About The Dalit Project

Our Standpoint

The Dalit Project writes from a Dalit standpoint. That is an editorial position, not a demographic label, but a way of seeing caste for what it actually is: a live, material system of graded inequality, enforced through endogamy, occupational fixation, ritual hierarchy, and the ongoing control of land, labour, and power. Not a cultural quirk. Not a fading tradition. Not a prejudice some people happen to hold and others have simply outgrown.

We work from an Ambedkarite horizon. The aim is annihilation, not reform: dismantling the hierarchy, not administering it more gently. Ambedkar, Phule, Periyar, and the generations of Dalit-Bahujan intellectuals who followed them are treated here as primary theorists, not decorative citation.

"Dalit" names a political identity of self-assertion, not a synonym for underprivileged, marginalized, or backward. The people this magazine covers organize, litigate, theorize, build, and disagree with each other. They are not a population to be processed or pitied. We center Dalit interpretive authority as the account of caste, not one perspective to be balanced against an "objective" outside view. The outside view already has the run of most newsrooms; the dominant-caste default is not neutrality, it's a standpoint that has simply gone unnamed.

Objectivity, here, means accuracy about power: naming the system, naming who benefits, and refusing to mistake the dominant-caste default for the neutral one. That is compatible with rigor, not opposed to it. We verify facts, mark uncertainty, publish disagreement inside Dalit-Bahujan politics, and are willing to criticize Dalit individuals and institutions when the evidence calls for it. A clear standpoint is not a license to lower the evidentiary bar; it's a reason to hold it higher.

We write for readers wherever caste reaches. Caste travels. So does our coverage.

Bahujan and Adivasi communities are adjacent to this fight, not incidental to it: caste and systemic injustice bear on both, and The Dalit Project stands with them against it. But the way caste operates for Dalit people is its own mechanism, not a variation on what Bahujan or Adivasi communities face, and this magazine's standpoint is exclusively Dalit: Dalit perspective, Dalit experience, Dalit expertise, first and always.

Final editorial authority over what The Dalit Project publishes rests with Dalit editors. That isn't a value we aspire to. It's the rule the outlet is built on. See Governance below for exactly how that works.

Governance

Structure

The Dalit Project is an independent, founder-led outlet, not the media arm of an existing political party or movement organization. It is registered and operates from Australia, where the founder lives.

The founder is a Dalit social-justice research scholar, not a career journalist. They hold final editorial authority and also run the outlet's funding, vision and strategy.

The governance rule

Anyone who shares our commitment to ending caste is welcome to contribute: Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi writers, and allies from any community. Final editorial authority rests with Dalit editors, so that what we publish stays rooted in the standpoint set out in Our Standpoint.

A Dalit contributor, for us, is someone from a community historically subjected to untouchability who identifies as Dalit, including Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims, and Dalit communities across South Asia and the diaspora.

AI tools support our editors (see How we work) but never hold a byline or the standpoint a piece rests on.

Funding and independence

The Dalit Project is currently funded by its founder, and we haven't yet sought outside funding. In future, we intend to seek funding to support our mission and to keep operating on a not-for-profit basis. That may include government grants, university research partnerships, philanthropic grants or reader membership.

Our editorial independence is not for sale: no funder, of any size, ever sees a piece before publication, influences it, or decides what we cover. Final editorial authority stays with Dalit editors regardless of who is paying the bills.

How we work

We build each piece from the public record: court judgments, police and government data, official statements, and reporting by other outlets, credited and linked in the text, with every claim checked against the source it rests on.

If you're named in one of our pieces and want to raise something, we want to hear from you. Use the form on our Right of Reply page.

We use AI tools across our work, including for research, drafting, checking and illustration. The final judgement is always human: our editor reads, edits and approves every piece, makes the final call on what we publish, and is responsible for it. An AI system never holds a byline or speaks for our standpoint.

When we get something wrong, we fix it visibly: see Corrections.

Why we use AI-generated images

Many of the stories we cover have no photograph we can use. The people at the centre may be survivors who must not be shown, or the moment was never photographed, or the only pictures are ones we can't license. Even in cases where photographs are available, we are cognisant that a caste identity may still bring discrimination or danger. And the commercially available stock image of Dalits is majorly one of poverty and suffering, which is exactly the picture we refuse to publish.

So we invented our own art form to show Dalit life, which we call Frames: they are designed to feel like stills from a fictional movie, drawing on the visual language of the anti-caste movement that is ongoing. The person at the centre of the frame acts: claiming, reading, organising, working. Deep Ambedkarite blue stands for dignity and assertion, and the neighbourhoods, fields and workplaces are shown as lived and dignified, never as squalor. Power sits at the edges, in its institutions.

The people in these images are fictional. We never use them to show a real person, a survivor, an accused or an actual event, we never show violence, and we never signal caste through skin colour or features. Every one is labelled "DalPro Frames (AI-generated)" on the page and in the image file itself. Where a real photograph is available and right for the story, we use it, often alongside an AI image in the same piece, credited to its photographer.

What we publish

Every piece belongs to one of our coverage areas:

And every piece has a format:

Get in touch

To pitch a piece, see Contribute. For anything else, use our contact form.