Degree Prasad Chouhan is a brave defender of the marginalized in the troubled state of Chhattisgarh.
“TO BE VICTORIOUS is colloquially called receiving a ‘degree’. When I was born, it was a moment of great joy for my family. My grandmother was the first to call me Degree. It stuck, somehow, and that’s the story behind my name!” laughs Degree Prasad Chouhan, 39, among the few remaining human-rights defenders of Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi rights in the state of Chhattisgarh.
Based in Raigarh, and working for marginalized communities who are often denied their fundamental rights, Chouhan has been targeted both by state and non-state actors. In August last year, a letter, purportedly written by Sudha Bharadwaj, national secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Chhattisgarh, surfaced, naming, among others, “comrade Degree Prasad Chouhan, who was sent into the interiors by me, has returned … completing the … operation.” This, to him, is a clear attempt to link him to the incident of violence between Dalits and upper-caste Peshawas in Bhima Koregaon in 2018. Bharadwaj, through her lawyer, has rubbished these allegations since.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 2019 من Reader's Digest India.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 2019 من Reader's Digest India.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
ME & MY SHELF
Siddharth Kapila is a lawyer turned writer whose writing has focussed on issues surrounding Hinduism. His debut book, Tripping Down the Ganga: A Son's Exploration of Faith (Speaking Tiger) traces his seven-year-long journey along India's holiest river and his explorations into the nature of faith among believers and skeptics alike.
EMBEDDED FROM NPR
For all its flaws and shortcomings, some of which have come under the spotlight in recent years, NPR makes some of the best hardcore journalistic podcasts ever.
ANURAG MINUS VERMA PODCAST
Interview podcasts live and die not just on the strengths of the interviewer but also the range of participating guests.
WE'RE NOT KIDDING WITH MEHDI & FRIENDS
Since his exit from MSNBC, star anchor and journalist Mehdi Hasan has gone on to found Zeteo, an all-new media startup focussing on both news and analysis.
Ananda: An Exploration of Cannabis in India by Karan Madhok (Aleph)
Karan Madhok's Ananda is a lively, three-dimensional exploration of India's past and present relationship with cannabis.
I'll Have it Here: Poems by Jeet Thayil, (Fourth Estate)
For over three decades now, Jeet Thayil has been one of India's pre-eminent Englishlanguage poets.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Penguin Random House India)
Samantha Harvey became the latest winner of the Booker Prize last month for Orbital, a short, sharp shock of a novel about a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station for a long-term mission.
She Defied All the Odds
When doctors told the McCoombes that spina bifida would severely limit their daughter's life, they refused to listen. So did the little girl
DO YOU DARE?
Two Danish businesswomen want us to start eating insects. It's good for the environment, but can consumers get over the yuck factor?
Searching for Santa Claus
Santa lives at the North Pole, right? Don't say that to the people of Rovaniemi in northern Finland
