revolutionary remembrance: Towards the Centenary of the Mahad Satyagraha

On Saturday, 28 March 2026, ASAP | art organised a panel discussion with Vikrant Bhise, Diwas Raja KC and Aban Raza on their work around anti-caste, feminist and working people’s movements, taking as a cue their participation in the exhibition, revolutionary remembrance, held last year in Mahad—a place of pilgrimage for the Dalit movement.

In 1873, Jotirao and Savitribai Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj—society of truth seekers—to fight against landlordism, Brahminism and the bureaucracy, and to work towards the imaginary utopia of bahujan samaj or collective of the majority. In the same year, Jotirao Phule published Gulamgiri—a seminal text that rallied against the slavery of Dalit and Bahujan people, to struggle against which Savitribai and he also set up schools for the education of girls and children from Dalit and Bahujan communities. A few decades later, a young Dalit boy, Ramchandra Babaji More, a resident of the port town of Dasgaon, which was near Mahad, itself known for its proximity to Raigad, the capital of the Shudra king Shivaji’s Maratha Empire, would benefit from the growing sense that education was necessary for the pursuit of freedom. A member of the temporary industrial workforce in Bombay, and later a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), More became known as a red star in the blue sky, and would bring to the notice of Dr Ambedkar the crucial issue of the lack of public access to water in Mahad. On 20 March 1927, Dr Ambedkar, along with 2500 Dalits and a few upper-caste comrades, would utilise rights conferred by citizenship to drink water from a public tank, until then denied to the Dalit community owing to the abhorrent practice of “untouchability.”

Thus began the first civil rights struggle in India, one which gathered renewed force in 1956 with Babasaheb’s adoption of Buddhism and then again in the 1970s, with the founding of the Dalit Panthers. Although inspired by the Black Panthers, this revolutionary lineage was a century old, for Gulamgiri was dedicated to the Black people of America, whose recent freedom from enslavement had been an inspiration for the Satyashodhaks. The anti-caste movement in India, then, has been global and universal from its very inception. It is perhaps, to emphasise this, at a time when we witness genocide against Palestinians, an ongoing war against Iran and everyday violence against minorities in South Asia, all in the name of “development,” for the extraction of natural resources and the deracination of labour, that the observatory—consisting of Ujjwal Kanishk Utkarsh, Frida Robles and Thomas Crowley—curated the exhibition, revolutionary remembrance, in Mahad, last year in the week of Manusmriti Dahan Diwas. As the world celebrates Christmas, lakhs of people gather in Mahad to remember the burning of the authority that legitimates oppression. We take strength from this multitude.

As we approach the centenary of the Mahad Satyagraha next year, in this edited conversation, three of the twelve exhibiting artists speak to us about the work they do with their communities to dismantle structural oppression and their reflections on the meaning of solidarity today.

Vikrant Bhise is a Mumbai-based visual artist whose artistic practice weaves civic resistance in the present with key texts and figures from history—spanning poetry, literature and songs from the annals of Bhimgeet and iterating his commitment to the revolutionary spirit inherent in Ambedkarite consciousness. His solo exhibitions include Human (2019) and Sense and Sensibilities: A Reflective Realisation (2024). Recipient of the Lalit Kala Akademi National Award (2018), the Bombay Art Society Award (2018) and the NDTV Masterstroke Emerging Artist of the Year Award (2026), his work has been exhibited widely in India and internationally.

Diwas Raja KC is a Nepal-based cultural worker, curator, archivist and researcher whose practice combines archival inquiry with community-centred methodologies, focusing on labour, gender, queerness and the politics of the commons in South Asia. His work has been exhibited internationally and as Head of Research and Archives at the Nepal Picture Library, he has led projects such as Dalit: A Quest for Dignity (2016), The Public Life of Women (2018) and The Skin of Chitwan (2019). He is also a Guest Professor at Kathmandu University School of Arts.

Aban Raza is a Delhi-based artist whose work raises fundamental questions about the lives of “large minorities” and “working majorities,” and asserts the right to protest and to exist. Her solo exhibitions include Luggage, People and a Little Space (2020), There Is Something Tremendous About the Blue Sky (2022) and Nothing Human Is Alien to Me (2025). She has curated several projects with SAHMAT and received the Asia Arts Future Award from Asia Society India Centre in 2024.

(Featured Image: “Mahad 1927: The First Civil Rights Struggle of India.” [Vikrant Bhise. 2024. Mixed media on canvas, 72 × 48 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.])

Recorded on 28 March 2026.

To learn more about struggles against caste-based discrimination, read Bashaheb Kambale's account of his father's life as a Dalit textile mill worker, K. Sajaya’s ode to Professor G.N. Saibaba, Ankan Kazi’s essay on Dalit Camera, Sukanya Deb’s conversation with Vishal Kumaraswamy and Steevez's review of MKP Gridaran's Dalit Subbaiah (2025).

To learn more about artists working to explore the legacy of Dr Ambedkar, watch the episode of In Person featuring Mahishaa as he speaks about his film Babsaheb in Bengaluru (2024) and Prabhakar Duwarah's two-part conversation with Supriya Dongre about her work on display as part of the Serendipity Arts Residency open studio in 2022.