A two-day conference in Bengaluru brought Dalit feminist organising and mental health practice together to explore what care looks like when caste and other structural inequalities are taken seriously
The National Federation of Dalit Women (NFDW) and The Blue Dawn organised Building Begumpura: A Conference on Anti-Caste Mental Health Practices at Sabha, Bengaluru from 14-15 April, marking Phule-Ambedkar Jayanti.
Described by the organisers as India’s first national conference to centre mental health through an explicit anti-caste, Ambedkarite and social justice lens, it brought together two pioneering organisations: The Blue Dawn in anti-caste mental health practice and NFDW in Dalit feminist organising and movement-building. It took its name from Begumpura, the city without sorrow, caste or fear imagined by the 15th-century saint-poet Ravidas. Inspired by Ambedkarite jalsas, the conference combined panel discussions, screenings, workshops, performances, an art exhibition and a live community art project led by the Aravani Art Project.
A pivotal moment of the conference was the celebration of 30 women leaders and institutions shaping Dalit and anti-caste movements, marking 30 years of NFDW. 2025 International Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq joined as keynote speaker. Practitioners, activists, artists, scholars and researchers reimagined care as a question of social justice, examining trauma-informed care, caste- and gender-based violence, displacement, labour precarity and access to dignity, while questioning the myth of neutrality in mental health work. Rooted in the lived realities of caste, gender, labour and exclusion, the conference affirmed that mental health cannot be separated from structural inequities such as caste and Brahmanical patriarchy. It became a space of collective joy and political imagination in pursuit of rights and dignity.
News and photos source: National Federation of Dalit Women
