Shreeja Rao Sankul SonawaneMy community of Dalit women are doubly oppressed by caste and gender. Dalit women like me are bound together by a sense of sisterhood woven with each other for as long as anyone can remember, and long before that. I think of my mentor, Beena Pallical, who made history by becoming the first Dalit woman to address the UN General Assembly. But these advances have led Dalit women to significant victories and more freedom than ever before in India’s caste-tainted history. Seeing the only Dalit woman hockey player score a hat-trick at the Olympics, becoming the first Indian woman to do so.

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Persons: India CNN —, Shreeja Rao, US Department of State’s Madeleine K, Albright, Shreeja Rao Sankul, cruelties, Beena Pallical, Pallical, —, we’ve, Joy, Ambedkar, India’s, Bhim Geet Organizations: India CNN, Guardian, The, US Department of State’s, Albright Young, CNN, Dalit, Assembly, UN, Olympics, Twitter, Ambedkar Jayanti Locations: Pune, India