The ‘Chalo Nagpur’ campaign mobilised thousands of women marchers and drew attention to not only the exploitation and violence suffered by women from the lower castes, classes and marginalised sections but also their efforts to build connections with women engaged in similar aims across the world.
The city of Nagpur in Maharashtra has a special significance in the Ambedkarite social consciousness it is the site of the mass historic struggle for reclaiming the Buddhist tradition, symbolised by Deeksha Bhoomi. Nagpur also symbolises both the wound of a massacre (the brutal, collective murders of four members of the Bhotmange family in Khairlanji) and the mass resistance against it. So when women rooted in the Phule–Ambedkarite ideology decided to take out a march on the 110th death anniversary of the pioneering reformer Savitribai Phule on 10 March 2017, Nagpur was the chosen destination. Thousands marched to protest the increasing violence against women from marginalised sectio