TEXT QUESTIONS :
1. List two fundamental rights in the constitution that Dalit’s can draw upon to insist that they be treated with dignity and as equals.Re-read the Fundamental Rights listed on page 14 to help you answer this question .
Ans:
i) Right to Equality and
ii) Right to Freedom .
2. Re-read the story on Rathnam as well as the provisions of the 1989 Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act . Now list one reason why you think he used this law to file a complaint .
Ans: Rathnam was an engineering student well educated. He knew his Fundamental Rights. He opposed all types of social and religious injustice and voiced his rights to equality. In India nobody can be exploited or forced to work in the name of false tradition against his or her wish .
The Scheduled castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention Act , 1989 has a provision to file a protest against the domination and violence of the powerful castes in the village .
3. Why do Adivasi activists, including C.K. Janu, believe that Adivasis can also use this 1989 Act to fight against dispossession ? Is there anything specific in the provisions of the Act that allows her to believe this ?
Ans: The 1989 Act is important for Adivasis . They can appear to the court to defend their right to occupy land that was traditionally theirs .
Adivasis are people staying in village areas/forest areas usually unwilling to move from their land are forcibly displaced. The constitution of India has already promised tribal people that their land cannot be sold or bought by non-tribal people .
C.K. Janu adivasi activist have pointed out that one of the violators of the constitutional rights guaranteed to tribal people are governments in the various states of India. Who allows non-tribal encroachment in the form of timber merchants, paper mills, to exploit tribal land and so forcibly evict tribal people from their traditional forests in the process of declaring forests as reserved .
4. The poems and the song in this Unit allow you to see the range of ways in which individuals and communities express their opinions, their anger and their sorrow . In class, do the following two exercises :
(a) Bring to class a poem that discusses a social issue. Share this with your classmates. Work in small groups with two or more poems to discuss their meaning as well as what the poet is trying to communicate .
(b) Identify a marginalized community in your locality .Write a poem, or song, or draw a poster etc . to express your feelings as a member of this community .
Ans:
(a) If you go there
You will stay there
In the veins of every mother
They will hail you
They will hate you
They will run from you and cover
They will abide by what you told them
But obey only in their actions.
Every drop of air they breathe
Is made of fragments and of fractions
They tired to make it on their own
But we forced air will beneath them
They had to learn our world to survive
The one we did bequeath them
Now tribal, rural and indigenous
Are synonymous with backwards
When they should be celebrated
Not replaced with new distractions
We hope they can ignore us
For being ignorant of everything we did
Ignore the atrocities committed
Ignore all the shame we’ve hid
Colonialism was wrong and we need to make it clear
To every child impatient to learn about the darkest British era
The guilt and shame still stretch across the widest of savannahs
And tribes still curse the name of Britain for us trying to teach them manners .
And the discussion can be done on above poem
(b) Marginalization-key to failure
Making them sit on floors
Stopping the rise of nation,
Closing the passion driven doors,
Just to promote marginalization
You are, the one who made them SC and ST’s
They all were made by god
Aren’t you having any feelings
All this system is fraud
Reservation is not the solution
Make them feel they have rights
Stop this uncivilized tradition
Let them make their future bright
Everyone is equal
Erase this line
Stop this sequel
Be determined
Marginalization is the key to failure
Its choice of yours
To choose wrong or right .