By Rajiv Shah A few days back, I happened to attend an interesting conversation among a group of young Indian Americans in Los Angeles. The theme proposed a deceptively simple proposition: can caste travel with people who leave India? The answer, the discussion made clear, is that it can—and that for a younger generation of the Indian diaspora, caste is not a subject safely confined to family histories, Indian villages, or the pages of social reform literature.
In the rugged, resource-scarce hills of Gujarat’s Panchmahals district —one of India’s most underdeveloped regions, marked by high poverty, poor nutrition indicators, and large tribal, Dalit, and Muslim populations—women who once stayed confined to household labour and early marriages have forged a different path. Through ANANDI (Area Networking and Development Initiatives) and three grassroots women’s organisations in Devgadh Baria , Panam , and Gogamba , they have moved from isolated survival to organised collective power.