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SUMMARY:CADALFEST 2026
DESCRIPTION:For the third year running\, Bonington Gallery is delighted to be a host venue for CADALFEST (Celebrating Adivasi and Dalit Arts and Literature Festival)\, the first international festival series dedicated to creative practitioners whose work resists caste discrimination and social exclusion in India. \n\n\n\nEvents will take place online on our YouTube channel\, or in person at the gallery. See the schedule below for more details. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAbhishek Bhosale: Caste-Class Intersection in Anti-Caste Songs of Western IndiaApril 20th\, 3pm (Online)  \n\n\n\nSongs have always been an important form of expression in the anti‑caste movement in India. They talk about caste oppression and celebrate the life\, work\, and values of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar and Siddharth Gautam Buddha. But their role doesn’t end there. These songs also raise serious questions about both caste and capitalist society. \n\n\n\nThis online event will explore how songs contribute to developing a combined understanding of intersections of caste and class in Dalits’ exploitation\, struggle and resistance — a framework Abhishek Bhosale refers to as “CLASTE”. It will consider the political life of musical traditions and their capacity to articulate everyday struggles and solidarities. \n\n\n\nAbhishek Bhosale will be in conversation with Judith Misrahi-Barak\, Purnachandra Naik and Nicole Thiara\, followed by Q&A. \n\n\n\nAbout Abhishek Bhosale\nAbhishek Bhosale is a writer\, journalist\, and doctoral researcher whose work emerges from more than a decade of engagement with caste\, land\, and everyday political life in Western India. Currently based in London\, he is pursuing his PhD at SOAS University of London\, examining the outcomes of land rights in Western India. His research\, Land for Emancipation: Development with Dignity and Dalit Land Struggle in India\, explores how land becomes a site of dignity\, imagination\, and resistance for Dalit households. \n\n\n\nBefore entering academia\, he worked as a journalist and columnist\, travelling extensively across India to report on the agrarian crisis\, land conflicts\, caste violence\, caste boycotts\, protest cultures\, and the lived experiences of Dalit communities. His writing is shaped by long conversations in drought-prone villages\, evenings spent in Dalit vastis\, and a commitment to bringing marginalised voices into public discourse. \n\n\n\nHis recent longform piece in The Wire\, “An Ambedkarite Voice Moving Through Latur’s Dalit Vastis\,” exemplifies his ability to weave reportage with reflective narrative. In 2025\, The Wire also profiled his anti-caste organising in UK universities\, highlighting the emergence of a new caste‑critical intellectual culture on British campuses and his role within it. At SOAS he currently serves as President of the SOAS Ambedkar Society\, curating events that bring Ambedkarite ideas into dialogue with global student movements. \n\n\n\nHis academic background spans journalism\, international relations\, and development studies\, but his most formative learning has come from years spent documenting the cultural and political life of Dalit communities — recording oral histories\, following land and water rights campaigns\, and tracing the travel of Ambedkarite thought across rural\, academic\, and diasporic spaces. \n\n\n\n\nAbout Prof. Judith Misrahi-Barak\nJudith Misrahi-Barak is Professor Emerita in Postcolonial Studies at the English Department\, Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry\, France. Her prime areas of specialisation are Anglophone Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean literatures\, diaspora and migration. Her monograph in French Entre Atlantique et océan Indien : les voix de la Caraïbe anglophone (2021) was published with Classiques Garnier. She is General Editor of the series PoCoPages published by the University Presses of the Mediterranean (Pulm\, Montpellier). She is currently involved in several transdisciplinary collaborative research projects such as Kala Pani Crossings (see the co-edited volumes Kala Pani Crossings\, Routledge 2021 & 2023); or ‘Thanatic Ethics: the Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces’ (see the Special Issue for Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies\, 2023). She has also acted as Co-Investigator on AHRC-funded series on Dalit and Adivasi Literatures with Dr NicoleThiara (NTU) as Principal Investigator. In this field\, she has co-edited a Special Issue for The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (2019)\, as well as Dalit Literatures in India (Routledge\, 2015)\, Dalit Text: Aesthetics and Politics Re-imagined (Routledge\, 2019) and The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India (Routledge\, 2022). \n\n\n\n\nAbout Dr. Purnachandra Naik\nDr. Purnachandra Naik is currently teaching at the Centre for Comparative Literature at University of Hyderabad. His PhD research monograph titled “Reading the Rejected: Dirt in Dalit Literature”\, which he completed at Nottingham Trent University\, is under contract with Routledge. He has published research articles on Dalit literature\, caste\, animals\, and Indian cinema in edited compilations published by Routledge and CUP. His review of the book Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada was published in “Food\, Culture and Society” (Taylor & Francis). His reviews and commentaries have also been published in the EPW\, Outlook\, Indian Express\, and The Book Review. \n\n\n\n\nDr. Nicole Thiara\nDr Nicole Thiara is co-lead of Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial and Global Studies Research Group and Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Research Network Series ‘Writing\, Analysing\, Translating Dalit Literature’ and its Follow-on Grant ‘On Page and on Stage: Celebrating Dalit and Adivasi Literatures and Performing Arts’. She teaches postcolonial and contemporary literature at Nottingham