Dalit Bahujan Shramik Union

Last updated June 28, 2019

The Dalit Bahujan Shramik Union (DBSU) is a Dalit-Bahujan civil rights organization and agricultural workers' union locally coordinated from Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, South India. It lobbies against violence towards Dalit women. Two of its founders were Paul Diwakar and Annie Namala.^[1]

Dalit, meaning "broken/scattered" in Sanskrit and Hindi, is a term mostly used for the ethnic groups in India that have been kept depressed by subjecting them to untouchability. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and were seen as forming a fifth varna, also known by the name of Panchama. Dalits now profess various religious beliefs, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity and various folk religions. The 2011 Census of India recorded their numbers at over 200 million people, representing 16 percent of India's population.

South India is the area including the five Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, as well as the three union territories of Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Puducherry, occupying 19% of India's area. Covering the southern part of the peninsular Deccan Plateau, South India is bounded by the Bay of Bengal in the east, the Arabian Sea in the west and the Indian Ocean in the south. The geography of the region is diverse with two mountain ranges–the Western and Eastern Ghats, bordering the plateau heartland. Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri, Tungabhadra, Periyar and Vaigai rivers are important non-perennial sources of water. Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam, Madurai, Mysore, Mangalore, Kozhikode and Kochi are the largest urban areas.

N. Paul Divakar is a Dalit activist and former General Secretary of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, based in Delhi. He was formerly the General Secretary of the Dalit Bahujan Shramik Union, a Dalit-Bahujan rights organisation in Andhra Pradesh.

Origins

The DBSU was previously known as the Andhra Pradesh Dalit Bahujan Vyavasaya Vruthidharula Union (APDBVVU).

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Ambedkar Samaj Party is a political party in India, that fights for the rights of Dalits. The party is opposed to Hindu nationalism, which it sees as representing an upper caste minority. ASP claims that Bahujan Samaj Party has betrayed dalits through its alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party. The leader of ASP is Tej Singh.

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References

↑ Singh, Jebaroja; Singh, Roja (2018). Spotted Goddesses: Dalit Women's Agency-narratives on Caste and Gender Violence. LIT Verlag. p. 55. ISBN 9783643909152.

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[1] Singh, Jebaroja; Singh, Roja (2018). Spotted Goddesses: Dalit Women's Agency-narratives on Caste and Gender Violence. LIT Verlag. p. 55. ISBN 9783643909152.