During the month of April, hundreds of thousands of Ambedkarites and caste-abolition allies rejoice Dalit History Month. Launched in 2015 by a collective of Dalit feminists, together with Thenmozhi Soundararajan and Christina Dhanaraj, Dalit History Month is a participatory group historical past challenge impressed by Black History Month. It started as a grassroots-led effort, originating in US-based political and group organizations, and has now spawned a world motion that encompasses story-telling, discussions, and art work — largely powered by social media.
Caste is an historical system of oppressive social hierarchy that divides society into 4 varnas or classes. Dalit and Adivasi individuals are excluded from the rating completely. It impacts over one billion folks immediately. Ambedkarite is another time period to Dalit, that means one who follows the philosophy of beloved Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), an anti-caste emancipatory chief, revolutionary, theorist, thinker, human-rights advocate, and architect of the Indian Constitution.
Dalit History Month is widely known in April as a result of it’s the delivery month of main Dalit icons equivalent to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, affectionately dubbed Babasaheb by many, and Jyotirao Phule, a 19th-century anti-caste reformer, social activist, and literary chief. While celebrations of those auspicious days predated the official introduction of Dalit History Month, Dhanaraj informed Hyperallergic, “What this project did was mainstream the month, make it more public, and more celebratory. We’re not just talking about victimhood, we’re also taking time to celebrate the community’s resilience and resistance.”
The introduction of social media has lent itself to a rising international Ambedkarite group and, one hopes, elevated consciousness of anti-caste actions.
“If it wasn’t for social media, I would not be where I am today,” shared Shrujantha Shridhar, artist, illustrator, and co-founder of the multimedia digital challenge Dalit Panther Archive. “I don’t have any of the resources, connections, and contacts that come from caste-privileged networks. It is a medium to galvanize, create culture for the Ambedkarite movement, and establish representation.”
Off the again of social media, the month has taken on a lifetime of its personal, particularly within the fingers of artists like Shridhar, Big Fat Bao, Siddhesh Gautam, Osheen Siva, and Rahee Punyashloka. While Dalit History Month has come a great distance, with Washington turning into the primary state to formally rejoice it and California’s Senate currently pending SB 403, a invoice to ban caste-based discrimination, the US has a protracted solution to go when it comes to allying with caste abolition actions. This turns into much more urgent given the rise of fanatic pan-nationalism and sweeping ethnoreligious edicts throughout the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state governments which have culminated in countless atrocities.
The modern socially engaged artist carries the burden of historic consciousness. Is it their accountability to teach the plenty?
Big Fat Bao, a caste-abolitionist, illustrator, and researcher based mostly in Mumbai, India, and I mentioned her April 13 Instagram post, a kaleidoscopic digital mosaic celebrating Bhim Jayanti, Babasaheb’s birthday. It garnered one of many strongest social media responses she has skilled. We questioned how many individuals could also be studying the identify Babasaheb and encountering his imagery for the primary time.
However, elevated visibility for Dalit-Ambedkarite activists and artists on social media comes at a price. As Bao’s community and attain grows, so does her publicity to internet-based harassment, discrimination, and oppression which she handles with grace.
In 2018, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, one of many first brazenly Dalit ladies on Twitter and originator of the viral hashtag #DalitWomenFight, and 6 ladies journalists met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in India to debate the vitriol they have been dealing with on the platform. At the top of the assembly, they gifted Dorsey a digitally illustrated poster designed by Soundararajan, snapped a gaggle photograph, and posted it to social media. The poster depicted a girl towards a blue background holding up an indication that learn “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy.”
The submit went viral and Twitter unraveled with (largely) caste-privileged folks, also referred to as savarnas, accusing Twitter of endorsing anti-Hindu sentiment.
“Something as simple as a poster got the entire internet to sit still. Because for one day, Twitter got the feeling of what it was like to be a Dalit woman,” stated Soundararajan.
The poster was designed by a collaborative staff at Equality Labs, “a Dalit civil rights organization dedicated to ending caste apartheid, gender-based violence, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and religious intolerance.” Equality Labs repeatedly collaborates with and amplifies Dalit-Bahujan artists.
It has been 5 years since the Twitter incident, however the hate-mongering continues, particularly for activists on the political frontlines who endure focused and arranged cyber-attacks. In an April 11 assertion released by PEN America, the group condemned the relentless on-line abuse marketing campaign waged towards Soundararajan, her colleagues, and allies.
