The Telegraph, Calcutta, Thursday , June 21 , 2012
Ranchi, June 20: Tribal heads from across the state congregated on the premises of Raj Bhavan on Wednesday to take part in a first-of-its-kind daylong seminar on traditional self-governance that was organised at the behest of the governor. […]
More than 400 Mankis, Mundas, Parha Rajas, Sohors, Dhoklos, Manjhis and Parganaits — the tribal heads as they are called in traditional system at village councils, clusters and community levels — were present. They thanked Governor Syed Ahmed for convening the meet and presented him shawls, headgears, bow and arrows and even a mandar besides flowers. […]
The governor, during his address, said that freedom was not complete unless all sections of the society enjoyed its benefits. […]
Jharkhand was the last state to hold the mandatory panchayat elections despite enactment of Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, as tribal communities were opposed to it. They were happy with the self-governance system in vogue since ages and felt that the new system would clash with it. In fact, many speakers like Antu Hemrom, Pero Oraon, Ram Chandra Murmu and Jadu Gopal Singh Munda, who represented various tribal communities, spoke about how the British had accepted their traditional self-rule system and granted them “records of rights”.
The present panchayat system has clashed with their rights and it should be resolved, they complained. They also lamented that their children could not pursue education in their respective mother tongues. […]
Source: Tribal heads prefer self-rule
Address : http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120621/jsp/jharkhand/story_15637575.jsp#.UHxV6bRrhLJ
Date Visited: Mon Oct 15 2012 20:30:07 GMT+0200 (CEST)
[Bold typeface added above for emphasis]
“It’s a long road to freedom!” – Stan Swamy (the late sociologist and activist for Adivasi rights), quoted in “I am Not a Silent Spectator: Why Truth has become so bitter, Dissent so intolerable, Justice so out of reach” | Indian Social Institute, Bangalore, 2021 | Accountability >>
In pursuit of “equality for all the citizens”: National Legal Services Authority asked to provide free legal consultations to Scheduled Tribes (ST) – Supreme Court >>
“You can’t keep quiet on everything. At some point, if you disagree – it’s better to say it then rather than piling it up.” – Former IAS Officer Kannan Gopinathan (who resigned from service over ‘lack of freedom of expression’) in a special lecture on “Democracy: Institutions and Individuals” (Asian College of Journalism – ACJ, 2 September 2020)
http://acjnewsline.org/special-lecture-by-kannan-gopinathan-ex-ias-officer-and-activist-on-democracy-institutions-and-individuals/
“Populist leaders often polarise society and delegitimise the political opposition, often presenting them as enemies of the state or people. […] Electoral autocracies, according to V-Dem, are now present in 87 states that are home to 68% of the global population. Liberal democracies, the group says, are diminishing, and are home to only 14% of the people.” – Report on democracy by Sweden-based V-Dem Institute as regards India’s diminishing freedom of expression, the media, and civil society; quoted by Soutik Biswas in “‘Electoral autocracy’: The downgrading of India’s democracy” (BBC News, 16 March 2021)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56393944
“English newspapers are worse than Hindi on representing Dalit, Adivasi writers.” – (The Caravan, 3 August 2019) >>
Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Human Rights Day >>
The National Human Right Commission (NHRC) describes “crimes like rape, molestation, torture, fake encounter in police custody as manifestations of a systemic failure to protect human rights”;
It reports that “rights of the people were violated or negligence was shown by a public servant in the prevention of such violations”; NHRC concludes:
“Atrocities against vulnerable sections of society – women, children, disabled and the elderly – are often compounded when they belong to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes”; and therefore demands:
India must ratify the International Convention against Torture.
Download | Backup (PDF, 500 KB) >>
“A call to action, resilience, and collective defence of democracy, truth, and academic freedom”
The Anti-Autocracy Handbook is a call to action, resilience, and collective defence of democracy, truth, and academic freedom in the face of mounting authoritarianism. […]
Because open inquiry and dissent are central to science and academia—qualities antithetical to authoritarian control—academia is often among the first targets of autocrats. To help scholars resist authoritarian developments, the handbook highlights both historic and contemporary measures aimed at attacking scholars, their institutional environments, and their scholarship.
The handbook also sets out a framework for action based on personal risk level—low, medium, high, or extreme. This is designed to help scholars think about their own risk and purposefully choose actions in line with it. The handbook considers tools for enhancing digital safety and highlights the importance of ongoing documentation, preserving imperilled data, and creating distributed archives as a defence against erasure. It also calls on scholars to tell their stories—publicly or anonymously—to inspire others, maintain accountability and preserve a historical record.
Accompanying the handbook is a living wiki that will continue to incorporate new developments and provide updates on global efforts by scholars to push back against authoritarianism and safeguard the democratic foundations that enable free inquiry.
Source: “The Anti-Autocracy Handbook: A Scholars’ Guide to Navigating Democratic Backsliding” by
URL: https://zenodo.org/records/15696097
Date Visited: 20 April 2026
Albert Camus on service of truth and the service of liberty – Nobelprize.org
Excerpt from Albert Camus’ speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1957 | Read the full speech: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/speech/ >>
By the same token, the writer’s role is not free from difficult duties. By definition he cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it. Otherwise, he will be alone and deprived of his art. Not all the armies of tyranny with their millions of men will free him from his isolation, even and particularly if he falls into step with them. But the silence of an unknown prisoner, abandoned to humiliations at the other end of the world, is enough to draw the writer out of his exile, at least whenever, in the midst of the privileges of freedom, he manages not to forget that silence, and to transmit it in order to make it resound by means of his art.
None of us is great enough for such a task. But in all circumstances of life, in obscurity or temporary fame, cast in the irons of tyranny or for a time free to express himself, the writer can win the heart of a living community that will justify him, on the one condition that he will accept to the limit of his abilities the two tasks that constitute the greatness of his craft: the service of truth and the service of liberty. Because his task is to unite the greatest possible number of people, his art must not compromise with lies and servitude which, wherever they rule, breed solitude. Whatever our personal weaknesses may be, the nobility of our craft will always be rooted in two commitments, difficult to maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression.