Priyanka Samy

I have seen the morning journey of Dalit girls in an informal settlement in India: the only tap that works, the long walk, the quiet calculation of whether they will reach school on time. On paper, their neighbourhood has full water infrastructure; in reality, the taps near their homes run dry most days. One girl said to me, ‘Nobody cares about us, that’s why the water never comes on time.’ That moment stays with me because it captures what public finance really means.

A conversation between a Black feminist scholar and a Dalit feminist activist is the seed for this reflective essay. In speaking to each other across racial and caste lines, across continents and struggles, they found themselves circling the same truth. What began as Jocelyn Bell’s study on Black storytelling in New England and Priyanka Samy’s work with Dalit girls and young women in India’s informal settlements grew into a shared inquiry.

What does it mean to ask a Dalit girl to dream? ‍ To invite her to imagine joy, power, and possibility in a world that has consistently denied her even safety? To encourage her to draw a future when her present is still shaped by violence, exclusion, and silence? When I walked into the dreaming workshop, I was not afraid of the girls’ capacity to dream, as I have seen their brilliance blaze through impossible odds. What unsettled me was the weight of the invitation.