Elections in various countries

[Raphael]

I do not have any details, not knowing much about Canada in general, but the Green voting intention is rising in Canada, as in Germany, Austria, France, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Scotland and England, and it's likely that NDP voters are often the ones switching to Green. This only accounts for part of their losses however.

True enough, but to some extent that might be comparing apples and oranges. Sure, all of these parties are called Green, but some of them are probably a good deal more to the Left than others. The German Greens, for instance, are basically a centrist party now, at least by German standards.

[Vijay]

Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is more fucked up and complicated than I will probably ever realize.

Also apparently, there were at least 93 bombs or grenade attacks in Sweden from the beginning of this year to June. Not sure whether there have been any more since

[tiramisu]

.

[mèþru]

Is there precedent though for someone forming a coalition without at least 60 recommendations?

[tiramisu]

.

[Raphael]

Is there any logic to the order in which people speak at the United Nations General Assembly?

[tiramisu]

.

[Vijay]

Narendra Modi is preparing to declare India open defecation-free, but Dalits are often denied access to a toilet even when they petition the government for it. In a village in Madhya Pradesh that was declared to be free of open defecation last year, a 12-year-old Dalit girl and her 10-year-old brother were murdered yesterday, supposedly for open defecation because they didn't have a toilet. Their father says this was revenge for him refusing to work on the perpetrator's land. The perpetrator's family is pleading mental illness.

[Nerulent]

Narendra Modi is preparing to declare India open defecation-free, but Dalits are often denied access to a toilet even when they petition the government for it. In a village in Madhya Pradesh that was declared to be free of open defecation last year, a 12-year-old Dalit girl and her 10-year-old brother were murdered yesterday, supposedly for open defecation because they didn't have a toilet. Their father says this was revenge for him refusing to work on the perpetrator's land. The perpetrator's family is pleading mental illness.

Wow that is a lot of awful to fit into a short paragraph. On the other hand, I learnt about the existence of the Dalit Panthers movement, supposedly supported by the Black Panthers Party, so that's pretty neat.

[Vijay]

There have been a lot of attempts at resistance. Unfortunately, they usually don't get anywhere because caste discrimination is denied, largely ignored, and deeply entrenched. The communists have occasionally been relatively effective. They pretty much ended slavery in Kerala and secured the right of Dalit Muslims in Uttar Pradesh to enter mosques.

[tiramisu]

.

[Moose-tache]

I've been to some very poor countries where everyone still had the luxury of a toilet. What is holding India back?

[zompist]

Here's a couple of articles about Dalit political support:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ne ... 476973.cms

https://www.livemint.com/Politics/olG5x ... votes.html

In brief: Dalits are quite divided, but they used to largely support Congress, and now are just as likely to vote BJP.

Bhimrao Ambedkar himself, with half a million of his followers, turned from Hinduism to Buddhism. But that's still only a fraction of all Dalits.

[Vijay]

This shows my ignorance, but for some reason I'm surprised that someone of low caste like Modi would go after the Dalit.

While Modi comes from an unusually humble background for an Indian prime minister, and non-Indian media may be confused on this point, he is by no means low-caste. He is from a family of grocers just like Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" Gandhi. Both of them are casteist but attempted with limited success to portray themselves otherwise.

I think, though, that I largely don't understand the Dalit in modern India. Do they still embrace Hinduism? Do they embrace Hinduism but reject hindutva?

The reality in India is that the caste system transcends religious lines and is far more complicated than it's usually made out to be, especially since it works differently depending on what part of India you're in. There are high-caste and low-caste people in probably every religion, not just Hinduism, and there is no way to fully escape caste discrimination, even though caste discrimination is technically illegal and contradicts (some of) the scriptures in all of these religions (even in Hinduism, one of the main characters in the Mahabharata declares the caste system pointless and invalid). Even religious riots in India have far less to do with religion in reality than they do with caste. All the powerful bigoted politicians on both sides are high-caste, but the people doing the actual dirty work of killing people in the streets on both sides are Dalits, so the riots are really all about using religion as an excuse to keep the Dalits killing each other as part of their general oppression and for the convenience of the high-caste people.

