From Paper to Pixel: Exploring anti-caste Print Culture

This interdisciplinary project explores the historical trajectories of print activism among low caste and Dalit movements in south India, and how print continues to play a significant role in a range of ongoing anti-caste endeavours across the country today. We are interested in exploring the positive financial and organisational impact that the emergence of community-focused printing presses had on local Dalit movements, as well as in mapping and preserving local community and family archives relating to this. The project conducts a case study of Siddhartha Press, a pioneering anti-caste printing press founded at Kolar Gold Fields (Karnataka) in the year 1919 and one of the most important publishers of the work of Dalit intellectual Iyothee Thass. Siddhartha Press was one of the earliest Dalit printing presses and was a pioneer in bilingual publishing – English and Tamil.

The project explores the intersection between communication technologies and social movements both historically and in the context of new digital print strategies. It employs an inter-disciplinary approach including ethnographic methods drawn from anthropology/sociology, textual studies, and oral and archival history. Tracing the local impact of Siddhartha Press, we will explore how new technologies have facilitated a global Dalit readership and international activist community. Our findings will be directly relevant to those with an interest in the history and practice of anti-caste activism, radical histories of print, and of social justice movements globally. It will also be of relevant to histories of medicine (Thass’s texts partly deal with Siddha medicine), and community organising and archival practices.

From Paper to Pixel will develop partnerships with creative and cultural organisations in India, including Sakya Buddhist Society, Ashoka Dhamma Vihara, The Buddhist Society of India, Siddhartha Charitable Trust and Neelam Cultural Centre, Neelam Publications and Neelam Books.

With these partners the project will conduct the following work:

a) Primary research, through semi-structured interviews with family members and founders of the press, and other stakeholders/archives in South India.

b) Mapping content and continuities of themes to contemporary Dalit publishing. We will catalogue and preserve ‘at risk’ family archives through digitization in collaboration with South Asia Commons archive

c) Public engagement with a number of other Buddhist and Dalit organisations, via an exhibition in April 2024 during Dalit History Month.