Black Panther

Dr. Shridhar Pawar is a distinguished scholar of Black Literature and the Black Panther movement. In the early 1960s, a wave of rebellion against established systems swept across the world. As a consequence of this larger movement, on 15 October 1966, Bobby Seale and H. P. Newton launched a struggle against oppression in the city of Oakland under the name Black Panther.

Inspired by this movement, poet-friends Namdeo Dhasal and J. V. Pawar founded the militant Dalit Panther movement on 29 May 1972 to fight against racial and caste-based supremacy.

I had expressed my wish to Dr. Pawar that the history of the Black Panther movement—the movement that inspired the Dalit Panthers to take up their struggle and create history—should become familiar to Marathi readers. This wish has now been fulfilled, as the history of the Black Panther movement is being made available in the golden jubilee year of the establishment of the Dalit Panther movement.

I hope this history will inspire Ambedkarite youth fighting against caste supremacy and that they will welcome this book.

— J. V. Pawar

Co-founder of the Dalit Panther Movement