Category Archives: Uncategorised
Inclusion of Caste as a Category in the Equality Act 2010
14th July 2025
As we reflect on DSN UK’s response to Equality law call for evidence which was submitted on 28th June 2025, we realise more that unless caste is included as a protected category in the UK’s Equality Act 2010, there is very little hope to experience equality for the South Asian Diaspora especially from India in UK. The diaspora remains to be divided based on the age old caste pyramid structure for more than 2500 years. However, Dr Elizabeth Joy feels there is hope in a few MPs like Warinder Juss (Time to outlaw caste discrimination – MP | Dalit Solidarity Network), and Nadia Whittome asking ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will make caste-based discrimination illegal, and Minister Seema Malhotra speaking out, saying, “No one should suffer prejudice or discrimination on any grounds, including any perception of their caste.” raise our hope in combating Caste Based Discrimination (CBD) here in the UK. The intensity of the negative impact due to CBD in India which is reflected as a mirror image here in UK. Recently, on 2nd July, the voice heard powerfully from Lord Richard Harries, Chair of APPG for Dalita and Adivasis, along with Warinder Juss MP and others at the Portcullis House on ‘Why the UK must ban caste discrimination’ organised by Anti Caste Discrimination Alliance (ACDA) which Dr Elizabeth Joy the Director of DSN UK attended enables the stakeholder group to march forward in hope.
Dr Elizabeth Joy
https://www.ft.com/content/b0a7eb5e-2f03-4855-81ea-3d8fd07e4b26
You’re Invited
30th June 2025
Informal Meet & Greet with Prachi Patankar Tomorrow, 1st July 2025
We are pleased to invite you to an informal community meet and greet with renowned anti-caste activist Prachi Patankar, who is visiting London this week.
📅 Date: Tuesday, 1st July 2025
🕖 Time: 7:00 PM onwards
📍 Venue: Dr Ambedkar Hall
At Dr Ambedkar Centre
12 Featherstone Road, Southall, UB2 5AA
( Please enter the premises via Rear Entrance )
This gathering offers a unique opportunity to engage in an open discussion with Prachi about her work and reflections on contemporary anti-caste and social justice movements in the United States and the United Kingdom.
All are welcome. Come with your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.
Let’s connect, listen, and learn together.
Community Outreach programme organised by Ambedkarite peoples in UK
DSN UK is proud to be a part of this event.
DSN UK participates in NSS event in Leicester
16th June 2025
Dr Elizabeth Joy, the Director DSN UK was a panellist at the Leicester event on 10th June 2025 speaking on the work of DSN UK: the Everyday Casteism project providing a platform in the DSN UK website for people to register Caste Based Discrimination within the UK, along with Business and Human Rights focussing on Caste in the global supply chain, inclusion of caste in the EDI Charter in the Higher Educational Institutions in the UK. She also mentioned about the pro=legislation stakeholder group lobbying with the UK Government to include caste as a protective characteristic in the Equality Act UK 2010. Megan Manson who chaired the Panel on Why we should speak about caste discrimination in the UK nailed the importance of addressing caste concerns and issues to be brought to the centre of discussions to raise our voices for Dalits deprived of Social Justice and Human Rights for more than 2000 years in India, Asia and the diaspora in the UK as well as across the world.
The panellists with the Chair Megan Manson and Amar on the Board of Directors from NSS.
Read more here.
DSN UK Welcomes Change: The Tamil Nadu government in India amends rules prohibiting caste discrimination in prisons
21st May 2025
DSN UK warmly welcomes the news item from The Hindu a prominent News paper that says’ “A sub-rule introduced in the Tamil Nadu Prison Rules, 2024, said manual scavenging or hazardous cleaning of a sewer or a septic tank inside a prison should not be undertaken, in line with the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013.” This amendment prohibits the question on caste on the form to be filled in the Prisons and Correction Centres in Tamil Nadu.
At a time when the current BJP government in India is trying to bring back the Descent based work that will promote employment based on caste which will hike caste based discrimination.
DSN UK is Recruiting a part-time Programme Officer
16th May 2025
DSN UK Endorses NSS’ Letter: Free speech and caste discrimination concerns
16th May 2025
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DSN UK Congratulates Critical Dance Studies Scholar Professor Royona Mitra!
