WORLD DIGNITY DAY
CADAM supported and participated in “Dalit Dignity Rally” organised by NACDOR on the occasion of World Dignity Day on 5th December 2008, at the Parliament. While observance of World Dignity Day in India is primarily a Dalit initiative to oppose casteism, racism, gender and other forms of discrimination, nevertheless it reaches out to other progressive, secular forces and struggling sections of society and seeks to join hands internationally with the Africans, Latin Americans, Afro-Americans, and Palestinians, religious minorities and indigenous populations and their organisations. More than 10 thousand Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis (Indigenous) people from all over India participated in the rally. Marching from the Ramlila Grounds in a seemingly unending queue of more than a kilometre, Dalit Dignity Rally covered about three kilometres before it culminated at the Parliament. Full of energy, enthusiasm and joy of struggle, rally participants raised slogans voicing their demands, concerns and issues seeking justice and freedom from hunger, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and diseases to enable them a dignified life full of opportunity and hopes. As soon as the march reached to the Parliament, it converted itself into a Peoples’ Assembly, discussing the agenda of the Dalits and the marginalized for handing over to various political parties. The Peoples’ Assembly of the NACDOR discussed the draft, “All India Dalit Manifesto”. Year after year thousands of Dalits, Adivasis and the economically and socially deprived gather at Ambedkar Bhavan in December to march to the Parliament for their dignity and rights. A thousand Lights of Dignity was organised on December 5 2013, to renew the pledge of Dalits, Adivasis, Minorities and all excluded to fight for their dignity through realising the rights to food and nutritional security along with all other development rights. This event has been an innovation of the organisation for pledging to continued struggle for