Friday, December 27, 2013

Fighting caste discrimination



Caste is one of India’s most enduring institutions and still retains its hold on Indian society. For those not fortunate to be born in the higher echelons of the caste hierarchy, life can be difficult indeed. Despite government efforts, caste discrimination is still rife, and low-caste Indians have to bear the brunt of poverty, illiteracy and violence. Lenin Raghuvanshi is in the forefront of the fight against caste discrimination, to ensure a just and equal society.

Raghuvanshi is the founder of the People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), which fights for the rights of marginalized people in several North Indian states, especially in the area around Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.

Raghuvanshi was born in an upper caste family, which he describes as “feudal”. He got a bachelor’s degree in ayurveda, modern medicine and surgery from the State Ayurvedic College in Haridwar. But the social inequities that faced India made him take up the cause of bonded labourers. This is when he noticed that not a single bonded labourer came from the upper caste, and realised that the problem was essentially caste.

In 1996, Raghuvanshi founded PVCHR to fight the caste system. He works to ensure basic rights to vulnerable groups like children, women, Dalits, tribes and minorities. Raghuvanshi and his team works at the grassroots level in Varanasi and around 200 villages in Uttar Pradesh and five other states. PVCHR works to eliminate situations that give rise to the exploitation of vulnerable and marginalized groups, and to start a movement for a people-friendly movement (Jan Mitra Samaj) through an inter-institutional approach.

Raghuvanshi has his task cut out for him since the lot of Dalits and other oppressed minorities continues to be dismal. “In the past, if anyone from the lower caste breached the unwritten law of caste hierarchy, the person would be beaten up in public. Now the person will be shot dead and the village burnt down and the women raped. A bridegroom riding a horse during his wedding, an enterprising peasant digging a well on his land, if a boy falls in love with a girl – do you kill them? Yet, if they belong to the Dalit caste they are killed. We still say that there is rule of law in India,” he said in his acceptance speech while receiving the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights.

He is also concerned about the plight of women and children in this country. “India is still very much a patriarchal and caste-based society with gender discrimination. The destructive effects of gender discrimination, patriarchal oppression and the semi-feudal society so prevalent in 21st century India are manifest in our 55 million children, employed at times in subhuman conditions,” he says in a newspaper interview.

Raghuvanshi received the Gwangju Human Rights Award in 2007. He was made an Ashoka Fellow in 2001 and was presented the International Human Rights Prize of the City of Weimar (Germany) in 2010. Raghuvanshi once said to a newspaper that caste discrimination is so rife in Bundelkhand that a Dalit has to take off his chappal and hold it in his hand if a person belonging to the Thakur caste approaches. It’s not something that would make us proud.
How can you Help?
Caste approaches is not something that would make us proud 



Contact details of the NGO/Institution

Name :  Lenin Raghuvanshi 
Email ID  lenin@pvchr.asia
Contact Number :  9935599333
Address  PVCHR Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh 

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Malnutrition death of a girl in Varanasi,India

Documentary made by Rohit Kumar of PVCHR highlights the plight of weaver belong to Muslim community at Rahimpur, Lohta of Varanasi in India.

Friday, July 19, 2013

WEAVING DREAMS, LIVING IN NIGHTMARE: SITUATION OF BANARASI SAREE WEAVING SECTOR OF VARANASI

The present paper looks into the situational analysis of weavers of Banarasi saree, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. The life of weavers is characterized by abject poverty, chronic malnutrition, varied health hazards and even hunger deaths and suicides. In-put cost is unbearable for many and profit is taken by middlemen. Globalization has severely affected economically vulnerable small weavers pushing them below poverty line. State machinery is apathetic and whatever schemes and programmes exist, fail to do any good to weavers who are battling hard to keep this one of the finest legacies of Indian culture alive. Situation of women and children is worse. Women are engaged in mundane work of thread-cutting, zari-filling and the like and are paid merely Rs.10-15 per day for 12-16 hours of work. Children are denied schooling to speed up saree-production. Suggestive interventions are highlighted in the paper.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Fake case against Lenin and Shruti



Fake case against Lenin Raghuvanshi and Shruti Nagvanshi.

Please write letter to Prime Minister pmosb@pmo.nic.in, NHRC Chairperson chairnhrc@nic.in, Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh cmup@nic.in and Director General of Police, Uttar Pradesh uppcc@up.nic.in and Registrar of High Court Fax No. : +91- 522-2272328.

http://www.pvchr.net/2013/06/fake-case-against-lenin-raghuvanshi-and.html

Sunday, June 09, 2013

Live Working or Die Fighting


Lenin, despite his name, does not want to overthrow the capitalist system; he wants to bring it in. He wants to eliminate feudalism but preserve the art of weaving, using the internet to market hand crafted silk. For this he needs to unravel the free trade agreements made by Indian government under the WTO. This is not a Ghandhian type of thing, this is a capitalist thing: we want to create a weavers’ trust, joint company to cut out the middlemen and sell our product to world direct. 
From the book of Paul Mason named “Live Working or Die Fighting, How the Working Class Went Global”