On the eve of Independence Day, Chennai’s sanitation workers, who had been protesting in front of the historic Ripon building, were forcibly evicted in a midnight police crackdown.
Hundreds of sanitation workers were dragged away, bundled into buses, and detained. While the tricolour was hoisted across the country on August 15, the workers’ absence was visible on the city’s streets. The piled-up garbage in several neighbourhoods was a stark reminder of who really keeps Chennai alive.
For nearly two weeks, the sanitation workers protested the Greater Chennai Corporation’s (GCC) decision to privatise solid waste management in Thiru Vi Ka Nagar (zone 6) and Royapuram (zone 5).
Their demand was simple: dignity, fair wages, and job security. Most of the workers – many of them women and Dalits – have spent decades cleaning the city without safety gear, paid leave, or recognition.
Though political parties and workers’ unions issued statements, what stood out in the weeks of the protest was the solidarity from civil society. Youth groups, students, artists, and photographers turned up to stand with the workers. They documented the crackdown live on social media, shared stories, and ensured that the voices of sanitation workers were heard.
This convergence is not accidental. It reflects how a new generation in north Chennai is embracing Dr BR Ambedkar’s call to “Educate, Agitate, and Organise”.
For Ambedkar, agitation was not mere disruption but the assertion of self-respect by the oppressed. In north Chennai today, agitation is organised, conscious, and deeply political.
North Chennai, where largely lowered-caste, working-class communities live, is often dismissively stereotyped as ‘backward’ or ‘violent’. Ambedkar’s legacy continues to inspire powerful movements that break such derogatory labels.
Youth here are dedicated to education, stand up for justice, and make efforts to unite for common causes. Their work illustrates a vibrant commitment to creating a better future. Their belief in the power of self-advocacy reflects the enduring legacy of Ambedkar’s vision.
The essence of Ambedkar’s message is alive in north Chennai.
Education
Vyasai Thozhargal, a youth-run advocacy group based in north Chennai’s Vyasarpadi neighbourhood, conducts educational programmes for children from marginalised communities in the area. Many of the group’s organisers are first-generation graduates.
One of their initiatives is a tutoring centre named Ambedkar Pagutharivu Padasalai (Ambedkar’s school of rationality). Children receive academic instruction and sports training as well as lessons about Ambedkar and his writings, which are often absent from school curricula.
Each year, Vyasai Thozhargal also hold student parliamentary elections to help students grasp the fundamentals of democracy and gain firsthand experience in organising and participating in elections.
Meanwhile, under the banner of director Pa Ranjith’s Neelam Cultural Centre, Neelam Publications focuses on anti-caste literature and Dalit and Dravidian writings. The publication also prints a monthly magazine called Neelam, featuring artistic, literary, and political content on Dalit issues. Neelam Books in Egmore, a bookshop and library, houses a comprehensive collection of Dalit and Dravidian literature.
Additionally, Neelam Iravupadasalai, a night school located in Dalit residential areas, provides academic support for students alongside socio-political education and holistic development.
Dalit photographer Palani Kumar trains north Chennai's children in photography, providing them with cameras to document their daily struggles and lives. People’s Photographers Collective (formerly Palani Studio) also helps organise exhibitions for the children’s work.
The Chennai Climate Action Group (CCAG) conducts summer camps on environmental issues, biodiversity, and the impact of environmental casteism on Dalit lives.
There is a strong sense of solidarity among these organisations, as they work together to educate and empower the predominantly Dalit children of north Chennai. Education is not only about classrooms here. It is about raising political awareness, telling their own stories, and ensuring the struggles of the oppressed cannot be erased.
Organised unity
Organisations such as Vyasai Thozhargal, Neelam and CCAG also come together for the larger cause of dignity and justice.
During the sanitation workers’ protest, their unity was unmistakable. Vyasai Thozhargal shared crucial legal updates. CCAG insisted that social justice is environmental justice by highlighting the politics of waste. Neelam amplified the political dimensions of the struggle, while the People’s Photographers Collective documented the demands of workers and their arrests.
They were not just present online but stood shoulder to shoulder with the workers at the protest site. Together, they created a chorus of resistance that mainstream institutions could not easily ignore.
Neelam Cultural Centre also organises Vaanam, an art festival focusing on Dalit art forms. The festival is held every April, Ambedkar’s birth month, observed as Dalit History Month.
In December, Neelam Cultural Centre hosts Margaliyil Makkalisai, a music festival that showcases Dalit and folk traditions such as parai, oppari, chikkatam and gaana. The festival is envisioned as a counterpoint to the Brahminical Carnatic music concerts held across Chennai during the Tamil month of Margali (December 17 to January 14).
In January 2024 Vyasai Thozhargal and CCAG organised a photography exhibition titled Our Streets, Our Stories. The chief guest was Pa Ranjith. The photos were taken by Vyasai Thozhargal's students, who were trained by Palani Kumar. The exhibition took place in the very neighbourhoods featured in the photos.