7th May 2025
The new monograph Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch was published last month by Oxford University Press. The cover design is by “Rukminee Guha Thakurta, Letterpress Studio. Critical dance studies scholar Royona Mitra (Brunel University of London) says that it has taken ten years to birth this project and its publication coincided with the unexpected departure of her beloved mother who has played an integral role in many ways to this work, as Royona says, ‘in ways she will now never know’. Royona also notes that this publication aligns with “a devastating time in UK universities as we contend with precarities, redundancies, and become the fulcrum of political culture wars…” we wish that the joy of this publication brings abundant blessings to her, the student communities who will interact with her work and engage with the concerns that are close to her heart, especially in relation to “Cast out Caste” efforts from universities. .
We congratulate the dance artists – Akila, Diya Naidu, Nahid Siddiqui, and LaWhore Vagistan – whose words and works are integral to this project. We look forward to an online book launch in early autumn in the new academic year.
Voicing out for options to restore reduced UK aid budget: DSN UK networks with BOND as a member
17th April 2025
DSN UK through BOND joined hands with refugee groups to call on the government to end the use of expensive contracts for housing asylum seekers in favour of more appropriate and cost-effective housing options and ensure that the freed-up funding is restored to the now reduced UK aid budget
With a strong support from 107 organisations that signed on, Bond’s Media Adviser secured coverage in The Times, BBC Breakfast and BBC News, LBC Radio (@08:06:00), LBC News, Times Radio, and Politico, and we have tweeted and shared via LinkedIn.
Dalit Theology Month
31st March 2025
Inspired by Black History Month, Dalit History Month was launched in April 2015 by a collective of Dalit activists, to reclaim and reassert the agency of Dalits through their stories of resistance and resilience. It is celebrated in the month of April every year commemorating the birth anniversary of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (14th April), a social reformer and a prophet for justice in modern India, who vehemently strived for the annihilation of caste oppression.
In resonance with the spirit of Dalit History Month, #DalitTheologyMonth is being launched this April 2025 to reclaim our Dalit theological Identity, to reinvigorate our Dalit theological spirituality and to seek a public relevance of Dalit theology in our post-Christian and post-secular world. #DalitHistoryMonth is an opportunity to create a new interest, to celebrate new passion, new perspectives and to envision new dreams of/for Dalit theology, as a means of transforming our world today.
Dalit theology, as an Indian liberation theology has a come a long way ever since it made its inroads into the Indian Christian theology by the articulations of Arvind P Nirmal in 1981. Taking cognizance of the Dalit realities in the Indian Church and in the Indian public sphere, Dalit theology emerged as a counter theology, countering the dominant publics of casteism. It has also been a protest theology against the forces of marginalization, domination and oppression. Dalit theology contests the oppressive status quo of any form and all forms of oppression with an aim of affirming life in all its fullness.
Dalit theology today stands as voices of resistance to the colonial projects of knowledge and has been on the go in employing de-colonial methods of reading/hearing/listening texts, contexts, events, histories, theories and theologies and therefore this can be a pointer in seeking its public relevance today. The challenges that #DalitTheologyMonth poses to the euro-centred epistemologies are ‘learning to listen to the voices from below’, the voices from margins as contested epistemologies and ‘hearing to speech’ such knowledge forms. It calls to sufficiently theorise power and its dynamics from the perspectives of those on the margins and to address situations of oppression.
During this month, we are encouraging students, supporters, allies and friends of Dalit theology to be intentional in speaking/sharing/writing about Dalit theology and strive to build a global wave of solidarity for the cause of Dalit liberation and justice. I shall share 30 quotes, posting a quote each day throughout April from various Dalit theologians and invite people to share and reflect on them as my personal offering to this #DalitTheologyMonth. I now seek your support in promoting #DalitTheologyMonth through your creative offerings and solidarity. Come let us join together in seeking the divine among the sites of margins and strive for a liberative and just world.
Rev Dr Raj Bharat Patta
Founder, #DaitTheologyMonth – April 2025
raj.patta@methodist.org.uk
25.03.2025