Dalits probably form the majority of the population but have always been repressed and exploited (hence their name, literally 'broken' or 'scattered'), and Indian politics has been determined to keep them that way for thousands of years. (The historical explanation for this I grew up hearing was this was a way for the Indo-Aryan invaders to keep the indigenous Dravidian population oppressed and prevent opposition, but I'm not sure how accurate that is). Higher-caste people generally don't admit that the caste system still exists, let alone that any of this discrimination (and worse) does, but this is similar to pretending race doesn't exist.

However, a decade or two ago, precisely because the Dalits form such a huge part of the population, the Hindu extremist politicians suddenly started reframing the Hindutva movement as if it supported the movements for Dalit rights. They have also tried to get support from Christians (in India) and Jews (in Israel, for funding purposes), with some success at least in earlier years, essentially by portraying Muslims as their common enemy.

EDIT:

I've been to some very poor countries where everyone still had the luxury of a toilet. What is holding India back?

This is also because of casteism.

In India, Dalits are the people who do all the dirtiest, least convenient jobs, and handling waste and sewage is one of them. For a higher-caste person in a village, having a toilet also means getting a Dalit to clean it out periodically, which is a lot less convenient than just shitting out in the open, so even when they do have access to a toilet, they're often unlikely to make use of it (or to use it for another purpose, such as storage). If even higher-caste people are unlikely to have access to a toilet (though of course this has been changing recently), lower-caste people are even less likely to have it.

[Moose-tache]

For a higher-caste person in a village, having a toilet also means getting a Dalit to clean it out periodically, which is a lot less convenient than just shitting out in the open, so even when they do have access to a toilet, they're often unlikely to make use of it (or to use it for another purpose, such as storage).

This... This has to be the worst thing about humans.
This is it, right?

[Travis B.]

My question is how much of the population of India has running water and sewers, and to me cleaning a toilet is as simple as squirting some cleanser liquid into the toilet then scraping a scrubby thing around it every so often, barely something that one needs to hire a Dalit for. And even when there isn't running water and sewers, a latrine can be simple as an outdoor hut placed over a hole in the ground, and when the hole gets full, the hut is moved somewhere else and the hole is covered over...

[Raphael]

My question is how much of the population of India has running water and sewers, and to me cleaning a toilet is as simple as squirting some cleanser liquid into the toilet then scraping a scrubby thing around it every so often, barely something that one needs to hire a Dalit for. And even when there isn't running water and sewers, a latrine can be simple as an outdoor hut placed over a hole in the ground, and when the hole gets full, the hut is moved somewhere else and the hole is covered over...

If I understand Vijay's point correctly - sorry if I misunderstand it - some higher-caste people would simply refuse to clean their own toilets, even in the basic way you describe, as a matter of principle.

[Travis B.]

If I understand Vijay's point correctly - sorry if I misunderstand it - some higher-caste people would simply refuse to clean their own toilets, even in the basic way you describe, as a matter of principle.

The thing I don't get is how do they consider defecating outdoors to be less degrading than merely occasionally cleaning their own toilet.

[MacAnDàil]

If I understand correctly, you describe Mohandas Gandhi as casteist. Is this correct and what basis would there be for this? I have read Gandhi's autobiography as well as another biography (though admittedly not fully yet) as well as some other snippets and have never got the impression he was casteist. Indeed, contrary to popular belief, he was concerned about the cause of dalits, and this significantly prior to his involvement in the independence movement. And the only moment he was somewhat aggressive towards his wife was when he wanted to house dalits at his home and she refused so he shoved her out the door.

[Raphael]

If I understand correctly, you describe Mohandas Gandhi as casteist. Is this correct and what basis would there be for this? I have read Gandhi's autobiography as well as another biography (though admittedly not fully yet) as well as some other snippets and have never got the impression he was casteist. Indeed, contrary to popular belief, he was concerned about the cause of dalits, and this significantly prior to his involvement in the independence movement. And the only moment he was somewhat aggressive towards his wife was when he wanted to house dalits at his home and she refused so he shoved her out the door.

Based on what I've heard about him, he apparently saw himself as pro-Dalit, but was very insufficiently so in the opinion of many Dalit leaders.