Essay and Art Contest on Civil and Human Rights
Dalit Solidarity Forum in the USA, Hindus for Human Rights, Indian American Muslim Council, and Tasveer are pleased to present the second annual Essay and Art Contest on Civil and Human Rights
The theme for this year’s contest is: Intersections Between Caste Discrimination and Anti-Black Racism.
Deadline: 12 pm EST on Wednesday, March 30th, 2022
Prize: $1,000 for winners, $500 and $250 for runner-ups
Pre-Register to indicate your interest in participating in the contest so we can hold a place for you.
Submit your final essay or work of art here.
We invite South Asian American students* in grades 6-12 to reflect on the intersections between caste discrimination and anti-Black racism.
Across South Asia and the diaspora, persons from oppressed-caste communities such as Dalits continue to face various forms of discrimination, oppression, and societal segregation. In India, caste discrimination is illegal, and affirmative action policies have enabled social, political and economic mobility for some who come from Dalit families. Yet, caste oppression persists and persons belonging to Dalit communities remain socially, economically, and politically marginalized.
Similarly, in the United States, despite the legal successes of the Civil Rights movement and the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, race-based inequities continue to impact Black communities and other people of color in myriad ways.
From Dr. B.R. Ambedkar to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., activists fighting identity-based marginalization, exclusion, and oppression have long seen parallels between the struggles against caste discrimination and anti-Black racism.
Through either an essay or a work of art, we invite students to engage with these intersecting struggles.
Questions that participants can consider include (but are not limited to):
What are some similarities between caste stratification in South Asia and the diaspora and racial segregation in the US?
When and how have campaigns to combat these injustices intersected?
Does your own identity and experiences with caste shape how you think about social justice issues in the US?
How can social justice movements combat caste and race-based discrimination?
ELIGIBILITY:
We welcome submissions from students in grades 6-12 who identify as belonging to the South Asian diaspora, defined broadly. Students from all religious backgrounds are welcome. We invite students whose identities intersect in meaningful ways with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, or Sri Lanka, and the United States. This includes members of the diaspora whose families hail from the Caribbean, Fiji, Singapore or Malaysia, or countries in Africa, for example, as well as students who identify as multi-racial.
South Asian students in grades 6-12 living outside the United States are welcome if they feel connected to or inspired by the U.S. civil rights struggle and contemporary movements against racism and caste oppression.
KEY DATES:
March 30: Deadline for submissions
April 16: Virtual award ceremony
ESSAY FORMAT:
700 words minimum; 1,000 words maximum
Microsoft Word (.docx) document; double-spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman font
No personal identification information may be in the body of the essay
Citations, if any, must be placed in the end, and will not be part of the word count
ARTWORK FORMAT:
A high-resolution photograph of your artwork.
8 1⁄2 x 11 inch or 11 x 17 inch format
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY:
Pre-Register to indicate your interest in participating in the contest so we can hold a place for you.
Submit your final essay or work of art here.
JUDGING PROCESS: Essay and art submissions will be grouped and judged based on grade level (middle school and high school). Jurors will not be able to see the names of contestants.
CRITERIA:
Your understanding of the history of struggles against racism and caste oppression
Your case for connecting social justice movements in South Asia and the United States
Factual accuracy and critical analysis
Originality, clarity, and effectiveness of your message.
Language (grammar, spelling, and composition)
Any other criteria that the juror groups may agree upon
GROUNDS FOR DISQUALIFICATION: All submissions must be original and unique to this competition. Please do not submit work that you have submitted elsewhere. Additionally, providing false information, missing the submission deadline, not complying with the submittal format and word count will disqualify your entry.
PERMISSION TO USE YOUR ESSAYS, ARTWORK, NAMES, AND PHOTOGRAPHS: Contestants may be asked to submit a release allowing the sponsors to publish your essay and/or artwork in print publications and on public websites. In addition, you may be asked to authorize use of your photograph in contest-related promotional materials.
JUDGES
Dr. Meena Kandasamy is an anti-caste activist, poet, novelist and translator. Her writing aims to deconstruct trauma and violence, while spotlighting the militant resistance against caste, gender, and ethnic oppressions. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Hindu Lit Prize. Activism is at the heart of her literary work; she has translated several political texts from Tamil to English, and previously held an editorial role at The Dalit, an alternative magazine. She holds a PhD in sociolinguistics.
