The lives behind the movement

Jurist, Economist, Statesman, Social Reformer, Constitutional Architect

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar — born on 14 April 1891 in Mhow (present-day Dr Ambedkar Nagar, Madhya Pradesh) and known to his followers as Babasaheb — was born Bhimrao Ramji Sakpal into a Mahar family, one of the communities classified as "untouchable" under India's caste hierarchy. His father, Ramji Maloji Sakpal, served as a Subedar in the British Indian Army, and the family traced its Marathi roots to Ambadawe village in Ratnagiri district; Ambedkar later adopted the name of that ancestral village as his own surname. Despite his father's military standing, caste discrimination shaped his earliest years: as a child he was segregated in school classrooms, barred from touching shared water vessels, and denied access to spaces reserved for caste Hindus. He went on to become one of the most credentialed intellectuals of the twentieth century and the foremost theorist of anti-caste liberation in the Indian subcontinent. A scholarship from the Gaekwar (ruler) of Baroda enabled Ambedkar to study abroad. At Columbia University in New York (1913–1916), under the mentorship of economist Edwin R.A. Seligman, he completed an M.A. in economics; his 1916 seminar paper "Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development" remains a foundational text of anti-caste scholarship. He then enrolled at the London School of Economics in 1916, studying social theory under L.T. Hobhouse while simultaneously reading for the Bar at Gray's Inn. His LSE doctoral thesis, "The Problem of the Rupee: Its Origin and Its Solution" — an analysis of British colonial monetary policy — was initially rejected in March 1923, reportedly as too radical, before being accepted in November 1923; it earned him a D.Sc. in Economics and was published that same year. He was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1923. He later returned to Columbia to complete his Ph.D. in economics in 1927, making him the first South Asian to hold dual doctorates from both Columbia and LSE. Back in India, Ambedkar combined legal practice with unrelenting social advocacy. In 1920 he founded the weekly newspaper Mooknayak ("Leader of the Voiceless"), and in 1924 the Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha, whose rallying motto — "Educate, Agitate, Organise" — became the animating principle of the Dalit movement. In 1927 he led the Mahad Satyagraha, asserting Dalits' right to draw water from Mahad's Chavdar Tank, and publicly burned a copy of the Manusmriti. The 1932 Poona Pact — signed at Yerwada Central Jail on 24 September 1932 between Ambedkar and Madan Mohan Malaviya — resolved a nationally charged dispute over separate electorates for the Depressed Classes: rather than the independent constituencies Ambedkar had won through the Communal Award, the Pact substituted 148 reserved seats within a joint Hindu electorate, a compromise Ambedkar accepted under the duress of Gandhi's fast unto death but which he later described as a defeat extorted from him. He founded the Independent Labour Party in 1936 — it won 11 reserved and 3 general seats in the 1937 Bombay elections — and served as Labour Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council (1942–1946). Ambedkar was elected to the Constituent Assembly in December 1946 and appointed Chairman of its Drafting Committee on 29 August 1947. He guided the framing of India's Constitution, adopted on 26 November 1949, integrating fundamental rights, the explicit abolition of untouchability (Article 17), and constitutional provisions for affirmative action for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. He served simultaneously as India's first Law and Justice Minister (1947–1951) under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bombay State in 1952. He resigned from Nehru's cabinet in October 1951 when the government failed to pass his landmark Hindu Code Bill, which sought to reform Hindu personal law to guarantee women equal rights to inheritance, divorce, and property. After more than two decades of publicly investigating which religion offered the best path of liberation from caste, Ambedkar publicly embraced Buddhism on 14 October 1956 at Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur. He received the Three Refuges and Five Precepts in a formal ceremony and administered 22 additional vows to his followers — vows designed specifically to sever converts from caste-embedded Hindu practice and to reject any assimilation of the Buddha into the Hindu pantheon. An estimated 500,000 followers converted alongside him. Ambedkar identified four criteria that Buddhism uniquely satisfied: compatibility with reason and science; a moral code grounded in liberty, equality, and fraternity; refusal to sanctify poverty; and grounding in legal or moral sanction. He died at his home in New Delhi on 6 December 1956 — less than two months after his conversion, and just three days after completing his last major work, The Buddha and His Dhamma. The Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, was conferred on him posthumously in 1990. The Dalit Buddhist movement he inaugurated transformed the religious demography of Maharashtra, where Buddhist communities — predominantly Mahar converts and their descendants — now represent approximately 6% of the state's population and roughly 77% of India's total Buddhist population.

