Our culture, our identity! Our identity, our right!
Facilitating Partners
Olakhaan Trust
Rajasthan
“Olakhaan” means identity in the dialect spoken by the nomadic communities of Rajasthan. It signifies a deeper, holistic sense of selfhood—one that is inseparable from culture, tradition, memory, and lived experience.
Olakhaan Trust is a non-profit organisation registered under the Rajasthan Public Trust Act, 1959. Founded in 2018 by Paras Banjara—a sociopolitical rights activist from the nomadic Banjara community—Olakhaan emerges from both personal experience and extensive field engagement.
The Trust works to address critical gaps in the recognition and realisation of rights among some of India’s most historically marginalised communities, including Nomadic, Dalit, and Adivasi groups. Rooted in the everyday realities of these communities, Olakhaan’s work centres on dignity, self-determination, and cultural justice.
Antakshari Foundation
Delhi
Antakshari Foundation is a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing the values of constitutionalism, equality, diversity, inclusion, and accountability in India. The organisation’s core focus lies in building need-based, community-rooted interventions that improve the lives of marginalised groups, with particular attention to vulnerable populations such as women and children.
With a wide-reaching network of grassroots communities, Antakshari Foundation works in close partnership with government agencies, professionals, and civil society organisations. Its interventions span key thematic areas including child rights, gender equality, and environmental justice—responding to structural inequities with locally informed and participatory solutions.
Ranga Mandira Trust
Chennai
Ranga Mandira is a cultural organisation committed to the dissemination of knowledge in the arts, grounded in a strong social context. In today’s world, understanding the practice and performance of the arts as societal and political expressions is more urgent than ever.
The organisation actively supports research, performance, and community-based projects that explore the complex relationship between the arts, their practitioners, and the communities from which they emerge. Its work engages critically with issues of gender, caste, community, social bias, rights, hegemony, and agency—placing artistic practice at the heart of broader conversations on justice and equity.
Ranga Mandira is particularly focused on enabling the intergenerational transmission of artistic knowledge, both within and beyond traditional artist communities. This is done with a commitment to respect, accountability, and the refusal of appropriation, erasure, or discrediting of original lineages and custodians of the arts.
