Activist Bezwada Wilson and musician TM Krishna win Magsaysay Award
July 27, 2016  10:25
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Social activist Bezwada Wilson and musician TM Krishna have won the 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Award. Wilson, the national convenor of the Safai Karmachari Andolan, has been named as an awardee for "asserting the inalienable right to a life of human dignity." 

"Bezwada Wilson has spent 32 years on his crusade, leading not only with a sense of moral outrage but also with remarkable skills in mass organizing, and working within India's complex legal system. SKA has grown into a network of 7,000 members in 500 districts across the country. Of the estimated 600,000 scavengers in India, SKA has liberated around 300,000. While Bezwada has placed at the core of his work the dalits' self-emancipation, he stresses that manual scavenging is not a sectarian problem," states Wilson's citation.

Carnatic singer TM Krishna receives the award for "social inclusiveness in culture." 

His citation read, "He saw that his was a caste-dominated art that fostered an unjust, hierarchic order by effectively excluding the lower classes from sharing in a vital part of India's cultural legacy. He questioned the politics of art; widened his knowledge about the arts of the dalits ("untouchables") and non-Brahmin communities; and declared he would no longer sing in ticketed events at a famous, annual music festival in Chennai to protest the lack of inclusiveness."

Also read Bezwada Wilson's interview with Rediff.com'Why do human beings have to clean shit?'
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