Every April, Dalit History Month brings caste and resistance into public discourse. Yet Dalit women are still largely framed through stories of violence, labour, and survival, with limited attention given to joy, desire, or their inner lives.

In her latest book, Dalit Women and the Fullness of Life, published by Penguin Random House India, Christina Dhanuja shifts this focus to foreground lived experiences shaped by identity, sisterhood, desire, trauma, and joy.

The book moves between the intimate and the historical, beginning with Dhanuja’s journey in writing it and an exploration of the word “Dalit.” Structured across 10 thematic chapters from ‘Work’ and ‘Movements’ to ‘Body’, ‘Desire’, ‘Faith’, and ‘Joy’, it highlights dimensions of life often overlooked in both public discourse and academic scholarship.

Written over several years across cities including New York, Chennai, and Visakhapatnam, the book reflects a deeply personal and political journey, one that seeks to document not just conditions of survival but the pursuit of a fuller life.

In an interview over Zoom, Dhanuja discusses the motive behind writing this book and how she used data to bring to light caste violence and discrimination, among other things.

Q. While the book is historically grounded, it is also deeply personal. How did you navigate the relationship between memoir and political analysis in your writing?

Dhanuja: It is a personal book, but it’s also, as cliched as it might sound, political. My writing has always emerged from the personal, especially when writing about caste and gender. But it is also true that Dalit lives, and in particular, Dalit women’s lives, have long been politicised. We are rarely afforded the luxury of existing as private individuals. So, in some ways, part of this struggle is the right to live personally: to have privacy, softness, desire, fullness, joy, and ordinariness, without constantly being treated as a political site.

This in turn creates an interesting tension in Dalit writing. How does one write politically without drawing from the personal? How does one write personally without confronting politics? I believe that paradox sits at the heart of contemporary Dalit literature—and my writing. Even if I had wanted to write differently, I am not sure what the alternative would’ve looked like. Where is the space for Dalit women to write politically without revealing the personal? And is there room to write personally without addressing the realities that shape our lives?

Historically, Dalit women’s writing has largely taken autobiographical forms such as memoir, poetry, and short stories. Long-form nonfiction is few and far between. There are exceptions, of course, but this expectation persists: Dalit women’s writing must emerge from lived experience and personal testimony. So, this blending of memoir and political analysis is not accidental. It reflects both my own writing preference and the constraints of what is considered acceptable within the landscape today.

Q. What drove you to write Dalit Women and the Fullness of Life at this moment?

Dhanuja: Because it is long overdue. Dalit women have always lived complex, expansive lives, yet the stories that are being told about us, in media, academia, and even on social media, often reduce us to stereotypes. We are either portrayed as victims or as symbols of extraordinary resilience. But where is the space to be human?

Dalit women are rarely spoken of in relation to fulfilment. It’s labour, not work. It’s sexual violence, not desire. It’s surviving, never thriving. And that reduction does more than just misrepresent us. It shapes what society, and even ourselves, believe is possible for Dalit women.

Yes, I’m a survivor of many things, but I’m not just that. I’m also someone who desires, who dreams, who experiences joy. I see the women around me, my sisters and peers, living rich, complicated, beautiful lives. Why are those stories still absent from public imagination?

Through this book, I want to interrupt this narrowing; this collective tendency to reduce Dalit women into symbolic figures and instead insist on their humanity in all its contradictions and complexities.

Q. To what extent do you think political parties have shaped or sustained these stereotypes over time?

Dhanuja: Not exclusively. I find that political parties often amplify what society is already willing to hear. The stereotyping of Dalit women has been a much broader, collective process involving academia, media, political actors, and society at large.

In fact, I believe academia and public media have played especially powerful roles. Dalit lives are assumed to be constantly available for study, analysis, and categorisation. And research frameworks often end up reducing people into subjects rather than recognising them as full human beings. These then circulate outward through mainstream and social media and public discourse, and thereafter become normalised.

Perhaps we must ask harder questions: Who is producing this type of ‘knowledge,’ at whose expense, at what cost, and to what end?

Q. You write about self-preservation in the book. How do you understand the tension between visibility, often demanded by affirmative action frameworks, and the need for self-preservation among marginalised communities?

Dhanuja: That’s a very important question. I think there’s a distinction between institutional disclosure and social coming out. In many educational institutions, reservation categories become visible through admission lists, attendance sheets, administrative records, and so on. Sometimes students are effectively “outed” by systems or by others around them. That can create terribly hostile environments.

I remember seeing this myself when I appeared for university entrance exams. Categories were publicly marked, and once those labels become visible, discrimination can easily follow. Perhaps institutions need stronger privacy protections, and community identities should not be casually exposed in ways that place students (or their other constituents) at risk.

The “coming out” I discuss in the book is more about social disclosure (telling friends, peers, colleagues, or followers on social media) or being vocally and publicly Dalit. And I strongly believe no one should feel pressured to do that. But importantly—this I explain in the book as well—there is nothing inherently Dalit about any of us that mandates a broadcast!

At the same time, people shouldn’t lose opportunities because of fear. Reservation policies exist because of structural inequality. And the burden should not fall on marginalised students to hide themselves in order to survive institutions that are unwilling to confront discrimination.

Q. Your book draws heavily on data and statistics around caste violence and discrimination. What did engaging with that data reveal to you?

Dhanuja: I think data is key to understanding the scale and type of violence Dalit women are subjected to, especially within South Asia. But behind every statistic are actual people. People often cite that ‘at least four Dalit women are sexually assaulted every day.’ But that ain’t merely a number, although that number is likely to be much higher in reality.

Those are four lives, four acts of violence, and four groups of (or individual) perpetrators. To treat that information casually, or merely use it to establish that ‘caste is not a thing of the past’ is deeply irresponsible—and lazy—to say the least. Data is not separate from humanity. It points back to people.

In the book, I try to move between statistics and lived experience. I discuss individual women, couples killed for crossing caste lines, and people whose lives were shaped or ended by caste violence. I also cite data that goes beyond violence, and try not to hyperfocus on only certain types of violence.

Q. What conversations do you hope this book will open up?

Dhanuja: First and foremost, I’d love to see it leading to more Dalit women-authored literature. I hope to see them writing expansively, across domains and subjects; from philosophy to science to romance to political theory. And I hope to see publishing houses becoming open to that. There’s a section in the Joy chapter, where I imagine a world where Dalit women write about electron configurations and binary black holes as much as they do about trauma. A wondrous world, where writing is a portal to all things joyful.

Second, I hope this book opens more serious—and less rhetorical—conversations around caste-based trauma and anti-caste mental health practices.

And third, I hope it pushes institutions to think more deeply about labour, healthcare, policy, safety, and what it actually means to create environments where Dalit women can thrive—not merely survive.

Q. Finally, how would you change the way caste and Dalit history are taught in Indian educational institutions?

Dhanuja: I think education must become more courageous. We need to ask ourselves: do we want students to simply absorb information and societally approved narratives, or do we want them to become capable of critical thought? Teaching history needn’t be a one-way street. Students can and should be encouraged to question, debate, write critically, and wrestle with contradicting perspectives.

For example, when teaching about Gandhi (ref Joy chapter), students can also be encouraged to engage critically with his caste and race politics. The goal of education isn’t obedience, right? It must be the cultivation of critical analysis, moral courage, and independent thought—something that educational institutions (and the rest of us) are so direly in need of.