Educator, Poet, and Social Reformer

Savitribai Phule (3 January 1831 – 10 March 1897) was a Marathi educator, poet, and anti-caste social reformer born in Naigaon, Satara District, Maharashtra, into a Mali-community family. Married to Jyotirao Phule at age nine and illiterate at the time of her marriage, she was educated by her husband and by activist Sagunabai Kshirsagar before completing formal teacher training at the American missionary Cynthia Farrar's institution in Ahmednagar and at the Normal School in Pune — becoming India's first professionally trained female teacher and headmistress. In January 1848, Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule, together with Sagunabai Kshirsagar, opened the first school for girls started by Indians, at Bhidewada, Pune, with six students. Defying violent harassment — stones and cattle dung hurled at her on her walk to school — she carried a second sari to change into on arrival. By 1851 they operated three schools in Pune serving approximately 150 female students; over her career she was involved in establishing 18 schools in total. In 1852 she founded the Mahila Seva Mandal for women's rights awareness and was named best teacher in the Bombay Presidency. She established the Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha, a home for the prevention of infanticide for pregnant widows, in 1863. In 1873 she co-founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (Society of Truth Seekers) alongside Jyotirao, leading its women's wing; after Jyotirao's death in 1890 she continued to lead the organization. In 1897 she organized plague relief in Pune, personally nursing the sick, and died on 10 March 1897 after contracting bubonic plague in the course of this work. As a literary figure, Savitribai Phule published "Kavya Phule" in 1854 — a collection of 41 poems constituting the first book-length verse publication by an Indian woman in the nineteenth century, and among the earliest modern poetry collections by any author in British India. Published before any work by Jyotirao Phule, it drew on vernacular Marathi forms — abhang, ovi, anushtubh, dindi — while adopting modern prosody to address individual rights and social transformation. Scholar Gayathri Prabhu, writing in "A Genre of Her Own: Life Narratives and Feminist Literary Beginnings in Modern India" (Bloomsbury, 2025), characterizes the collection's dominant quality as a "commitment to justice" and its politics as a "distinct brand of socio-cultural radicalism" that unified the categories of stree-shudra-atishudra — women, backward classes, and Dalits — alongside adivasis and Muslims. Her most widely cited poem, "Go, Get Education," positions knowledge as the primary weapon against caste oppression. Her second collection, "Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar," appeared in 1892. Political scientist Bidyut Chakrabarty has characterized Savitribai as "the sole female reformer of 19th-century India to explore the interplay of patriarchy with caste." Dalit writer and critic Anita Bharti, who has published extensively on her poetry, calls her "the backbone of the Dalit feminist movement and an ideal for the Indian feminist movement as a whole." Scholars Shailaja Paik and Braj Ranjan Mani have argued that she "assigned agency to the personhood of women" through her combined practice of education reform and anti-caste activism. The University of Pune was renamed Savitribai Phule Pune University in 2015 in her honor.

Minister for Women, Children and Senior Citizens, Nepal

Sita Badi was born in 1995 in Jhuprakhola, ward 11 of Birendranagar Municipality in Surkhet district, in the Karnali Province of Nepal. She comes from the Badi community, one of Nepal's most marginalized Dalit groups, and experienced poverty, caste-based discrimination, and social exclusion throughout her childhood. Her parents are Gopal Badi and Parbati Badi. Badi pursued higher education despite systemic barriers, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from Puspalal Memorial College and a Master's degree in political science, becoming the first woman from the Badi community to earn a master's degree in higher education. Before her political career, she was deeply engaged in social work and community development, supporting children from underprivileged communities in accessing education, providing vocational training to women (particularly in sewing), and launching a handicraft enterprise in Chunikhel on Kathmandu's outskirts to create employment opportunities. In the 2026 general election, Badi was elected to Nepal's Pratinidhi Sabha (Parliament) through the proportional representation system, representing the Rastriya Swatantra Party under the Dalit women cluster. On March 27, 2026, she became Minister for Women, Children and Senior Citizens under Prime Minister Balendra Shah—making her the first person from the Badi community to serve as a federal cabinet minister in Nepal and the first Dalit woman to hold a full cabinet position. In May 2026, her portfolio expanded to include Gender and Sexual Minorities and Social Security. Badi is married to Suresh Purkuti and currently resides in Budhanilkantha, Kathmandu.

