April, the birth month of Dr B R Ambedkar, is celebrated as Dalit History Month in India and globally. This call was first given by activist Paari Chezhian in 2011 and was put into action by a six-member team consisting of Vee Karunakaran, Christina Thomas Dhanaraj, Asha Kowtal, Sanghapali Aruna, Manisha Devi and Thenmozhi Soundararajan in 2015. The concept of this initiative was inspired by Black History Month that is celebrated in the United States in the month of February. With each year, this initiative is only expanding, with a greater number of organisations contributing to it and popularising the discourse.
Why do we need a Dalit History Month?
Throughout history, upper-caste Hindus have ill-treated Dalits and committed violent crimes against them. Even today, casteism is alive and thriving, with Savarnas governing all institutional spaces and silencing the voices of Dalits. They are the ones to write school textbooks, edit journals, author monographs, produce edited volumes, and make documentary films. Dalit scholars and journalists have historically been kept away from these exercises. Therefore, the history writing in India has been a product of Brahmin Savarna consciousness.
There are many stories of Dalits resisting violence and indignities inflicted upon by Savarnas. However, the history that we read has failed to note these instances with sincerity. Contributions of Dalits to various spheres of life have been erased from mainstream discourses. Therefore, Dalit History Month is an initiative to reclaim the agency of a mass of people who have historically remained peripheral in mainstream consciousness, to bring forth their stories of resistance, resilience, heroism and to challenge the Savarna-hegemony in knowledge production. Dalit or Dalit feminist histories are not merely meant for filing gaps into the already existing upper caste and Brahminical discourses. It is meant for claiming a space of its own to have a body of research, literary works, testimonies, oral histories and memory that provides it with a sense of independence, even within the world of reading, writing, teaching and learning.
