Caste, Environment Justice, and Intersectionality of Dalit–Black Ecologies

Abstract

Caste and race, Dalits and Black people, and the common ground between them have been analyzed in many areas, but their conjunction in the environmental field has been neglected. This article locates Dalit ecologies by examining the close connection between caste and nature. Drawing from a plural framework of environmental justice and histories of environmental struggles among African Americans, it focuses on historical and contemporary ecological struggles of Dalits. It contemplates how their initial articulations under the rubric of civil rights developed into significant struggles over issues of Dalit access, ownership, rights, and partnership regarding natural resources, where themes of environmental and social justice appeared at the forefront. The intersections between Dalit and Black ecologies, the rich legacies of Black Panthers and Dalit Panthers, and their overlaps in environmental struggles open for us a new historical archive, where Dalit and Black power can talk to each other in the environmental present.

Hydrosocial geographies: Cycles, spaces and spheres of concern

“…For Shrestha et al (2020), water debates in peri-urban Nepal are a clear case of caste exclusion as Dalits are marginalized in ways that require a socio-hydrological response to inequality. In her work on intersectional justice, Sharma (2022) argues that forms of political solidarity have rich potential to extend to Dalit-Black ecologies. Here, what emerges for hydrosocial scholarship is an opportunity to engage more directly with anti-racist and anti-caste concerns that think water through alternate practices of responding to, and thriving amidst, oppression.…”