Legal scholar, anti-caste author, and poet; DPhil (Law) candidate at the University of Oxford

Asang Wankhede is a Dalit legal scholar, anti-caste author, and poet from a slum colony in Nagpur, Maharashtra. He holds a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from National Law University, Delhi (2016), and an LLM in Human Rights, Conflict, and Justice from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London (2018, Distinction), where he read as a Felix Scholar. He subsequently pursued graduate legal study at the University of Oxford, completing an MPhil in Law (awarded without corrections) before embarking on a DPhil in Law, affiliated with Balliol College and Wolfson College. His doctoral research undertakes a doctrinal assessment of Indian constitutional law jurisprudence on the interaction of caste and poverty in affirmative action policy, with particular attention to the proliferation of reservation policies in favour of dominant upper-caste and middle-caste groups. In 2022, Wankhede published his monograph "Affirmative Action for Economically Weaker Sections and Upper-Castes in Indian Constitutional Law: Context, Judicial Discourse, and Critique" (Routledge, UK) — the first doctrinal analysis of upper-caste reservations in India. The book examines the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, which introduced an income- and asset-based standard for determining backwardness, and includes case studies of Maharashtra, Haryana, and Gujarat. The Bar Council of India subsequently designated it a compulsory reference book for Constitutional Law-I courses in Indian law schools. In 2024, he served as Lead Research Consultant for the Australian Human Rights Commission's National Community Consultations on Caste Discrimination. He also serves as Associate Editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal. Beyond his academic work, Wankhede has been active in Dalit student politics against institutional caste-based segregation and discrimination in university spaces. He writes opinion journalism for publications including The Wire, The Leaflet, The Quint, Outlook India, and Countercurrents, and contributes poetry — including "Ripples of Revolution," published for Ambedkar Jayanti — that draws directly on his experience as a Dalit from Nagpur. His research interests span discrimination law, comparative equality law, international human rights law, critical legal theory, and socio-legal studies.

Professor of Economics, Founding Director of Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA)

Ashwini Deshpande is a Professor of Economics at Ashoka University, where she is the Founding Director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA). She also serves as a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics' International Inequalities Institute and is affiliated with the IZA network as a Research Fellow. Her research career has evolved significantly. Early in her academic trajectory, she focused on the international debt crises of developing countries during the 1980s, for which her doctoral dissertation earned the EXIM Bank Award for Outstanding Dissertation in 1994. Since then, her scholarly work has centered on the economics of caste and gender discrimination in India, affirmative action policies, and inequality across multiple dimensions. Deshpande is the author of two influential books published by Oxford University Press: "The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India" (2011, revised 2017) and "Affirmative Action in India" (2013). She has also edited collections on global economic and development perspectives. Her published research addresses son preference, gender gaps in education, caste-based wage disparities, social identity's impact on economic outcomes, and the effectiveness of affirmative action policies in reducing inequality. In recognition of her contributions to Indian economics, she received the 2007 VKRV Rao Award for Indian Economists under 45.

Economist, educationist, professor, and scholar

Sukhadeo Thorat is a leading Indian economist and scholar whose research has fundamentally shaped how India addresses economic inequality through the lens of caste discrimination. Born on July 12, 1949, he served as a faculty member at Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre for the Study of Regional Development from 1973 to 2014 and continues as Professor Emeritus. His scholarly work spans agricultural development, rural poverty, social exclusion, labour market discrimination, and the economic philosophy of B. R. Ambedkar—making him a recognized expert on integrating Dalit perspectives into development economics. Thorat's most influential contribution has been establishing rigorous empirical evidence of caste-based economic discrimination in contemporary India. As founder and director of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (2003–2006), he led landmark research using résumé-testing methodology to demonstrate that job applicants with Dalit and Muslim names faced significantly lower chances of employment success compared to those with high-caste Hindu names—translating abstract concepts of caste prejudice into quantifiable economic harm. His work has directly influenced India's social science research agenda and policy discussions on inclusive development. Beyond scholarship, Thorat has wielded significant institutional power as Chairman of the University Grants Commission (2006–2011) and Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, positions that shaped higher education policy and research priorities across the nation. He also serves as a Founder Member of the Centre for Economic and Social Studies. His contributions have been recognized with India's Padma Shri award (the fourth-highest civilian honor), the Mother Teresa International Award, and the Babasaheb Ambedkar Ratna Award from the Delhi government—signaling both national recognition and the Dalit community's acknowledgment of his scholarship as advancing Ambedkar's vision of economic justice.