The Dalit Panther Party Archive
Founded by poets and writers Namdeo Dhasal, Raja Dhale, J. V. Pawar, and Arun Kamble, the Dalit Panther Party (DPP) (1972–1977) was impressed by the Black Panther Party. The Dalit Panthers Manifesto categorised “American imperialism” in the identical class as “Hindu feudalism.” The Party rallied at atrocity websites, organized marches, boycotted elections, and propositioned direct militant motion towards their dominant-caste aggressors — direct cues from the Black Panther Party.
Though the group fractured and finally disbanded on account of dissenting ideologies, their legacy lives on partly because of the work of the Dalit Panther Archive.
Established in 2018 by Shridhar, the Dalit Panther Archive is a multi-media digital area that “examines and evaluates the aesthetic qualities and design selections of assorted Little Magazines related to the Dalit Panthers motion,” as Tanya George reported in Fontstand News. The Instagram archive permits artists to review and rearticulate the male-led motion, ushering it into an more and more feminist area.
In 2017, Shridhar started the tedious and meticulous work of visiting the private collections of Satish Kalsekar, Ramesh Shinde, and J. V. Pawar. She listened to their tales and thoroughly photographed, scanned, and translated the fragile supplies, which included guide covers, magazines, posters, and pictures.
“It changed me as an artist,” Shridhar informed Hyperallergic. “It taught me how I must view myself as an anti-cate Ambedkarite Dalit feminist artist today. Where do I see myself? How do I locate myself in the history of the world? What is my role? It’s not just about present politics and reacting to those politics. If it can do that for me, what can it do for others?”
Rahee Punyashloka, an Ambedkarite multi-disciplinary artist, agrees: “Had it not been for Shrujana’s digitizations, I would not have known about this whole artistic register. These are artists who have created iconography that we can build on.”
Punyashloka’s current physique of labor, Ambedkarite Blues, is a sequence of summary digital illustrations and text-based graphics that reimagines historic literary texts and celebrates modern and historic figures with an emphasis on feminist leaders. He revives historical past by giving it a brand new breath by a definite blue-and-white visible conceptual strand.
The blue is an homage to Babasaheb who liked the colour, associating it with the vastness and freedom of clear skies. It grew to become the colour of the flag flown by the Ambedkar Scheduled Castes Federation in 1942, in addition to subsequent Ambedkarite-led organizations.
The Dalit Panther Archive additionally permits researchers and artists to research the design selections of the booklets and texts. The DPP’s strategy to design was largely self-taught, evident of their disregard for formal design guidelines. The Party struggled to entry printing sources, adapting their designs to suit the dimensions of recycled paper, touring as much as six hours to Alibag to make copies through cyclostyling, and utilizing minimal coloration to reduce prices.
In her current article for The Futuress, Big Fat Bao breaks down how the Indian design trade is traditionally caste-based, exclusionary, and Eurocentric, traced to the long-standing vocational hierarchy codified within the four-tiered caste system that locations Brahmins (monks and academics) on the high, Shudras (laborers, craftspersons, and artisans) on the backside, and Dalit folks exterior of the rating completely.
Dalits have been lengthy compelled to work in “impure” and labor-intensive occupations, together with handbook scavenging, dying material, and weaving. The latter are thought-about folks crafts and out of doors of nice arts. A historic denial of entry to training exacerbates the hole between know-how entry and social mobility. All of the artists I spoke with for this text shared their endurance and legitimate frustration in navigating hegemonic educational areas, accessing inventive sources, and apprehension in proudly owning the identification of “artist” versus “designer.”
“Celebration comes from deep-seated apprehension about the world beyond us. If we don’t celebrate with each other, perhaps no one else will,” shared Punyashloka.
Despite these challenges, it’s the resilience charged by millennia of resistance that impresses me and the generosity of spirit that humbles me.
These individuals are just some out of 1000’s of artists, activists, thinkers, and leaders who’re standing on the shoulders of anti-caste revolutionary leaders. Now is the time for caste-privileged of us inside and out of doors of the South Asian diaspora to look at their very own caste areas as they amplify and rejoice anti-caste actions and leaders.
Jai Bhim!