Urmila Pawar weaves Dalit women into the record
From a Konkan village to Mumbai's women's movement, the Marathi-language writer has spent fifty years putting Dalit women, and the caste and patriarchy that bound them, on the page in their own terms.
Coverage
Gender & Caste
Caste and gender together — Brahminical patriarchy, Dalit women, queer, trans, and disabled Dalit people.
In focus
Dalit Feminisms
Urmila Pawar at Savitribai Phule Pune University in December 2017. File photo. — Hemalataeditor, CC BY-SA 4.0
My mother was an expert at weaving; similarly I also wove with words.
Rs 144 vs Rs 290
Roughly what a Dalit woman earned for a day of paddy transplanting in Mahatwar, Uttar Pradesh, in cash and rice, against the local daily wage for men.
Marrying Across Caste
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
Police suspect Vimal Vaniya's wife's brother and two other men killed him over a marriage her family tried to undo. The Supreme Court asked Parliament for a law in 2018, and there isn't one.
Intercaste marriage narrows India's child nutrition gap where it happens. Endogamy keeps it rare
The right to marry by choice is settled law. Protecting it is not. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
The real remedy for breaking Caste is inter-marriage. Nothing else will serve as the solvent of Caste.
64%
Of Indians say it is very important to stop women in their community marrying into another caste; 62% say so of men.
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?
I very seriously see Dalit as a political identity and not as a caste location.
16 years
in roles across India, China, Singapore and the Netherlands, with government, business and development organisations, by her own account.
Showing —
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?
Critical Review
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.
Analysis
Khairlanji at twenty: how three courts read caste out of a massacre
Twenty years after a mob killed a Dalit family of four, eight men stand convicted of murder and none of an atrocity. One court even counted the absence of caste in their favour.
Analysis
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
Police suspect Vimal Vaniya's wife's brother and two other men killed him over a marriage her family tried to undo. The Supreme Court asked Parliament for a law in 2018, and there isn't one.
Profile
Christina Dhanuja is building the rooms caste kept Dalit women out of
The co-founder of Dalit History Month has spent more than a decade making spaces where Dalit women tell their own story. Her first book is the newest of them.
Profile
Yashica Dutt stopped passing in 2016. A decade on, she is taking caste to New York's lawmakers
The journalist who hid her Dalit caste, then named it in public, now reports on caste in the diaspora and helps organise New York's caste-law campaign. She answers her Dalit critics in print.
Profile
Gogu Shyamala writes the Madiga village in its own words
The Telugu Dalit writer has turned the speech of Madiga women in a Telangana village into literature, and gathered eight decades of Dalit women's writing in Telugu into print.
Profile
Urmila Pawar weaves Dalit women into the record
From a Konkan village to Mumbai's women's movement, the Marathi-language writer has spent fifty years putting Dalit women, and the caste and patriarchy that bound them, on the page in their own terms.
Profile
Sujatha Gidla's family history puts caste at the centre of modern India
Gidla traced her Dalit Christian family's caste through mission schools, communist parties, a police cell and a New York subway job. Her newest writing turns to her mother.
Opinion
Self-determination, denied twice over: the 2026 transgender law and the Poona Pact
India's 2026 transgender law stripped self-identification from the 2019 Act. A Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi trans and queer network named it the same denial Dalits met in 1932.
Analysis
Intercaste marriage narrows India's child nutrition gap where it happens. Endogamy keeps it rare
A study of 16 years of survey data links more intercaste marriage to a 37 to 43 percent fall in child-stunting inequality. Yet only about one marriage in twenty crosses caste.
Profile
Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar paints Dalit women at rest, on their own terms
The Mumbai artist known for archiving the Dalit Panthers' magazines makes work about who gets to picture Dalit women, and what even the anti-caste movement lets them be.
Explainer
Paid Less for the Same Field: Wage Discrimination Against Dalit Women in Rural Labour
A 2023 survey in rural Uttar Pradesh found Dalit women paid Rs 144 a day for paddy transplanting, against Rs 290 for men. The gap rests on caste as well as gender.