Professor of Sociology

Surinder S. Jodhka is Professor of Sociology at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has held this position since 2006, having previously served as Associate Professor at JNU (2001–2006), Reader at Panjab University, Chandigarh (1998–2001), and Lecturer at the University of Hyderabad (1991–1998). He earned his M.A. (1985), M.Phil. (1987), and Ph.D. (1991) in Sociology. Jodhka's scholarly interests center on the dynamics of rural transformations and agrarian change; social inequalities—old and new—and their reproduction; the social life of caste and its varied modes of articulation in contemporary India; and the political sociology of community identities. He is also a Senior Affiliate Fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi, since September 2014, and has served as Visiting Professor at Lund University, Sweden (October 2012–June 2013), and Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Bergen, Norway (May–June 2005). Jodhka is the author and editor of over 10 books and approximately 90 research articles. His major publications include: *Contested Hierarchies, Persisting Influence: Caste and Power in 21st Century India* (with James Manor); *The Indian Village: Rural Lives in the 21st Century* (Aleph, 2023); *The Oxford Handbook of Caste* (OUP, 2023, co-edited with Jules Naudet); *Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege and Inequality* (OUP, 2019, co-edited with Jules Naudet); *India's Villages in the 21st Century: Revisits and Revisions* (OUP, 2019, co-edited with Edward Simpson); *The Indian Middle Class* (OUP, 2016, with Aseem Prakash); *Caste in Contemporary India* (Routledge, 2015); *Caste: Oxford India Short Introductions* (OUP, 2012); and *Interrogating India's Modernity* (edited, OUP, 2013). In 2012, Jodhka became one of the first recipients of the ICSSR-Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists. He is editor of the Routledge India series on "Religion and Citizenship" and co-editor of the Oxford University Press series "Exploring India's Elite." His recent publications in journals such as *Social Change*, *Economic & Political Weekly*, and others continue to address themes of caste policy, rural transformation, and social inequality.

Activist, digital political organizer, founder of Cockroach Janata Party

Abhijeet Dipke is a 30-year-old Dalit activist and digital political organizer from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra. He earned his undergraduate degree in journalism from Pune before pursuing graduate study in public relations at Boston University, graduating in 2025. Prior to his graduate studies, Dipke worked with the Aam Aadmi Party's social media team from 2020 to 2023, where he developed expertise in meme-based political campaigning and digital youth engagement during the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections. Dipke founded the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) in May 2026 as a satirical political movement responding to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant's remarks characterizing India's unemployed youth as "parasites" and "cockroaches." The CJP rapidly became a viral phenomenon, gaining over 20 million Instagram followers and attracting 46,000 signups within 48 hours, positioning itself as a youth-led digital political platform focused on Generation Z concerns around unemployment, education pressure, and government accountability. The movement's manifesto proposes significant reforms, including raising women's parliamentary reservation to 55 percent and preventing Chief Justices from receiving Rajya Sabha appointments after retirement. In June 2026, Dipke transitioned from digital activism to street-level organizing, leaving the United States to return to India and lead NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) medical exam reform protests, announcing his commitment with "#JaiBhim." He has positioned the CJP as a mechanism to mobilize youth toward concrete civic action, including filing Right to Information requests and demanding ministerial accountability.

Scholar, author, civil-rights activist, and management professor

Anand Teltumbde was born on 15 July 1951 in Rajur, Yavatmal district, Maharashtra, the eldest of eight children in a Dalit farm-laboring family. He holds a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering (1973) from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, an MBA (1982) from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and a PhD (1993) in cybernetic modelling from the University of Mumbai. He was later awarded an honorary D.Litt. by Karnataka State Open University. He is married to Rama Teltumbde, granddaughter of B.R. Ambedkar — a connection he has publicly stated he is careful not to trade upon, insisting his work must stand on its own intellectual merits. Before entering academia, Teltumbde held senior corporate roles: Executive Director at Bharat Petroleum and Managing Director at Petronet India Limited. He subsequently joined the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur as a professor before moving in 2016 to the Goa Institute of Management as a Senior Professor, where he established a Big Data programme. He also maintained a long-running column, "Margin Speak," in the Economic and Political Weekly, and contributed regularly to Outlook, Tehelka, Seminar, and Himal Southasian. Teltumbde is one of the most prolific and theoretically rigorous voices in contemporary anti-caste scholarship. His major works include The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders and India's Hidden Apartheid (2010), Mahad: The Making of the First Dalit Revolt (2015), Republic of Caste (2018) — a collection of essays assessing Dalit political life in India — and Dalits: Past, Present and Future. His intellectual project seeks a synthesis of Ambedkarism and Marxism, arguing that neither caste-only nor class-only frameworks are sufficient for Dalit liberation, and that the caste system must be annihilated rather than merely reformed. He has been sharply critical of symbolic Dalit politics and of the appropriation of Ambedkar's legacy by rival electoral parties. In 2018, Teltumbde was implicated in the Elgar Parishad / Bhima Koregaon case, accused under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) of having links to the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and of involvement in an alleged conspiracy against Prime Minister Narendra Modi — charges he has consistently denied. He was first arrested and released on 3 February 2019. After the Supreme Court dismissed his anticipatory bail on 16 March 2020, he surrendered to the National Investigation Agency on 14 April 2020 from Rajgruha, Ambedkar's former Mumbai residence. He was held as an undertrial for 31 months at Taloja Central Jail in Maharashtra. A Pegasus spyware infection of his phone had been documented in October 2019. More than 600 international scholars signed a joint statement condemning the prosecution as a "witch-hunt." The Bombay High Court granted him bail in November 2022, finding "no prima facie evidence" to sustain the charges. His brother Milind Teltumbde, a Maoist insurgent, was killed by security forces during the same period. Following his release, Teltumbde published The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir (Bloomsbury), documenting his incarceration, the conditions of Taloja Central Jail, the COVID-19 pandemic inside prison, and his fellow undertrial inmates. He also published The Caste Con Census (Navayana), a critical analysis of the arguments for and likely consequences of a national caste census. As of 2025–26, his bail conditions severely restrict his movement within India. In January 2024, the Government of Karnataka awarded him the Basava Puraskara.

