Why understanding Dalit identity matters for planetary justice
Dalits are historically, socially, and culturally defined communities shaped through the violent act of being rendered “untouchable” within Hindu society. They continue to face pervasive yet often invisible forms of discrimination. Alongside Indigenous (Adivasi) peoples, Dalits are among those burdened with the worst effects of capitalist extraction, as their exploitation sustains consumption by elites. The roots of Dalit oppression can be traced to the origins of the caste system within Hindu religion.
Caste functions as an institutionalized system of oppression organized around hierarchies of purity, pollution, and occupational segregation. Brahmins (priests and teachers) occupy the top-most position, while Dalits/Avarnas/Atishudras are relegated to the lowest rung, historically forced into ‘impure’ occupations involving human waste, animal carcasses, skinning, and tanning. This hierarchy is enforced through socio-cultural prejudice, violent practices of untouchability, residential segregation, and the mob lynching of Dalits for transgressing the so-called holy Brahmanical norms which include abstinence from non-vegetarian (especially cow meat) food and alcohol consumption.
This institution gained an even stronger grip on the Indian economy during British colonial rule, when caste was formalized and bureaucratized, and vast stretches of land were allocated into the hands of upper castes, intensifying pre-existing hierarchies. Today, caste-based inequalities are further institutionalized through failures in land redistribution laws/policies, with Dalit agricultural labourers comprising over 86% of landless groups, which perpetuates poor living standards and unequal access to education. These inequalities persist alongside other discriminatory cultural, policing, and judicial practices, despite constitutional rights and guarantees of affirmative action.
In this video, I explore Dalit identity and Dalit consciousness—and why they matter for justice, both social and ecological.
First, I explain what Dalit consciousness is and why it is essential for imagining a fairer world. I then narrate two powerful poems by Dalit scholars and artists: Supernova by Gautam Vegda, and Agitation, Agitation, Agitation by Anjali Tayade (originally written in Marathi) and translated into English by Shardool Thakur. Together, these works demonstrate how Dalit collective consciousness, rooted in struggles for emancipation from Brahmanical Hinduism and capitalism, extends its political reach and transformative potential to the planet itself.
Why should the global community care?
Today, “Dalit” functions as a global category of oppression. As communities migrate, cultures migrate with them, and systems of caste oppression, upper-caste privilege, and caste inequality also travel with Hindu diasporas. In the video, I engage with the concept and movement of Dalit Marxism, drawing on the writings of Dalit social reformer and India’s constitutional forefather B.R. Ambedkar, as well as Dalit scholar Anand Teltumbde. This perspective challenges mainstream Marxist assumptions and the economic determinism that positions class as the base or foundational concern, and caste as the superstructure or peripheral one for reformation. Instead, Dalit Marxism re-centers caste as constitutive of class in postcolonial India’s capitalist state formation, re-informing global labor consciousness in ways that can ultimately dismantle capitalist class structures.
For a global degrowth movement to be successful, Dalit peoples’ collective political agency must be taken seriously.
The video insists that any political-economic transformation must begin with social transformation, operating across geographical scales.