The contribution of Dalit journals is virtually undocumented in the history of Tamil print media, and the only historiographic trends that have received scholarly attention so far are the Brahmin nationalist perspective and the non-Brahmin Dravidian perspective. Based on colonial records and journals, this article attempts to construct a history of Dalit journals in colonial Madras by analysing the sociopolitical contexts and the content of 42 journals published from 1869 to 1943. The wide-ranging conversations in these journals suggest that Dalits were not only active agents in creating a modern identity, questioning their marginalisation, but were also involved in knowledge production in an otherwise restricted public sphere.
