Kavali Chandrakanth KCK, CC BY-SA 4.0
Analysis · Atrocity
After Rohith Vemula, Telangana's campus caste law is still a committee
Telangana named a bill after Rohith Vemula in April and gave it to five ministers.
Picks
Explainer · Technology
What the evidence shows about caste bias in AI
Tests since 2023 find that chatbots and image generators reproduce caste hierarchy.
Profile · Culture
Gurram Jashuva took the pundits' metre and turned it on caste
Walked out on as a boy poet in Vinukonda, the Telugu Dalit poet mastered the classical verse of…
Latest
- Analysis · Atrocity
A Dalit family in Punjab held its son's body to demand caste-atrocity charges. Police supervised his cremation instead
- Analysis · Labour
A BJP leader says manual scavenging has been eradicated. The government's own count of Gujarat's sewer deaths says otherwise
- Review · Culture
Gabbilam sends a bat where Dalits were barred
- Explainer · Power
India's model blood-donor form doesn't ask for caste. Why did a form at an Ooty camp?
Cases Without Convictions
India has a law against caste violence. Its courts rarely make it stick
In 2024 India's courts finished trials in fewer than 5 of every 100 caste-atrocity cases before them, and convicted in a third of those. The Una and Dangawas verdicts show what happens to the rest.
India's court backlog of caste-atrocity cases tripled in ten years, while finished trials stayed flat
The Gujarat High Court, where the family of the men attacked in Una has said it will appeal. File photo. — Maulik Kansara, CC BY-SA 3.0
This shows how difficult it is for Dalits to get justice. This is eroding the trust in the justice system and the guarantee of justice that our constitution gives us.
339,853
Crimes against Scheduled Castes awaiting trial at the end of 2024: 95.2% of the cases before the courts. A third of finished trials ended in conviction.
Caste on Campus
IIT Bombay promised caste reforms after Darshan Solanki. Sahil Wakode's death tests what it built
Three years after Darshan Solanki's death, another Dalit student has died at IIT Bombay, and the institute's first account again centred on the student. Students want many of the same reforms.
Campus caste rules are on hold. Here is what still protects Dalit and Adivasi students
IIT Bombay's main building in Powai, a neighbourhood of Mumbai. File photo. — Shishirdasika, CC BY-SA 4.0
… there was a vaccine to cure Covid, and similarly, the Rohith Act is a cure for casteism.
2,389 of 5,737
Posts reserved for Scheduled Castes in India's 45 central universities that stood vacant on 1 April 2021.
Untouchability & Modern India
A ritual to cleanse ground a Dalit leader stood on, and a commission that found no caste in it
Untouchability has never needed anyone to announce a motive. India's Scheduled Castes commission went looking for one in Haldwani.
Where did untouchability go? How caste survived the law in modern India
The Commission looked for declared malice. Untouchability rarely declares itself. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
But after my speech, you … tried to insult me by doing a purification ritual … you made me feel the sting of untouchability.
27%
Of respondents to the India Human Development Survey (2011–12) who said they practised untouchability in some form.
Who Holds the Land
In the fight over KCR's farmhouse, Erravalli's Dalit assignees are the ones asked to prove their land
Telangana says it is testing an allegation against a former chief minister. The notices have gone to Dalit families who have farmed Erravalli's assigned land for 60 years.
In Poomani's Vekkai, the law belongs to whoever owns the land, and caste goes unnamed
A farmer at the corner of his plot, his papers under his arm. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
I am a farmer, without my land I am nothing.
186,000 of 1.2 million acres
Panchami land left in Tamil Nadu out of the land granted, the state's social justice minister told the Assembly, citing RTI replies.
Four states have divided the Dalit quota. The federal government keeps no count to test it
Each state built its case on its own commission's evidence after India's Supreme Court allowed the split in 2024. Federal records count Dalits in central jobs, not which Dalit communities hold them.
India's Caste Census Is in the Field. What the Blank Caste Column Means
The Supreme Court of India in New Delhi, photographed in December 2019. File photo. — Subhashish Panigrahi, CC BY-SA 4.0
A census produces data. Data by itself does not produce equality.
84 of 543
Lok Sabha seats reserved for Scheduled Castes since the 2008 delimitation, up from 79.
