The Dalit I Define: Social Media and Individualized Activism in Subaltern Spheres

Abstract

This paper discusses an explorative study of emerging Dalit activism in online realms. It is the aim of this study to provide empirical content to debates that link the advance of social media to shifts in citizenship and the manifestation of democracy. It seeks to unravel the complexity and hybrid appearance of online activism in practice by focussing on underexplored subaltern spheres. After some contextualizing reflections concerning literature on Dalit media and online political participation, it assesses attempts of prominent Dalit bloggers to employ social media in their battle for justice, representation and socio-economic mobility. Contributing to current debates on collective (and connective) action and 'new' or personalized politics -especially since Web 2.0 -the article stresses the importance of embracing a broad conceptualization of online political practice and the need to explore such practice as part of contemporary projects of self. It is argued that, in order to explore the dynamics of personalized politics within marginalized communities, one needs to assess the way in which the intertwinement of these individual projects of self and the collective emancipatory project appear in online social networking strategies of digital activists. As such, the analysis adds to the understanding of every day activism at grassroots level in the age of the Internet.

Gender, Caste and Subjectivity: Revisiting the #MeToo Movement in India

“…Additionally, it is also important to highlight the inaccessibility of digital platforms for Dalit women. Explorations regarding the impact of the social media in expanding the scope of marginalised, emancipatory politics has been explored predominantly in case of Dalit politics (De Kruijf, 2015;Kumar and Subramani, 2014). For Dalit women, the problem is two-pronged and concerns accessibility and epistemic authority.…”

New Media and the Dalit Counter-public Sphere

“…Facebook became available in more than eleven Indian languages and Twitter also enabled tweeting in six vernacular languages since 2015, paving the way for greater accessibility. These activities have led to a sense of an emerging “digital Dalit.” The “digital Dalit” (Nayar 2011; de Kruijf 2015) is a commonly used term among these activists. Similar to the complex category of Dalit, “digital Dalit” is fraught with contestations, and there is no uniform identity—a point I will revisit in the following sections.…”

“…Online media are providing the technocultural means to express lived experiences of systematic injustice, thereby enabling Dalit activists to articulate counter-meaning-making practices. The focus on digital action departs from current scholarship on Dalit mobilization, which has largely drawn upon social movement perspectives (Omvedt 2001; Pai 2013; Zelliot 1992) and organized media practices (de Kruijf 2015; Jeffrey 2001; Kujat 2016; Kumar and Subramani 2014; Loynd 2009; Nayar 2011; Neyazi et al 2016; Thirumal and Tartakov 2011).…”