Almost eighty years after Independence, Dalits in India remain shackled by caste-based violence and systemic oppression. From brutal murders and sexual violence to everyday humiliations, the atrocities continue unabated. Nearly every day brings a reminder that the horrors of the past persist in our present — like Nilesh Rathod, a Dalit man in Amreli, Gujarat, beaten, ultimately to death, for addressing a teen from a higher caste as ‘beta’ (child); a Dalit man’s wedding party attacked by upper-caste men over music and riding a mare in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh; and Jitendra Ahirwar, a Dalit groom in Madhya Pradesh’s Tikamgarh, pelted with stones for refusing to walk barefoot through an upper-caste neighbourhood.