Human Rights and Legal Associate

Dharsika Sivapragasam is the Human Rights and Legal Associate at the Human Development Organization (HDO) in Sri Lanka, where she works on issues affecting marginalized communities. She co-authored the research report "Between Tokenism and Invisibility: Minority Women's Political Representation in Sri Lanka" (with Farah Mihlar and Akeela Shadhique), which was launched in Colombo on 28 January 2026. The research was conducted in partnership with Oxford Brookes University's Centre for Development and Emergency Practice, Minority Rights Group, Eastern Social Development Foundation, and the Sri Lanka Development Journalist Forum. Her research examines the intersecting barriers that minority women face in political participation, where ethnic, religious, and caste identities intersect with gender. The report documents how women are often included in political structures merely to meet quota requirements rather than for genuine decision-making participation, and how patriarchal and ethnoreligious norms limit women's mobility and public engagement. Sivapragasam has represented HDO in international advocacy efforts, including participation in a weeklong delegation to Brussels in June 2025 convened by the International Dalit Solidarity Network. The delegation, comprising six representatives from marginalized caste groups across South Asia, met with officials from the EU External Action Service, European Parliament, and European Commission to advocate for strengthened EU engagement on addressing caste discrimination and ensuring monitoring mechanisms to protect the rights of marginalized caste communities.

Executive Director of Centre for Law and Justice; human rights lawyer, activist, former legislator, policy researcher

Mary James Gill is a Pakistani human rights lawyer, activist, and policy researcher with over fifteen years of professional experience. She currently serves as Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Justice (CLJ), a minority-led policy research and advocacy organization focused on marginalized and religious minority communities in Pakistan. Born on 28 August 1985, Gill earned a Bachelor of Arts with honors from Lahore College for Women University in 2004, followed by a Bachelor of Laws in 2007. She completed her Master's in Public Policy and served as a U.S. State Department Professional Fellow in 2017. From 2013 to 2018, she represented Punjab in the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab and convened the Punjab Minority Advisory Council from 2015 to 2018. Gill is best known as the founder of "Sweepers are Superheroes," Pakistan's first digital advocacy campaign launched in 2019. This pioneering initiative brought international attention to the dignity, safety, and working conditions of sanitation workers, documented discriminatory recruitment practices excluding religious minorities from sanitation positions, and successfully advocated for legislative reforms allowing non-Muslims to work in sanitation roles. The campaign received coverage from major outlets including the New York Times, BBC Urdu, Al-Jazeera, and DW, and was endorsed by UN-Water and WaterAid International. Throughout her career, Gill has contributed to significant legislative reforms including the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act 2016 and reforms to Christian personal laws, which were incorporated into the Punjab Women Empowerment Package 2017. Her research focuses on the intersection of minority rights, gender justice, and economic dignity, with published work including "Shame and Stigma in Sanitation: Competing Faiths and Compromised Dignity, Safety and Employment Security of Sanitation Workers" (2019) and "Stories of Resilience and Resolve: An Intersectional Study on the Plight of Non-Muslim Women and Girls in Pakistan" (2022). Her work has earned significant international recognition, including the Swedish Anna Lindh Prize (2020), the French Republic's Human Rights Prize "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" (2021), the U.S. State Department Professional Fellows Alumni Impact Award (2022), and Pakistan's Development Leadership Award (2023). Gill's primary focus areas include social inclusion of marginalized minorities, minority women and girls' rights, improving socio-economic conditions for vulnerable working populations, and integrating religious minorities into political and parliamentary processes.

