Making Political Solidarity: Kinship and Care among Dalit Feminist Activists

In this thesis, I examine the everyday life and labors of Dalit feminist activists in Tamil Nadu, India. I demonstrate that ‘political solidarity’ among this community of activists is forged through idioms of consanguineal, affinal, as well as ‘fictive’ kinship. I argue that political solidarity is consolidated through practices of care, that often circulate as indebtedness. I illustrate how a movement for social justice is a site of social reproduction, intending to nurture further generations of Dalit activists. By situation this ethnographic research against the backdrop of neoliberalism in India, I show how the meaning of ‘activism’ has changed across generations of kin, resulting in what I call, ‘activist anxiety’. Ultimately, I contend that these anxieties circle back to how older generations of activists are cared for pointing to the infrastructure that both makes, and unmakes, a movement for social justice.