April is marked as Dalit history month and this year the theme is ‘Dalit hope’. Our history textbooks omit these stories but now, thanks to social media, artists and storytellers from the community are telling their own tales and celebrating them. Metrolife puts together a list of Instagram pages that are celebrating this month in their unique ways.
@equalitylabs
Equality Labs is an Ambedkarite South Asian power-building organisation. They are celebrating hope this month by telling the stories of icons from the community. The first post revolves around folk artist Mariamma Chedathy. All the posts and stories of this year as well as the previous years can be found on dalithistorymonth.medium.com
@thebigfatbao
Maithili Madhusudanan is a communication designer with a focus on illustration. Her work revolves around wildlife, conservation, politics and casteism. It is bright, loud, colourful and happy. This month she is celebrating the extraordinary things done by ordinary women. Her first illustration and post is dedicated to Divya Kandukuri, a writer and anti-caste activist.
@anticastecat
Divya Kandukuri is a writer, anti-caste activist and the founder of The Blue Dawn, a caste conscious counselling facilitator. She has been at the forefront of many conversations on caste, many a time conveying these issues through pop culture, especially film. For Dalit History month, she is curating a list of books to read. The first in the line-up is ‘We also made history: Women in the Ambedkarite Movement’ by Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon.
@bakeryprasad
Siddhesh Gautam is an illustrator and visual storyteller whose work revolves around politics and caste. His illustrations are often supplemented with captions that tell the tales of Dalit joys and struggles. For this month he will be sharing his visual interpretation of pieces of literature by various Dalit artists, writers, scholars, intellectuals and individuals.
@dalit_history
Started in March, the page aims to amplify Dalit stories and history every day. With the slogan ‘Every month is a Dalit history month’, the page has covered the stories of Nangeli, Kanshiram and more. Their latest post recounts the story of Palwankar Baloo, India’s first great cricketer, who wasn’t allowed to eat or drink with the rest of his team due to caste
barriers.