Bhima Koregaon, Dalit Assertion, and the Politics of Public Memory

— ✍️ Dr. Vikrant Kishore

Bhima Koregaon occupies a distinctive place in contemporary Dalit public life, not because it offers a settled historical consensus, but because it allows Dalits to gather, remember, and assert themselves in public without mediation. Each year on 1 January, large numbers of Dalits travel to the village near Pune to commemorate the 1818 battle and to mark what has come to be known as Shaurya Diwas. For many observers, the scale and persistence of this gathering remain puzzling. Yet scholarship on Bhima Koregaon consistently shows that the importance of the site lies less in the military encounter itself and more in what the act of commemoration enables in the present.

The Battle of Koregaon has been interpreted in multiple ways, and these interpretations have been contested, including within anti-caste thought. Thakur and Moharana outline the reasons the site has become significant for Dalits, pointing to the presence of Mahar soldiers’ names on the memorial, Ambedkar’s visit to the site in 1927, and the symbolic association of the battle with resistance against Peshwa rule (Thakur & Moharana, 2018). These elements have allowed Dalits to read the site as a counterpoint to a historical record that has largely excluded them. The significance of Bhima Koregaon therefore does not depend on proving that the battle was fought with anti-caste intent, but on how it has been taken up as a resource for collective memory and identity.

This distinction between historical fact and political meaning is crucial. Anand Teltumbde has warned against mythologising Bhima Koregaon and attributing intentions to Mahar soldiers that cannot be historically sustained (Teltumbde, 2018a). His critique is valuable in guarding against simplistic readings of colonial history. At the same time, Teltumbde’s own intervention acknowledges the intensity of the attachment Dalits feel towards the site, even as he questions the political direction such attachment takes. The debate itself demonstrates that Bhima Koregaon functions as a living site of memory rather than a closed historical episode.

Scholars of memory and memorialisation remind us that remembrance is never neutral. Heredia argues that memorial practices around violent or unequal pasts are shaped by present-day struggles over recognition and power, rather than by archival reconstruction alone (Heredia, 2018). Bhima Koregaon makes this process visible in everyday political life.

The reactions provoked by Bhima Koregaon further clarify why the site matters. The violence surrounding the bicentenary commemorations in 2018, and the subsequent targeting of activists and intellectuals, revealed how unsettling Dalit assertion can be for dominant caste and political interests. In its editorial response, Economic and Political Weekly ((“Of Old and New Peshwai,” 2018) described the attacks and the political context in which they occurred, noting the role of right-wing mobilisation and the failure of the state to protect Dalit participants. The attempt to reframe Dalit commemoration as a law-and-order problem or as an anti-national act did not emerge from confusion about history, but from discomfort with Dalit presence in public political life.

Saroj Giri’s work helps situate this discomfort within a wider political frame. Writing on Bhima Koregaon, Giri argues that the site has become a point where memory, resistance, and repression intersect, particularly in moments of political danger (Giri, 2021; Giri, 2022). For Giri, the power of Bhima Koregaon lies in its capacity to condense a long history of caste oppression into a shared public moment that cannot be easily absorbed into dominant narratives. The past, in this sense, is not recalled for its own sake, but because it speaks to present conditions of exclusion and vulnerability.

Understanding Bhima Koregaon also requires attention to why identity and assertion are not optional for Dalit communities. Wankhede’s analysis of contemporary Dalit movements in Maharashtra shows that caste discrimination continues to structure everyday life, from education to employment to social interaction (Wankhede, 2019). In such conditions, identity is not merely a symbolic claim; it is a means of survival and self-respect. Assertion becomes necessary when silence is interpreted as consent and invisibility is treated as normal.

This is also why respect for Dalit assertion at Bhima Koregaon must be understood as a democratic requirement rather than a concession. Respect, in this context, does not mean agreement with every interpretation of the past. It means recognising the right of Dalits to assemble, remember, and claim public space without fear of violence or reprisal. A democracy that permits dominant groups to celebrate their histories while policing subaltern remembrance cannot claim neutrality.

Cultural practices, including documentary cinema, have played a limited but visible role in circulating the meaning of Bhima Koregaon beyond the site itself. My own engagement with the issue strengthened after curating a screening and discussion that included documentaries touching on Dalit commemorative spaces. That conversation prompted me to look more closely at why such sites recur across Dalit public life and why they continue to draw people year after year. The answer, repeatedly confirmed in scholarly work, lies in the scarcity of spaces where Dalit history is not marginalised or rendered suspect.

- Dr Vikrant Kishore is an academic, filmmaker, journalist and a photographer. He has authored and edited books on Indian cinema, celebrity culture, and intangible cultural heritage.