Thenmozhi Soundararajan
Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a prominent Indian-American Dalit rights activist based in United States of America.[1] She is also a transmedia storyteller and a technologist.[2]
Personal life
Thenmozhi was in fifth standard when she learnt that she belongs to the Dalit community, when she was reading about how Bhopal gas tragedy affected a group of people called 'Untouchables'. Upon a conversation with her mother, she came to know that she is a Dalit too. She openly came out as a Dalit by making a film on caste and violence against women as a part of her college thesis at UC Berkeley. The release of her film and her coming out as a Dalit publicly had many consequences. While fellow Dalit friends secretly confided in her about their Dalit identity, she also faced discrimination from Indian professors in her campus, who refused to advice her on projects.
Activism
Thenmozhi Soundararajan found her calling in the art of storytelling. She used this art to speak about casteism within 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 in the Outlook magazine about her Dalit experience in United States of America met with a huge response from people[3][4]. She received many messages of support coupled with death threats on social media. She then began to create an American map of Dalit community and reached out to them, thereby facilitating the creation of a diaspora community in process.
Dalit women fight
Thenmozhi Soundararajan has been painstakingly documenting Dalit Women Fight, a movement led by Dalit women protesting against caste related sexual violence and other human rights violations against them. As a part of this project, she creates and translates stories across platforms that includes social media posts, professional photography, security training for its participants among others.
Fellowships
She is a recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation fellowship in 2015.