Trent University\, UK. Her area of research is Dalit and Adivasi literature and her current research project is on the representation of modernity in Dalit literature. Her publications include Salman Rushdie and Indian Historiography: Writing the Nation into Being (Palgrave Macmillan\, 2009)\, ‘The Caste of Nature: Wholesome Bodies and Parasites in Bimal Roy’s Sujata and Gogu Shyamala’s “A Beauteous Light”\, The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India (Routledge\, 2022)\, ‘The Colonial Carnivalesque in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies’\, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 52: 6 (2016)\, ‘Subaltern Experimental Writing: Dalit Literature in Dialogue with the World’\, Ariel 47:1-2 (2016)\, pp. 253-80. With Judith Misrahi-Barak and K. Satyanarayana\, she co-edited the critical volume Dalit Text: Aesthetics and Politics Re-imagined (Routledge\, 2019) and special issue on Dalit Literature in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature 54 (1)\, March 2019. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn Conversation with Sambhaji Bhagat: the Future of Anti-Caste Cultural Politics in IndiaMay 4th\, 3pm (Online) – Watch here. \n\n\n\nSambhaji Bhagat will be in conversation with Abhishek Bhosale and reflect on his artistic journey\, perform selected songs\, and speak about the role of music in shaping anti-caste cultural politics in India. \n\n\n\nAbout Sambhaji Bhagat\nSambhaji Bhagat is one of Maharashtra’s most influential cultural figures — a musician\, Lokshahir\, and activist whose work spans artistic\, intellectual\, and social justice spheres. Renowned for his powerful use of folk music\, he gives voice to the struggles and aspirations of marginalised communities\, particularly Dalits\, and his performances across India function not simply as entertainment but as instruments of political education and resistance. His academic engagement and long-standing participation in social movements further reflect his commitment to challenging structural inequalities. His artistic vision is perhaps most widely recognised through the acclaimed film Court\, and the theatre play Shivaji Underground in Bhim Nagar Mohalla\, where his music played a central narrative and political role\, leaving a lasting imprint on contemporary cultural debates. \n\n\n\n\nAbout Abhishek Bhosale\nAbhishek Bhosale is a writer\, journalist\, and doctoral researcher whose work emerges from more than a decade of engagement with caste\, land\, and everyday political life in Western India. Currently based in London\, he is pursuing his PhD at SOAS University of London\, examining the outcomes of land rights in Western India. His research\, Land for Emancipation: Development with Dignity and Dalit Land Struggle in India\, explores how land becomes a site of dignity\, imagination\, and resistance for Dalit households. Before entering academia\, he worked as a journalist and columnist\, travelling extensively across India to report on the agrarian crisis\, land conflicts\, caste violence\, caste boycotts\, protest cultures\, and the lived experiences of Dalit communities. His writing is shaped by long conversations in drought-prone villages\, evenings spent in Dalit vastis\, and a commitment to bringing marginalised voices into public discourse. His recent longform piece in The Wire\, “An Ambedkarite Voice Moving Through Latur’s Dalit Vastis\,” exemplifies his ability to weave reportage with reflective narrative. In 2025\, The Wire also profiled his anti-caste organising in UK universities\, highlighting the emergence of a new caste critical intellectual culture on British campuses and his role within it. At SOAS he currently serves as President of the SOAS Ambedkar Society\, curating events that bring Ambedkarite ideas into dialogue with global student movements. His academic background spans journalism\, international relations\, and development studies\, but his most formative learning has come from years spent documenting the cultural and political life of Dalit communities — recording oral histories\, following land and water rights campaigns\, and tracing the travel of Ambedkarite thought across rural\, academic\, and diasporic spaces. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNarrating Namdeo Dhasal’s Life and Poetry (performed by Sayali Sahasrabudhe & Abhishek BhosaleJuly 17th\, 2026\, 3-4.30pm (In person at Bonington Gallery) \n\n\n\nThis event celebrates Namdeo Dhasal\, a poet who turned pain into poetry and poetry into resistance. Moving through his personal history\, the rise of the Dalit Panthers\, and his bold political presence\, we reflect on the force he became in the anti‑caste movement. His verses in English will echo through the session\, carrying the same urgency and beauty that defined his life. \n\n\n\nAbout Namdeo Dhasal\nNamdeo Dhasal (1949–2014) is one of the most groundbreaking and uncompromising literary voices in modern India. Poet\, writer\, activist\, and co-founder of the Dalit Panthers\, Dhasal revolutionised Marathi poetry by bringing into it the raw\, unfiltered realities of caste violence\, urban marginality\, and the inner life of the oppressed. His poetry — fierce\, experimental\, and unapologetically political — challenged the aesthetic norms of Indian literature and carved out a new radical tradition of Dalit expression. Reading Dhasal on a global platform is especially important today\, as his work speaks not only to the Indian context but to broader struggles for dignity\, liberation\, and social justice worldwide. His vision continues to inspire anti-caste movements\, artists\, and scholars across generations. \n\n\n\n\nAbout Sayali Sahasrabudhe\nSayali Sahasrabudhe\, a PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin\, has worked in Indian theatre for over fifteen years and is an accomplished performer and artist. She will be joined by Abhishek Bhosale for a reading of selected poems by Namdeo Dhasal.
URL:https://boningtongallery.co.uk/event/cadalfest-2026/
CATEGORIES:Event
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