1 - Introduction

Summary

This book comes out of my continuing research on the interrelationship between caste, Dalits, and the environment. The terminology of Dalit Ecologies is an open, collaborative space to collate insights from Dalit, backward, and anti-caste histories, socio-political thought, and movements and organizations, and to bring to light some aspects of contemporary Dalit environmental narratives. My deep interest in the subject inspired me to introduce an elective course on ‘Environment and Social Exclusion’ at Ashoka University in 2020, which proved to be very popular, and initiate an international webinar series on ‘Anti-Caste Politics and Environmental Justice’ and ‘Dalit Ecologies’ in 2020–21, organized by the Ambedkar Study Centre, Seshadripuram Evening Degree College, Bengaluru, in association with the Antiracist Research and Policy Centre, American University, Washington, DC.

My conception of Dalit Ecologies is also influenced by, and derives from, rich academic and political work in other parts of the world around ‘Black ecologies’, ‘Racial ecologies’, and ‘Feminist ecologies’, which analyse the interrelation between race, gender, and environmentalism through an interdisciplinary lens of race and gender studies, and socio-political ecology. Simultaneously, they sculpt distinct histories, stories, and approaches of racialized communities in expressing ecological relations. I draw insights from collective thinking and initiatives on ‘Global Black Ecologies’, which focus on ‘the critical insights, world-making, and world-sustaining practices of global Black communities’. While primarily Afro-diasporic in nature, they also express ‘connections to communities without recent African ancestry who have articulated political and social connections to Blackness with respect to their position within racialized national and global hierarchies, such as caste, exemplifying Achille Mbembe's conceptualization of “Becoming Black of the World”’.

The chapters are grounded in my fieldwork and visits, interviews, and conversations with Dalit, backward caste, and anti-caste people and activists, grassroots organizations and NGOs involved in Dalit issues, leaders of political parties, industrialists, and government officials – in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, and Punjab. Dalit autobiographies, coming out from the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and West Bengal, have also been insinuated to comprehend the wide canvass of the subject. The chapters here include rural and urban environments; industrial, technological, and agricultural systems; developmental and anthropogenic activities; economic, political, and cultural spheres; and Dalit social and political organizations.