Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a Dalit rights activist based in United States of America.[1] She is also a transmedia storyteller, song writer, hip hop musician and a technologist.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]

Personal life

Thenmozhi Soundararajan's parents are from a village in rural India and experienced inter-caste violence there. Her father is a doctor and her mother was the first woman from her family to get a college education.[9] She learned from her mother that she was a Dalit while at school. She had been reading about how the Bhopal disaster affected Untouchables, asked her mother some questions and was told that she, too, came from the community.[10]

Soundararajan publicly admitted to being a Dalit when she made a documentary film on caste and violence against women as a part of her college thesis at University of California, Berkeley. She says the decision had many consequences: while fellow Dalits secretly confided in her about their identity, she also faced discrimination from almost all of the Indian professors in her campus, who refused to advise her on projects.[10]

Professional life

Soundararajan is a filmmaker, transmedia artist and a storyteller. She is also the Executive Director of Third World Majority, a women of color Media/Tech Justice training and organizing institution based in Oakland. She is also a co-founder of the Media Justice Network and Third World Majority is one of the network’s national anchor organizations. In that context she has worked with over 300 community organizations across the United States.[11]

Activism

Soundararajan found her calling in the art of storytelling. She used this to speak about casteism within the Indian diaspora. She worked with Marvin Etizioni, a bassist on her debut blues album, Broken People, which was a collection of liberation songs about people belonging to the Black and Dalit community. Her essay and a photo series about her Dalit experience in the US was published in Outlook magazine.

Dalit History Month

Soundararajan has also been involved in the curation and creation of Dalit History Month, a radical history project.[12][13]

References

  1. ↑ "Thenmozhi Soundararajan: fighting the Dalit women's fight with art and activism | World news". The Guardian. 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2017-08-05.
  2. ↑ "About | dalitnationdotcom". Dalitnation.com. Retrieved 2017-08-05.
  3. ↑ "Creating Technology by the People, for the People". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2017-08-12.
  4. ↑ Holpuch, Amanda (2015-03-12). "Thenmozhi Soundararajan: fighting the Dalit women's fight with art and activism". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-08-12.
  5. ↑ "Thenmozhi Soundararajan Archives - The Seattle Globalist". The Seattle Globalist. Retrieved 2017-08-12.
  6. ↑ "Asha Kowtal and Thenmozhi Soundararajan: The Journey towards Liberation - The Feminist Wire". The Feminist Wire. 2014-05-02. Retrieved 2017-08-12.
  7. ↑ "The Black Indians". https://www.outlookindia.com/. Retrieved 2017-08-12. External link in |work= (help)
  8. ↑ Sathian, Sanjena. "Can Art Dismantle a Centuries-Old System?". OZY. Retrieved 2017-08-12.
  9. ↑ Sathian, Sanjena (2015-04-14). "Can Art Dismantle a Centuries-Old System? | Rising Stars". OZY. Retrieved 2017-08-05.
  10. 1 2 Team, ELLE. "Still I rise". Elle India. Retrieved 2016-05-29.
  11. ↑
  12. ↑ History, Dalit (2015-04-01). "Dalit History Matters". Round Table India. Retrieved 2017-08-05.
  13. ↑  Apr 21, 2015 9:30AM EDT (2015-04-21). "How to Fight a Deadly Caste System". Colorlines. Retrieved 2017-08-05.

Further reading

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