Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

USHA SAXENA writes a letter to Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit:

Dear ma’am,

My daughter Shambhavi and I and a colleague of mine Reema Ganguly went to Jantar Mantar today 25th Dec to take part in a peaceful gathering there against the gang-rape.

At around 4pm two girls came running up to us in tears and said that the police had dragged away 2 of their female friends to Parliament Street Police Station and they asked us to help bring them back. The three of us joined 9 other women and we went to the police station. When we reached there we only saw male constables. We demanded to talk to a female senior officer and said that the 3 women must be released immediately. The policemen very rudely and aggressively tried to chase us out. We refused to leave without those 3 women and so one male cop ordered…

Kalbeliya are a community living in the Thar desert, in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Considered as untouchables, these independent people try to do their own things their own way, they try to preserve their values and customs despite the pressure of change. Like other nomads of the region, they were once part of the mobile market that took its wares to the remote villages located far away from the main commercial centres.
Among all the itinerant “castes”, each one was specialized : each community distributed specific commodities that ranged from cattle, herbal medicines, salt, bamboo poles and drums to thread and needles, buttons and beads. For example, the Gaduliya Lohar ( I have already written a post about this community) set up smithy and repair workshops for a few days in the villages. While domestic looms existed, the Kalbeliya made and marketed the spindle for the loom. But with…