farmer, village council head, Dalit land rights activist

Pyla Kondamma is a Dalit farmer and former head of the village council in Tarluvada, a village in Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh. She owns approximately two acres of land that was allocated to her family in the 1970s through a government program intended to provide land to landless Dalit households. In 2025–2026, her land became central to a major land acquisition conflict when Google selected three villages near Visakhapatnam for its largest data center project outside the United States, requiring 480 acres total—with 200 acres drawn from Dalit-owned land in Tarluvada and surrounding areas. Kondamma has emerged as a prominent voice resisting this acquisition, explicitly stating: "We are not afraid — even if they kill us, we will not give it away." She has also highlighted the discriminatory targeting of Dalit land, noting: "They are not touching land owned by dominant castes. Only Dalit land." Her resistance reflects the precarious position of Dalit land ownership in the region—in Visakhapatnam district, approximately 68% of Dalit households own no land, making the few acres allocated to families like Kondamma's potentially their only means of economic security and subsistence.

ASHA worker (Accredited Social Health Activist), health activist

Rekha was a 34-year-old Accredited Social Health Activist from a Scheduled Caste community posted in Sihol village in Petlad block of Anand district, Gujarat. She held a higher secondary education and was described by her immediate supervisor, the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM), as a fast learner deeply committed to community health care. Despite her competence and dedication, her Dalit caste identity became the primary lens through which upper-caste community members viewed her capability to provide health services. In 2012, while visiting a Patel family home to conduct routine health monitoring of a newborn, Rekha was subjected to explicit untouchability practices. A family member told her: "You are a Harijan. Your position is outside my house. Finish your work at the door." This rejection was particularly painful given that Rekha's grandmother-in-law had previously assisted the same household with childbirth services. The caste-based discrimination intensified over time: an upper-caste woman who had previously engaged with Rekha on friendly terms abruptly distanced herself once Rekha's caste identity became known within the community. Rather than accept this disrespect, Rekha exercised agency and refused further home visits to those households, instead directing families to attend the primary health centre for services. She asserted: "I should get some respect. I am working for the government after all." Despite this discrimination, Rekha persisted in her work and built substantial community trust through her commitment and availability. Over time she became known as someone who was available to the community at all times. While continuing her ASHA duties, Rekha pursued nursing education and completed her course in General Nursing and Midwifery (GNM), further establishing herself as a dedicated health professional.

Youth activist, Dalit Panthers member

Saroj Meshram was a youth activist and member of the Dalit Panthers, the revolutionary anti-caste organization formed in Bombay in 1972 by poets and activists including Namdeo Dhasal, J.V. Pawar, and Raja Dhale. At seventeen years old in 1973, Meshram was part of the Nagpur chapter's mobilization against caste oppression, working under the leadership of Prakash Ramteke and Bhimrao Naik. On the evening of June 5, 1973, Meshram participated in a historic march organized by the Nagpur Dalit Panthers. Nearly a hundred young activists gathered around Indora Chowk before marching through the city to the RSS headquarters in the Mahal locality. Reflecting on that night, Meshram recalled: "It was a sweltering night, but the heat did not stifle our excitement." The march was mounted in response to the death of RSS leader M.S. Golwalkar, whom the Panthers viewed as the foremost advocate of the caste system. When asked about celebrating Golwalkar's death, Meshram articulated the Panthers' principled stance: "We don't celebrate death. But Golwalkar was different. He was the foremost advocate of chaturvarnya"—the fourfold caste hierarchy that Ambedkarite Dalit activists sought to annihilate.

ASHA worker (Accredited Social Health Activist)

Suman is a Dalit (Scheduled Caste) Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA worker) from Gorakhpur district, Uttar Pradesh, stationed in Korari village in Gola Taluka. As an ASHA worker, she is responsible for providing essential healthcare services including vaccination administration at the community in level. During a routine immunization house visit, Suman experienced caste-based discrimination and untouchability practices when she was denied permission to sit on a chair while administering a vaccine to a child. When she reminded the upper-caste household that she was on official duty and holding their baby to administer medication—emphasizing her professional role—they refused to accommodate her basic dignity by offering a seat. This incident exemplifies the structural discrimination Dalit ASHA workers face despite providing frontline healthcare services to communities that practice caste-based exclusion against them.

ASHA worker (Accredited Social Health Activist)

Suman Kamble is a 48-year-old Dalit ASHA worker from Chandgad taluka in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra. Employed since 2009, she has worked in grassroots health promotion for over 16 years alongside three other ASHA workers—one Muslim and two Marathas. Throughout her tenure, Kamble faced systematic harassment and discrimination from her Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) supervisor. The ANM withheld critical work information, filed complaints to authorities over minor infractions, and forced Kamble to perform unpaid household labor outside her job responsibilities, including cleaning spices and rice and washing the supervisor's dishes. The supervisor also reassigned patients away from Kamble, directly reducing her work opportunities and incentive payments. Despite her years of dedicated service to her community's health, Kamble experienced profound social isolation among her workplace colleagues. She noted that coworkers formed tight-knit groups and excluded her from their conversations and social interactions. Only her Muslim colleague extended solidarity by sharing meals with her. This caste-based exclusion compounded the harassment she endured. Kamble remained silent about the mistreatment for years, fearing job loss and lacking alternative employment options.

