Dalit Panthers

Vikrant Bhise represents the historical trajectory of the Dalit Panthers, a revolutionary group of poets, artists and writers within the Ambedkarite political movement founded in the early 1970s by Namdeo Dhasal, Raja Dhale, Arjun Dangle, and J. V. Pawar, that drew upon the ideological legacy of the Black Panther party of the 1960s in the United States. Bhise has a deeper lens into the trajectory of the organisation towards the emancipation of the Dalit and the historically oppressed communities and their protests against the caste atrocities in Maharashtra through his father Vishvas Bhau Bhise who was directly involved with the group.

Bhise reproduces the letterheads, iconographic elements and portraits of leaders used by the Dalit Panthers in their published pamphlets, manifesto and magazines through watercolour, gouache and ink in the series ‘Archival Historicity/Dalit Panthers’. This body of work commemorates the movement’s enduring influence in carrying out constitutional democratic practices and the fight for social justice within the rubric of our nation’s history.