Anand Teltumbde

Dalit rights activist

In 2020, the Indian scholar and civil rights campaigner Anand Teltumbde was arrested for allegedly inciting caste-based violence and associating with Maoist groups. According to the US and human rights groups, though, the charges are trumped up—and Teltumbde was targeted by Narendra Modi’s government for his advocacy of Dalit rights and criticism of the Hindutva ideology sweeping the country. A sophisticated thinker, Teltumbde is the author of 2018’s Republic of Caste, which argues that his country’s free-market reforms are not, as some argue, the solution to inequality between castes, and that positive discrimination for Dalits in fact only reinforces unfairness and thus should be abolished.