Dalit Panther co-founder, poet, writer, and editor

Namdeo Laxman Dhasal was born on February 15, 1949, in Pur village near Pune into a Mahar (Dalit) caste family. He grew up in the Golpitha red-light district of Bombay, where his father worked for a butcher, and spent his childhood surrounded by marginalized communities including pimps, prostitutes, and petty criminals who would become central figures in his artistic vision. Despite never attending college, Dhasal was an autodidact who read voraciously while working as a taxi driver. In 1972, Dhasal co-founded the Dalit Panthers with J.V. Pawar, Raja Dhale, and Arjun Dangle, modeling the movement after the American Black Panther Party. The organization became instrumental in 1970s and 1980s Dalit activism and played a crucial role in popularizing the term "dalit" across India. Dhasal served as one of the movement's most prominent voices and remained committed to its radical anti-caste organizing through much of that decade. As a poet and writer, Dhasal published nine poetry anthologies and several prose works. His 1972 debut collection *Golpitha* shocked Marathi literary circles with its raw, visceral language depicting the harsh realities of Bombay's underworld and the lives of society's most marginalized people. His subsequent works—including *Moorkh Mhataryane*, *Tuhi Iyatta Kanchi?*, and *Khel*—continued to combine innovative linguistic style with fierce social commentary, employing vernacular Dalit expressions that challenged literary conventions and scandalized middle-class Savarna (upper-caste) readers. His famous dictum "Poetry is politics" embodied his inseparable fusion of artistic and political work. Dhasal received numerous prestigious awards: the Soviet Land Nehru Award (1974) for *Golpitha*, Maharashtra State Awards for Literature (1973, 1974, 1982, 1983), the Padma Shri (1999), and the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Lifetime Achievement Award (2004). He died on January 15, 2014, in Mumbai from colorectal cancer at age 64.

PhD scholar in life sciences; student activist

Rohith Chakravarthi Vemula was a Dalit PhD scholar in life sciences at the University of Hyderabad whose death by suicide in January 2016 became a watershed moment in Dalit activism and exposed systemic caste discrimination within Indian higher education. Born on January 30, 1989, in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, Vemula's mother belonged to the Mala community—a scheduled caste—and he became politically conscious about caste oppression while at university. From 2015 onwards, Vemula became actively involved with the Ambedkar Students' Association (ASA), an organization dedicated to addressing caste discrimination on campus. Following a confrontation between ASA and the RSS-affiliated ABVP student group in August 2015, university authorities launched an inquiry against Vemula and four other student activists. In July 2015, the university had already suspended his monthly fellowship of ₹25,000, an action widely understood as institutional retaliation for his activism. In December 2015, all five students were formally suspended from hostel residence, barred from administrative buildings and libraries, and prohibited from participating in campus activities—a coordinated campaign of institutional humiliation. In protest against these restrictions, Vemula and his friends slept in public spaces on campus. On January 17, 2016, at age 26, Vemula died by suicide. His death note read: "The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility." His death sparked widespread protests across Indian university campuses and beyond, galvanizing Dalit students and emerging as a defining moment in anti-caste student resistance. His legacy has become central to ongoing demands for systemic reform in Indian higher education institutions, including the proposed Rohith Vemula Bill in Karnataka designed to prevent exclusion and discrimination of marginalized students.

Dalit landowner, anti-caste witness, and central victim of the 2006 Khairlanji massacre