Caste Law Beyond India
Nepal cites a Dalit apology it never formally made
Nepal told the UN it had apologised to Dalits. No apology was passed by the Cabinet or gazetted, and a Dalit man's death in police custody was investigated only by the police.
Yashica Dutt stopped passing in 2016. A decade on, she is taking caste to New York's lawmakers
Police face Dalit rights protesters in Kathmandu in June 2013, at a protest over the lack of justice for attacks on Dalits in Rautahat district. File photo. — The Advocacy Project, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Sometimes I was evicted after landlords learned my caste. At other times, I faced physical violence. Now it is time to fight the final battle and end this discrimination once and for all.
39
Untouchability cases Nepal Police registered in the 2021/22 fiscal year, after 30 the year before.
How do India's courts read caste? What Khairlanji and Una show about an atrocity trial
India's law against caste violence promises special courts and two-month trials. Khairlanji ended with no atrocity on the record; Una took almost ten years to convict five men of 41.
India has a law against caste violence. Its courts rarely make it stick
Illustration: men and women sit on the steps of a district court at dusk as a young woman reads aloud from a judgment. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
- Khairlanji at twenty: how three courts read caste out of a massacre
- IIT Bombay promised caste reforms after Darshan Solanki. Sahil Wakode's death tests what it built
- Seven years after he married across caste, a Dalit man was killed in a Rajkot street. India still has no national law against "honour" killings
- Dangawas: a mob killed five Dalit men. The state has convicted no one
They don't collect tax because we are Dalits. They have two different graveyards for Dalits and caste Christians, that shouldn't exist.
287,694
cases under the SC/ST Act were pending trial across India at the end of 2024, the highest in five years.
India's Caste Census Is in the Field. What the Blank Caste Column Means
Census 2027 asks everyone outside the SC and ST lists to write in a caste. Who sorts those answers, and which Dalits the list leaves out, is still open.
Four states have divided the Dalit quota. The federal government keeps no count to test it
A Census of India 2011 enumerator fills out a household schedule by hand in West Sikkim. File photo. — MoSPI, Government of India, GODL-India
- Dalit seats follow the Scheduled Caste count, not the new caste question: what India's census will and won't change
- A 1950 clause still bars Dalit Christians from Scheduled Caste status. It would have barred Ambedkar too
- The chair that stays empty: 2,389 posts reserved for Dalits sat vacant in 2021, and a parliamentary committee says "not found suitable" lets institutions bypass filling reserved posts
What can possibly be done is to exclude the economically better SCs from economic concession and various caste-based subsidies but not from job reservation.
17.14%
Share of federal government posts held by Scheduled Castes on 1 January 2026, against a 15% quota. How those posts divide among the communities on the list is not recorded centrally.
Three festivals, no reason: how India keeps a film on the caste order in hospital sanitation work off screen
The information ministry asked for cuts, got them, and still hasn't cleared Sanitised Republic for Kerala's documentary festival.
In the fight over KCR's farmhouse, Erravalli's Dalit assignees are the ones asked to prove their land
Sanitation workers pass an imagined poster for Sanitised Republic on their way into a hospital. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
- Andhra Pradesh police blocked, for 111 days, a reel of Dalit families describing the land they lost to Google's data centre
- What is DC Manna land, and why are Dalits in coastal Karnataka still waiting for it?
- Inside India's new caste economy: equity follows the IIT network, and the state lends to Dalit founders
- What is Panchami land, and who holds Tamil Nadu's Dalit land grants now?
When we refused to allow the revenue officials to survey our land, they told us that it would be taken at any cost as the plot was assigned to us by the government.
92%
of the 54,574 sewer and septic-tank workers in towns and cities verified under NAMASTE, the federal scheme for sanitation workers, belong to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class communities: 67.9% Scheduled Caste, 15.7% Other Backward Class and 8.3% Scheduled Tribe.
A Kanpur university closed a Dalit student's caste complaint on its own committee's word. A national commission has given it 15 days to answer
The Dalit M.Ed. student says faculty harassed her and held her marks down. The national commission that took up her case can demand answers, but has no power of its own to punish.
The cockroach and the Constitution: Dalit writers split on a Dalit-founded protest party
Illustration: a student presses her hand to an office door whose blind has been pulled down from inside. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
- Ambedkar's warning, read in West Bengal's voter rolls and its 68 Dalit seats
- Campus caste rules are on hold. Here is what still protects Dalit and Adivasi students
- The merit card: how one word does caste's arguing online
- West Bengal cuts its OBC quota to 7%, and dozens of mostly Muslim communities lose reservation
The fear in the Brahminical establishment is that a Dalit can enter this so-called prestigious institute with a voice and assertion. Their deepest insecurities were exposed in the way this case was handled.
