Some three years ago a movement calling itself the Dalit Panthers began to be heard of outside the Untouchable communities of Bombay and the surrounding coastal village of Maharashtra where it originated. By the time the Dalit (“oppressed”) Panthers had come to .the attention of the national and foreign media, they had extended their base to include other areas and language groups and broadened their appeal to reach beyond Untouchables to aboriginal people and landless peasants, and even to small landowners and cultivators.

This newest revolutionary Indian group's rallying cry is “Untouchable Power.” Admittedly influenced by the Black Panthers from which they took their name, one leader declared: “The problems of black Americans are our own. