As the still-nascent academic discipline of Dalit studies of Nepal matures into a vibrant, imperative pursuit, this book, Empowering Dalits through Knowledge, will be recognized as a landmark contribution. What it does most profoundly and definitively is to dislodge entrenched thinking, including my own, about caste and Dalits’ place in it. Its contributors take on the most challenging topics of our time; through the lens of Dalit experience, it explores the relationship of Dalit identity with the experience of being Dalit in its various forms. It examines the material basis of caste in relation to its ideological underpinnings while also examining its fluidity historically and across different geographies, governmentalities and social structures.