Society

Di Ball DISCLAIMER: As the unofficial, unsupported , self appointed Queen of Kochi and the biggest fan of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, the following reportage will be totally biased. After two incredibly successful iterations, the current Kochi Muziris 2016 Biennale is titled Forming in the Pupil of an Eye and curated by Sudarshan Shetty. Shetty explains that taking his cue from an old story of a sage and a young traveller, he has used the notion of the " eye as the only reflective organ of the body", and that his curatorial approach draws on the notion that the world "is not an image of one reality, but a reflection of multiple realities and of multiple possibilities in time. (....) As its own process, Forming in the Pupil of an Eye comes from that junction o f the physiological with...

Kalki Subramaniam In this article, Kalki Subramaniam writes how through encouraging creativity among transgender people, a change is being brought for the psycho social wellbeing of their future. The majority of Indian transgender population (census of India 2011 survey says 4.88 lakhs, but it could be 5 times higher) is not educated, mostly ostracized by the family, thrown out of our homes and have lost the opportunity to study at school or college. This rejection makes us disqualified for well paid jobs and pushes us into the street for begging and sex work to make money to meet all their needs. While food and shelter become a priority, education fades away as a distant dream for us, and art is something not in our priority and needy list at all, we see it only in films or occasio...

 Dr.Ajay Sekher It required the sacrifice of a brave Avarna woman called Nangeli of Chertalai in the current Alapuzha district of Kerala to end the infamous breast-tax in Kerala instituted by the erstwhile Travancore kingdom. There were more than 100 types of caste taxes imposed on the Avarna people, especially Nadars and Ezhavas in Travancore. This casteist custom was a form of humiliation of the former Buddhist Bahujans in Kerala who never accepted and succumbed to Brahmanical Hindu religion and its priestly-militia patriarchy. Caste and untouchability were punishments given to the broken Buddhist people who resisted the Brahmanic Varnasramadharma and caste as Ambedkar in his Who were the Sudras? or Who were the Untouchables? explains or Dr K Sugatan in his Buddhamatavum Jativy