DALIT PANTHERS: A SHORT-LIVED UPRISING IN MAHARASHTRA

By the mid-1970s, Dalit Panthers had chapters across urban and rural Maharashtra. They also participated in wider struggles - famously backing the 1974 food riot movement led by socialist women which forced then-Chief Minister Shankarrao More to improve grain rations.

- TDG NETWORK

Demonstration against manual scavenging (Chennai, 2005) - Although not directly part of the Dalit Panthers, this photo represents continued Dalit activism. A Wikimedia Commons entry notes that the image was taken "during a demonstration to eradicate Manual Scavenging by Aathi Thamilar Peravai held in Chennai on 18 December 2005" - illustrating the larger anti-caste struggle that the Panthers helped inspire.

The Dalit Panther movement was born in 1972 in Bombay (now Mumbai) when a group of young Maharashtrian Dalit poets and activists rose in militant anger against caste atrocities.

Writer-poets Namdeo “Namdev” Dhasal and J.V. Pawar recall that they began discussing a new organisation while walking through Kamathipura, after witnessing brutal attacks on Dalits with no justice from authorities. Inspired by Ambedkarite Buddhism and Marxist ideas, the founders even borrowed the name and logo of America’s Black Panther Party - learning about it from an international magazine - and chose the name “Dalit Panthers” in tribute to the U.S. movement for Black rights. The first public act was a call to boycott India’s 25th Independence Day (15 Aug 1972), terming it a “Black Independence Day” for India’s “untouchables”. The organization formally launched on 9 July 1972 with a fiery manifesto urging Dalits to “rise up” and overthrow the caste system.