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 Articles Mari Marcel Thekaekara
- May 11, 2012: Video Volunteers – A new campaign to fight untouchability: An interview with Stalin K., film maker ('Lesser Humans’, ‘India Untouched') (Mari Marcel Thekaekara)
A fascinating project is currently under way. Spreading it's message all over India, is a campaign against untouchability run by Video Volunteers, a unique effort to get a community to document and showcase its own problems to bring them to the notice of the World. The originality lies in the way the campaign is being conducted. >>
- May 2, 2011: Cooking for Change - The Malgudi Coffee Shop (Mari Marcel Thekaekara)
Cooking for change? Yes. It’s possible. A very small step forward, no doubt, yet balmiki
girls cooking for Brahmins in the orthodox South Indian city of Mysore, is a mini
revolution. It’s breaking the barriers of untouchability and caste pollution. Let me tell you
about it. >>
- Feb 22, 2011: Another day, another rape (Mari Marcel Thekaekara)
Every day three Dalit women are raped. I read this statistic for the first time when I was on my way to the Durban Racism conference in 2001, writing articles for the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights. It is hard to absorb, even harder to internalize, because it seems so utterly impossible that something so outrageous could be true. When I incorporated this statistic into articles, people challenged me. Where did you find that figure? Statistics are easy to manipulate, you should get your facts right. >>
- Jan 18, 2011: A historical battle for dignity for India's balmikis (Mari Marcel Thekaekara)
The best news of 2010 was that one
million balmiki women threw down
their brooms after a decade long
campaign declaring “We will never
clean shit again”. Balmikis or safai
karmacharis are at the bottom of the
Indian caste ladder.
Balmikis are the only community,
ordained by the caste structure, to
clean toilets. >>
Read the blog of Mari Thekaekara on the struggle of Dalit women on New Internationalist >>
 Who is Mari Marcel Thekaekara?
On the website of Dalit Network Netherlands (www.dalits.nl), Mari Marcel Thekaekara will write a series of at least six articles on issues relating to Dalit women, men and children.
The series is giving ‘views from the inside’ on a number of aspects of what caste discrimination means in practice but also what is done against it in India.
The writer of the articles, Mari Marcel Thekaekara, is a professional journalist on social issues and a media campaigner on the rights of Adivasi, Dalits and other disadvantaged groups. Mari has written in national and international magazines and newspapers as well as on websites which include The Hindu, Statesman, Times of India, Indian Express, Frontline, Economic and Political Weekly, Hindustan Times, Seminar, Infochange, New Internationalist and The Guardian.
Mari Marcel Thekaekara has written extensively on the issue of Dalit human rights, including the (violation of) rights of Dalit women, for e.g. the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, Action Aid, Christian Aid and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. A piece she wrote for The Hindu on children of sanitation workers won the Press Club “best article of the month” award in 2004.
In particular Mari has closely tracked the issue of manual scavenging for over a decade. In 1999 she published the book ‘Endless Filth’ which contributed significantly to attracting attention to the issue. Mari has also documented in a number of article the struggle against manual scavenging by the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), a national movement against this inhuman practice.
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