What’s Featuring Dalits

Dalits, a self-identified term for the formerly untouchable ‘lower’ caste people who are mainly from South Asia, have never been featured in our own stories. There are at least 356 million of us in India, and in United States we form a significant but mostly excluded minority of the Indian American population.

Caste is still a glaring reality, both in South Asia and among our communities across the world, especially in the America. Yet it is deemed an elusive fiction from a very long time ago. As someone who grew up in a Dalit manual scavenging caste family in India, passing as dominant caste while hiding my identity for the fear of ostracization, and still hearing everyday that caste didn’t exist around me, I would know.

Now in the United States, as a journalist and the author of the award-winning non-fiction memoir, Coming Out as Dalit, I write about caste and stories that feature Dalits, but also everyone else who has been excluded from the narratives and ideas of mainstream culture. Along with a decade of writing in India, my work has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic and Foreign Policy Magazine.

Why this now?

You don’t need me to tell you that the news media industry is falling apart and reporting and independent journalism is now more important than ever. While it’s still relevant to publish at outlets with familiar names, there is simply isn’t enough time to spend waiting around to hear back from frazzled editors as yet another story loses its timeline and relevance.

This is a space for short reflections, feature-length stories, commentary, essays and deeply reported analysis. I will also be inviting experts, commentators, journalists and justice advocates for conversations, in a podcast version to be launched shortly.