Deepa Dhanraj

Award-winning filmmaker and writer Deepa Dhanraj has been part of the women's movement in India since 1980. She was one of the founding members of Yugantar, a feminist film collective that made a series of films in the early 1980s documenting rural and urban women's movements for labour rights and autonomy.  Focused on feminist politics, Deepa's extensive filmography spans three decades and subjects including population control programs in India, Muslim women's courts, the rise of Hindu majoritarianism, the history of the human rights movement in Telangana/Andhra Pradesh and the caste question, as it plays out in local governance especially issues faced by elected Dalit women Panchayati raj members and more. She has a special interest in education and has worked closely with government schools to create pedagogy and materials suited for problems faced by first-generation learners who come from Dalit and Adivasi communities. Presently she is working on an audio-visual archive of the anti-caste student's movement that arose post the institutional murder of PhD research scholar Rohith Vemula.