About The Dalit Project
Our Standpoint
The Dalit Project writes from a Dalit standpoint. That is an editorial position, not a demographic label — a way of seeing caste for what it actually is: a live, material system of graded inequality, enforced through endogamy, occupational fixation, ritual hierarchy, and the ongoing control of land, labour, and power. Not a cultural quirk. Not a fading tradition. Not a prejudice some people happen to hold and others have simply outgrown.
We work from an Ambedkarite horizon. The aim is annihilation, not reform — dismantling the hierarchy, not administering it more gently. Ambedkar, Phule, Periyar, and the generations of Dalit-Bahujan intellectuals who followed them are treated here as primary theorists, not decorative citation.
"Dalit" names a political identity of self-assertion, not a synonym for underprivileged, marginalized, or backward. The people this magazine covers organize, litigate, theorize, build, and disagree with each other — they are not a population to be processed or pitied. We center Dalit interpretive authority as the account of caste, not one perspective to be balanced against an "objective" outside view. The outside view already has the run of most newsrooms; the dominant-caste default is not neutrality, it's a standpoint that has simply gone unnamed.
Objectivity, here, means accuracy about power: naming the system, naming who benefits, and refusing to mistake the dominant-caste default for the neutral one. That is compatible with rigor, not opposed to it. We verify facts, mark uncertainty, publish disagreement inside Dalit-Bahujan politics, and are willing to criticize Dalit individuals and institutions when the evidence calls for it. A clear standpoint is not a license to lower the evidentiary bar — it's a reason to hold it higher.
We write for readers in India and for readers across the global Dalit diaspora — not one audience with the other treated as an afterthought. Caste travels. So does our coverage.
Bahujan and Adivasi communities are adjacent to this fight, not incidental to it — caste and systemic injustice bear on both, and The Dalit Project stands with them against it. But the way caste operates for Dalit people is its own mechanism, not a variation on what Bahujan or Adivasi communities face, and this magazine's standpoint is exclusively Dalit: Dalit perspective, Dalit experience, Dalit expertise, first and always.
Final editorial authority over what The Dalit Project publishes rests with Dalit editors. That isn't a value we aspire to. It's the rule the outlet is built on — seeGovernance below for exactly how that works.
Governance
Structure
The Dalit Project is an independent, founder-led outlet — not the media arm of an existing political party or movement organization. It is registered and operates from Australia. That's a legal and personal reality for the founder, not a strategic choice to sit outside India's regulatory environment, though it does have that effect.
The founder is a Dalit social-justice research scholar, not a career journalist, and holds a hybrid role: they sit inside the Dalit editorial group carrying final editorial authority (below), while also running the outlet's funding, vision, and institutional strategy — functions a founding editorial collective doesn't typically hold all at once.
The governance rule
Two groups exist here, deliberately not the same one:
- Contributors, broadly. Majority Dalit, consistent with the outlet's standpoint and beat. Bahujan and Adivasi contributors working on shared terrain — the POA Act, land dispossession, exclusion from state power — and non-Dalit allies doing research support, translation, design, or technical work, are welcome in this wider pool.
- Final editorial authority, narrowly. Held exclusively by Dalit editors. Bahujan and Adivasi communities are adjacent to this fight — caste is a live, material force in both, and The Dalit Project stands with them against it — but the way caste operates for Dalit people isn't the same mechanism it is for them, and this outlet's specific standpoint and authority is Dalit. Folding a different community's authority into that would dilute the specifically Dalit standpoint this rule exists to protect, not strengthen it.
Verification is by self-identification — being a human being with an actual Dalit caste position, not satisfiable by an AI system regardless of how fluent its output reads. An AI agent may work alongside a commissioned Dalit contributor as research or drafting support; it never holds the byline or the standpoint claim a piece rests on.
Right now, at this stage of the outlet's life, the founder holds every one of these roles — editorial and operational — directly. That will change as more contributors and editors join; we'd rather say so plainly than imply a masthead that doesn't exist yet.
What we publish
Every piece carries a subject-matter section and a format. The formats:
- Analysis — argued structural analysis of a live issue.
- Explainers — shorter, accessible breakdowns of a policy, ruling, or event.
- Opinion — bylined argument, shorter than a full analysis piece.
- In Their Own Words — first-person, community-authored pieces, edited for clarity and safety, never ghostwritten or reframed by staff.
- Data & Research — original data work and accessible synthesis of existing research, contextualized through an Ambedkarite standpoint rather than presented as neutral.
Funding and independence
The Dalit Project is currently self-funded by the founder. We're pursuing Australian government arts and journalism grants and university research partnerships as the next phase of funding, ahead of philanthropic grants or reader membership — in that order, deliberately.
One exclusion is absolute, not case-by-case: we will not take funding from any entity tied to Hindutva-adjacent or dominant-caste political organizations. Every other funder is evaluated individually against one rule that never moves — no funder, of any size, ever receives pre-publication review or editorial influence. Final editorial authority stays with Dalit editors regardless of who is paying the bills.
Corrections
We correct errors visibly, not silently. See our Corrections Policyfor how that works, and how to report a mistake.