The CCAG also conducts a ‘toxic tour’ for residents of south Chennai, bringing them to north Chennai to demonstrate the detrimental impact of heavy industries on local communities and their livelihoods. This initiative highlights the environmental injustices that Dalit populations face daily in the city. The tour is conducted on a regular basis with announcements circulated on social media. They take students and the public who register for it in small groups.
In September 2024, Namma Chennai, Namma Heroes (Our Chennai, Our Heroes) was conducted at Neelam Books. The programme was organised by CCAG and Reach the Unreached to highlight the fight for climate justice by Dalit and working-class communities.
Each year, when floods hit the city, north Chennai is largely overlooked by the state and civil society. It is these groups who come together to provide assistance instead. Their unity and self-organisation in disaster management demonstrate a significant step toward the self-empowerment that Ambedkar advocated.
Agitate
The final step is to collectively agitate against systemic discrimination that has long shaped life in north Chennai. Here, residents continue to mobilise for basic needs such as water, electricity, housing, education, and healthcare. Dalit communities, in particular, experience the ongoing denial of adequate living conditions and safe infrastructure.
The question is not whether the subaltern speaks but whether they are heard.
Their protests are frequent, yet responses are often muted or bureaucratically ignored.
With the emergence of a younger generation of activists, however, everyday resistance has increasingly taken the form of well-organised and solidaristic efforts. For instance, students from Vyasai Thozhargal, trained in journalism, documented how the Ennore gas leak and the oil spill triggered by the 2023 Michaung cyclone devastated the livelihoods of fisherfolk.
Similarly, students mentored by photographer Palani Kumar captured the struggles of Dalit and Irula women fishers forced to handpick prawns from polluted rivers.
Resettlement housing in north Chennai is often poorly constructed, overcrowded, and lacks basic amenities.
An unsafe lift in KP Park, a tenement constructed by the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board (TNUHB), caused the death of a 60-year-old man in 2024.
In the immediate aftermath, groups such as Vyasai Thozhargal and the Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC) visited the site, documenting the tragedy in their reports and across social media platforms.
On May 25, 2025, more than 8,000 residents formed a 4.5 km-long human chain in Kodungaiyur to protest the proposed Waste-to-Energy (WtE) plant. The Federation of North Chennai Residents Welfare Association (FNCRWA), who organised the protest, have raised concerns about pollution and health risks. Agitations against the WtE plant are ongoing.
Resistance has also unfolded in city-wide mobilisations.
Counter-mapping activists have also challenged official cartographic narratives by contesting Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) maps, incorporating fishermen’s traditional fishing grounds and community open spaces to expose how state-led planning perpetuates environmental injustice.
Similarly, eviction struggles have become crucial arenas of protest. The Kannappar Thidal struggle began with the eviction of over 60 families in 2002, who lived in a temporary shelter for more than two decades. Through years of collective protest and solidarity actions, including agitations in 2024 demanding free housing, residents finally secured permanent allotments of homes in Moolakothalam.
Fishermen have resisted displacement from the Loop Road project, and sanitation workers have staged demonstrations demanding secure jobs and better conditions. Tamil media outlets often cover these protests, yet larger narratives of spatial justice and structural caste discrimination remain absent from mainstream framing.
Other forms of violence, such as so-called ‘honour’ killings and sanitation worker deaths, are also constantly documented and discussed by these groups. Palani Kumar’s series Malakuliyil Maranangal, for instance, powerfully archives the lives lost to sanitation work.
While such issues do receive attention in the media, these are often reported as sensational or standalone incidents, without situating them within the larger structures of caste, labour, and state neglect that produce these recurring tragedies.
To fill these silences, grassroots organisations have cultivated alternative modes of agitation. Youth are being trained in journalism, podcasting, theatre, and visual arts, enabling them to tell their own stories. This has revolutionised the political landscape of north Chennai, amplifying Dalit voices in the present and providing careful archives for the future.
Carrying Ambedkarite ideals forward
Ambedkar’s call to “Educate, Agitate and Organise” was not meant as a sequence but as an ongoing process. In north Chennai, it is visible in classrooms, libraries, street festivals, relief efforts, and the protests outside Ripon Building.
Oppression often works by convincing the oppressed that they are weak, divided, or powerless. But the youth of north Chennai are proving otherwise. By linking education to activism, art to politics, and local struggles to wider solidarities, they are building a counter-voice in a city long divided by caste.
On Independence Day, while sanitation workers were silenced in the dark of night, Ambedkar’s words found new life in the resistance of Chennai’s youth. Their presence reminds us that true freedom lies not in ceremonies but in the everyday fight for equality and dignity.
Sindu Deivanayagam is a research scholar in the Department of Sociology at Christ University. Her work focuses on environmental casteism and questions of urban equality. Opinions expressed are the author's own.