Dr. Khalid Anis Ansari (he/him) is an academic activist presently working as Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of Arts & Sciences at the Azim Premji University. His broad research pertains to social and cultural theory, focusing on democracy and counterpublics, sociology of caste and religion, minority studies, and public policy. Khalid is a passionate advocate of the anti-caste Pasmanda Movement within Indian Muslims. Before joining academics in 2013, he worked in leadership positions in the social sector for over ten years. He has published and lectured widely in reputed academic and popular spaces. Since 2021, he has been a research partner with the SIMAGINE International Research Consortium and visiting scholar at the US-based advocacy and policy collective South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT).
Dr. Alka Kurian is an Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Washington Bothell and a recipient of the 2020-2021 Fulbright US Scholar award to Morocco. She is the author of Narratives of Gendered Dissent in South Asian Cinemas (Routledge: 2014) and a co-editor of New Feminisms in South Asia: Disrupting the Discourse Through Social Media, Film and Literature (Routledge: 2017). She is currently working on her third book Transnational Fourth Wave Feminisms: A Postcolonial Backlash (forthcoming 2023 Routledge). She has published extensively on South Asian film and feminism and was the founder-co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Studies in South Asian Film and Media. Alka Kurian is the board president of Tasveer, director of the Tasveer South Asian Literary Festival, and host of the podcast South Asian Films & Books.
Dr. Nico Slate is Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. His research examines struggles against racism and imperialism in the United States and India. He is the author of Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2012); The Prism of Race: W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and the Colored World of Cedric Dover (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating With the World In Mind (University of Washington Press, 2019); and Lord Cornwallis Is Dead: The Struggle for Democracy in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2019). He is also the editor of Black Power Beyond Borders (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Dr. Roja Suganthy-Singh is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at St. John Fisher College. Her ongoing research and social activism focus on intersections of caste, class and gender in rural India as evident in the lives, experiences, leadership strategies, oral narratives and cultural expressions of Dalit communities of women in South India and other indigenous communities. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Rutgers and is Co-Founder and President of Dalit Solidarity Forum in the USA, Inc. a nonprofit organization committed to the social and economic progress of Dalit communities.
Frank Hardy is a self-taught artist with a passion for life, music, all forms of art, and fitness. Hardy is also an author of the fantasy fiction book, Rise of The Emancipator (2017), and he frequently invites people to view his bold, colorful paintings that often brush against the current and historic significance of civil rights, human rights and African Americans’ contributions made to this nation.
He began his journey as an artist coming of age in Selma, Alabama, where he was born and raised. Frank has always been active in his community and giving back to the community’s youth is something he values greatly. He is the founding father of the iconic Selma Youth Development Center, where he taught art, dance, and boxing to underprivileged youth for more than 20 years.
A. Kirsten Mullen is a folklorist and the founder of Artefactual, an arts-consulting practice, and Carolina Circuit Writers, a literary consortium that brings expressive writers of color to the Carolinas. She was a member of the Freelon Adjaye Bond concept development team that was awarded the Smithsonian Institution’s commission to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Under the auspices of the North Carolina Arts Council she worked to expand the Coastal Folklife Survey. As a faculty member with the Community Folklife Documentation Institute, she trained students to research and record the state’s African American music heritage. Kirsten was a consultant on the North Carolina Museum of History’s “North Carolina Legends” and “Civil Rights” exhibition projects. Her writing in museum catalogs, journals, and in commercial media includes “Black Culture and History Matter” (The American Prospect), which examines the politics of funding black cultural institutions. She and William A. Darity, Jr. are the authors of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-first Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
Dr. Juned Shaikh is an Associate Professor of History at UC Santa Cruz. His research lies at the intersection of urban history, labor history and Dalit Studies. Dr. Shaikh studies the ways in which marginalized groups negotiated and created urban spaces, navigated institutions of the modern State, produced social movements, and how these groups fashioned an intellectual corpus including a field of literature in 20th century Mumbai. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2011 with a dissertation entitled Dignity and Dalit Social Imaginaries: Entanglements of Caste, Class, and Space in Mumbai, 1898-1982.
Rita Meher is the co-founder of Tasveer. Before diving full-time as the Executive Director of Tasveer in 2012, she was a video producer and editor. She made her career debut on TV in Japan in 1995. She edited the award-winning Bangladeshi documentary Threads and made her first short film, Citizenship101, based on her own immigrant experiences. Rita has been honored by Northwest Asian Weekly as one of the Rising Stars (2015), the Seattle Globalist of the Year (2015), and Excellence in Arts (2016) by International Examiner and nominated for Seattle Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Arts in 2017. Her passion is to bring unique South Asian diaspora stories to light. She was born and brought up in India, and lived in Japan. She speaks English, Hindi, Odia, and Japanese.
