Digital
AvailableLanguage | English |
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ISBN-10 | 9386050870 |
ISBN-13 | 978-9386050878 |
No of pages | 216 |
Book Publisher | Speaking Tiger Books |
Published Date | 14 Nov 2016 |
"Harsh Mander, fifty-five, social worker and writer, is a member of the National Advisory Council. He is also the founder of the campaigns Aman Baradari, for secularism, peace and justice; Navagraha, for legal justice and reconciliation for the survivors of communal violence; and Dill Se, for street children and homeless people.
He is special commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food case, and director, Centre for Equity Studies.
For almost two decades he worked in the Indian Administrative Service in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
He is also associated with causes like tribal, Dalit and disability rights, the right to information, custodial justice and bonded labor.
He writes columns for The Hindu and Hindustan Times, and is the author of Unheard Voices: Stories of Forgotten Lives and Fear and Forgiveness: The Aftermath of Massacre published by Penguin India.
Other books include The Ripped Chest: Public Policy and Poor in India and his co-authored Untouchability in Rural India.
Harsh has taught in the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; St Stephen’s College, Delhi; California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco;
LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie; and the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millie Islamia, Delhi, among others. He lives in Delhi with his wife and daughter."
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This volume collects seventeen stories of women and men who, simply because they were born poor, or a particular gender, or into a certain caste or religion, fell prey to the many atrocities and indignities endemic to contemporary India. Some resisted, survived and soldier on. Some did not.
Lachmi Kaur lost almost all the male members of her family in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. She then overcame despair to singlehandedly bring up her children and grandchildren with fierce love and pride. With great courage of conviction, Krishan Gopal, a Dalit man from Nimoda in Rajasthan, decided to build his own shrine to Hanuman after being forbidden from the village temple by his upper-caste neighbours. What followed was persecution, violence and exile from the village which lasted all his life. At twenty-eight, Dandapani defied his family—which could not accept him for what he was—left home and underwent a sex-change operation. Now known as Dhanam, she lives with her extended family of eunuchs in a Chennai shanty. And, in a chilling first-person account, Raheem tells of his village in Muzaffarnagar which, after cynical political manipulation, went from amity to a communal conflagration in just a week.
Fatal Accidents of Birth is a powerful, challenging book. It tells us of the many ways in which we inflict violence upon each other—most of all by choosing to not see. And as it does so, this necessary book ensures that these stories will find their rightful place in our consciousness.