Nikita Sonavane on caste origins of modern policing | What’s your ism?

What are the caste origins of words such as “rowdy” and “goonda” in the police vocabulary? Did India’s caste system help colonial anthropology? What was the role of eugenics in the creation of the country’s modern police force? How do Dalit women negotiate in the savarna-dominated judiciary? And what does it mean to be a ‘creamy layer’ Dalit?
In our latest episode of What’s Your Ism, Sudipto Mondal speaks to Nikita Sonavane, a Dalit feminist lawyer, scholar, and founder of Bhopal-based Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project, about the savarna stranglehold on the judiciary and Brahminical policing.
Watch.
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[@alokmukherjee8160]

Thank you for this wonderful and important conversation.

[@123xyzabccba]

75+ years of distorted constitutional reservations seems to have sent shiver down the spine of the beneficiaries of 3000+ years varnashram reservations ordained under manusmriti…..

[@MadhuriSharma612]

Thank you, TNM for your excellent journalism and Nikita, for your inspiring efforts. Hoping that Newslaundry and TNM can make a more detailed series about this.

[@sasentaiko]

Thank you so much for this interview. I learned so much. For example, hadn’t heard of being denotified before, and I guess I’m just taken aback at how many ways people in power will find to say that another person doesn’t deserve basic dignity. The situation in America isn’t that far ahead on the path to liberation. Nearly everything thing you discussed is regularly happening in America too, unfortunately… even in the most progressive places. Perhaps it seems rhetorically further ahead on justice and policing, but “defund the police” was so quickly vilified that police budgets actually grew, even in cities that passed laws and ballot measures to redistribute a tiny sliver of their funds. It’s an uphill battle for us all.

[@123xyzabccba]

20:15 ; “we were books with same cover but different content” - well said

[@rohanxdavis]

Nikita is spot on 👌🏾

[@kaushikisapahia6759]

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@rahulroy898]

4:08 min. It's funny how a discussion on caste starts with hailing Gandhianism( despite Gandhi having staunch casteist beliefs) and demonising Savarkar( despite him being an anti-caste figure). The appropriation of Ambedkar by the left doesn't seem to end.