17% → 7%
West Bengal's OBC reservation in state government posts, after the May 2026 notification restored the pre-2010 list of 66 classes.
A FAccT paper says caste bias in AI images is a ranking between groups, which one-label audits miss
A paper at this year's FAccT conference argues that auditing AI image models for caste bias one category at a time misses how caste works: as a ranking between groups.
The invisible hierarchy: how caste decides who 'fits' on a tech team
A researcher sketches the link between two sets of generated images. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
We are good at our jobs and we are good engineers. We are role models for our community and we want to continue to work in our jobs. But it is unfair for us to continue in hostile workplaces, without protections from caste discrimination.
67%
of Dalit respondents said they had been treated unfairly at their workplace because of their caste, against 12% of Shudra respondents and 0–1% of Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishya respondents. All four groups rank above Dalits in the traditional caste order. Equality Labs, Caste in the United States (2018): a web survey of self-selected South Asian Americans that drew 1,534 responses, 1,200 of them usable, so a pattern among respondents, not a national rate.
What Tamil Nadu's order to take caste off its street signs means
Tamil Nadu's SC/ST Commission has given Collectors a month to strip caste names from streets and settlements. For Dalits whose address told strangers their caste, the name is the point.
Nagraj Manjule puts caste where Indian cinema looks away
A Greater Chennai Corporation street sign for Kauveri Street in Uthandi, Chennai, in the corporation's bilingual Tamil and English design, August 2022. File photo. — Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0
It created a space for the visualization, sound modulation and movements of an assertive Dalit body for the first time.
Rs 1 billion
what Sairat earned at the box office, the first Marathi film to reach that mark, as Open magazine reported.
Christina Dhanuja on the caste mind that awards merit, and why a Dalit woman's education is a right
Her book Dalit Women and the Fullness of Life is sharpest on merit, allyship and who sets the terms. Its turn to joy as a political practice is braver than it is finished.
Christina Dhanuja is building the rooms caste kept Dalit women out of
Tea, jasmine and a notebook on the steps of a housing block in Chennai, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, at dusk. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
Dalit women in India are the Dalits among Dalits and suffer from three-fold oppression — on account of gender as a result of patriarchy, caste 'the untouchable', and class — as they hail from the poorest and most marginalised communities.
16 years
in roles across India, China, Singapore and the Netherlands, with government, business and development organisations, by her own account.
Nepal's caste law has no word for the rented room. A Dalit woman has sat five months asking for one
Nepal's 2011 law bans caste discrimination everywhere but never mentions renting. Since April, Deepa Nepali has sat in a Kathmandu square asking the government to close that gap.
Nepal cites a Dalit apology it never formally made
Houses and apartment blocks across Kathmandu, seen from above. File photo. — Royonx, CC0 1.0
- Yashica Dutt stopped passing in 2016. A decade on, she is taking caste to New York's lawmakers
- The EU has leverage on caste. Its India trade deal doesn't use it
- A Geneva side event tests whether caste gets its own line in UN human rights law
- Nepal told the UN it would enforce its caste law. Its police log a few dozen cases a year
The hardest part is getting justice for Dalit victims because police refuse to register complaints. If it is registered, a Dalit hardly gets justice because all institutions are run by upper-caste people who still think Dalits are untouchable.
15 to 43
complaints Nepal Police registered each year under the 2011 caste-discrimination law, 2019/20 to 2023/24.
Where did untouchability go? How caste survived the law in modern India
India abolished untouchability in 1950. Surveys, audits and Dalit testimony show it moved into the rental interview, the hiring shortlist, the marriage market and the kitchen.
A ritual to cleanse ground a Dalit leader stood on, and a commission that found no caste in it
The notice doesn't mention caste. It doesn't need to. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
You cannot move out of your lower caste. You can obscure it but cannot escape it.
48%
of Dalit home-seekers who met landlords in person got a positive answer, against 97% of dominant-caste Hindu home-seekers with matched profiles, in a 2012 in-person audit of 66 matched home-seekers per group in five cities of the Delhi region.