kandhamal district, Orissa, August 25, 2008(REUTERS)
Updated on Sep 14, 2016 10:41 PM IST

Discontent now out in the open

HT Image
Published on Aug 18, 2016 08:14 AM IST

Angry Dalits in Gujarat won’t take it lying down

The Dalit anger in Gujarat and elsewhere is against the traditions that have weighed down the community over centuries

Radhika Vemula, mother of Rohit Vemula, and others attend Dalit rally in Una in Gujarat on August 15(Hindustan Times)
Updated on Aug 17, 2016 11:45 PM IST

Roles that are cast in stone

HT Image
Published on Jul 27, 2016 09:14 AM IST

Is it sacrilege for upper castes to clean toilets?

The fury and indignation of upper caste organisations that members of their caste could even be invited to apply for the post of a sanitation worker is instructive about how entrenched the idea of caste remains in India.

For centuries we have thrust chores we regard to be unclean and socially humiliating on people of the lowest, most oppressed castes.(RAJ K RAJ/HT Photo)
Updated on Jul 27, 2016 07:56 AM IST

There’s little to cheer in the Gulberg Society massacre verdict

The recent ruling of the special SIT court in the massacre of 64 people in the Gulberg Society in Ahemdabad in 2002 illustrates the limits of the possibilities of full justice in the context of persisting institutional bias

A file photo of a biker passing near a burning vehicle during the riots in Ahmedabad, 2002(PTI)
Updated on Jun 18, 2016 11:00 PM IST

Muzaffarnagar riots: Judicial panel fails to hold up the light to truth

The judicial panel on the Muzaffarnagar riots frees the politicians from any culpability and legitimises the communal version about the violence

The popular imagination about the Muzaffarnagar communal violence remains that it was sparked off by the sexual harassment by a Muslim youth at Kawal in Muzaffarnagar of a Jat girl.(Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times)
Updated on May 19, 2016 07:16 AM IST

Why are Indian students angry

The recent protests in university campuses were not only a battle for freedom of speech but also a demand for acceptance of disadvantaged students

AISA students demand justice for Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in New Delhi, April 23(Hindustan Times)
Published on Apr 24, 2016 10:42 PM IST

Terrorism and communal violence must carry same stigma and punishment

Stigma and law must apply equally to those who participate in terror crimes and to those who target people for their religious or caste identity

Among the survivors of these crimes — many of whom fight epic and hopeless battles for justice like the widows of the 1984 Sikh massacre or the survivors of the 2002 Gujarat massacre — there is little popular outrage that these crimes go unpunished(Mohd Zakir/HT)
Updated on Mar 16, 2016 01:16 AM IST
Hindustan Times | By

IMA needs to introspect on state of private medical services

The Indian Medical Association needs to introspect on the state of private medical services in an unequal market-led India writes Harsh Mander

India’s public spending on healthcare, at just above 1% of GDP, is among the lowest in the world. By contrast, Brazil spends 4.7%, China 3.1% and the United States 8.1%.(AP File Photo)
Updated on Nov 20, 2015 01:29 AM IST
Hindustan Times | By
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