Culture

Dalit art, music, writing and faith, long dismissed as lesser, asserted on Dalit terms as culture in its own right.

Literature

Study

“My dagger is my pen”: a study of Gurram Jashua, the father of Dalit literature in Telugu

The historian Chinnaiah Jangam reads the life and poetry of Gurram Jashua (1895–1971) as a Dalit life narrative, like the slave narratives of the United States. He argues that Jashua's poem Gabbilam (The Bat) brought the experience of untouchability into classical Telugu poetry and turned that poetry against caste.

Explains: Chinnaiah Jangam, "Desecrating the sacred taste: The making of Gurram Jashua—the father of dalit literature in Telugu", The Indian Economic and Social History Review 51, no. 2 (2014): 177–198

Film

Study

Not “anti-caste cinema” but Dalit cinema: a study of Pa. Ranjith and the new Tamil films

Sree Govind Bharatvaraj, a media scholar, argues that the Tamil films led by Pa. Ranjith grew out of the Ambedkarite movements of the 1990s, not out of earlier cinema's caste critique, and should be called Dalit cinema.

Explains: Sree Govind Bharatvaraj, "Contemporary Anti-Caste Cinema: Pa. Ranjith, Dalit Movements, Cultural Assertion and the Politics of Representation in Mainstream Tamil Cinema", South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 49(1), 2026, pp. 167–187