Surekha Bhotmange was a Mahar Dalit woman from the village of Khairlanji in Bhandara district, Maharashtra, who became a martyr of the anti-caste movement following her murder on 29 September 2006 — a crime that came to be known as the Khairlanji massacre. She lived with her husband Bhaiyalal Bhotmange and their four children: daughter Priyanka (17) and sons Roshan and Sudhir, the latter of whom was visually impaired. Within her community she was known for her assertiveness, her education, and her insistence on constitutional rights in a social environment designed to deny them. Despite the constrained circumstances characteristic of Dalit life in rural Maharashtra, Surekha owned agricultural land, managed her household through independent means, and had built a permanent pucca home for her family — material gains that made her a target of resentment from dominant-caste neighbors. Her troubles with upper-caste villagers were not new: as early as 2002 she had filed a police complaint against a neighboring farmer for casteist trespass, and records document a sickle attack against her by upper-caste women. The events that culminated in the massacre began in September 2006 when a wage dispute escalated into violence involving a Mahar policeman, Siddharth Gajbhiye. Surekha and her daughter Priyanka intervened to stop the violence and subsequently appeared as witnesses at the police station, helping secure the detention of upper-caste accused Sakru Binjeswar. On the evening of 29 September 2006 — the day Binjeswar and the others were released — a mob of approximately 40 armed men descended on the Bhotmange home. Surekha, Priyanka, and both sons were dragged out, stripped, and paraded naked through the village. Surekha and Priyanka were gang-raped and killed. Both sons were murdered when they attempted to defend them. Only Bhaiyalal, who concealed himself in nearby bushes, survived to witness and later testify. The massacre received almost no mainstream media coverage in the weeks immediately following — what coverage there was omitted any mention of caste. It was Dalit-led protests across Maharashtra, beginning in November 2006, that forced national attention, compelled the Central Bureau of Investigation to take up the case, and ultimately secured criminal convictions. Scholars across Dalit studies and feminist theory have since identified Surekha Bhotmange's case as paradigmatic of the intersection of caste and gender violence: her "crime," in the eyes of her killers, was her land ownership, her legal agency, and her refusal to perform the subordination demanded of Dalit women. Her name is commemorated annually at Khairlanji and invoked in Dalit feminist discourse as a symbol of both the violence of brahmanical patriarchy and the courage of resistance.

Pastor, Treasurer of Pastors Fellowship

=== NOTES === I verified the existing biographical information across multiple authoritative sources including the official judgment from Indian Kanoon, legal analysis from Supreme Court Observer, and journalism from The Leaflet and The Wire. The core facts are accurate and well-sourced: Chinthada Anand was born into the Madiga Scheduled Caste, converted to Christianity, served as a pastor for approximately ten years conducting Sunday prayer meetings in Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, and held the position of treasurer in the local Pastors Fellowship. The incidents of alleged assault on January 3 and January 24, 2021, and the Supreme Court judgment on March 24, 2026, are confirmed across sources. I added two substantive journalistic sources (The Leaflet and The Wire) to complement the existing three legal sources. This brings the source count from 3 to 5, providing both official judgment text and critical legal analysis. Birthdate and deathdate remain unavailable in all public sources consulted—standard biographical information that may not be publicly documented for this individual. I noted that the existing document mentions December 2020 telephone calls, but my sources only explicitly confirm the January 2021 physical assault incidents; the December contact may come from the original FIR or court filings not fully detailed in secondary sources.

Former Chief Justice of India; Chair, Balakrishnan Commission on SC Status for Dalit Converts

Konakuppakatil Gopinathan Balakrishnan was born on May 12, 1945, in Kaduthuruthy, Travancore, British India, into a Dalit Christian family. He enrolled as an advocate with the Kerala Bar in 1968 and went on to become one of India's most consequential judges. In 1985, he was appointed as a judge of the Kerala High Court, followed by postings to the Gujarat High Court (1997) and service as Chief Justice of both the Gujarat High Court (1998) and Madras High Court (1999). He was appointed to the Supreme Court of India in 2000. On January 14, 2007, Balakrishnan made history as the first Dalit and the first judge from Kerala to be sworn in as the 37th Chief Justice of India. His tenure, which lasted until May 12, 2010, was one of the longest in Supreme Court history. During this period, he authored 219 judgments and sat on 787 benches, establishing a legacy in constitutional interpretation and judicial reform. His tenure was marked by significant contributions to constitutional jurisprudence, including landmark decisions on reservations, environmental protection, and public welfare. After retiring from the Supreme Court, Balakrishnan served as Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) from June 7, 2010, to May 11, 2015, becoming the sixth and longest-serving chair of that institution. During his NHRC tenure, he revitalized the practice of regional "Camp Sittings" across different states to expedite case disposal, and organized over 40 national-level consultations on human rights issues. In October 2022, the Government of India appointed Balakrishnan to chair a Commission of Inquiry tasked with examining the constitutional validity and implications of granting Scheduled Caste (SC) status to individuals from historically Dalit backgrounds who have converted to religions other than Hinduism, Sikhism, or Buddhism. This three-member commission, which also includes retired IAS officer Dr. Ravinder Kumar Jain and UGC member Prof. Sushma Yadav, was initially given a two-year mandate but has received multiple extensions, with its tenure currently extended through June 2026. As a Dalit Christian himself, Balakrishnan brings direct lived experience to these intersections of caste, conversion, and constitutional rights.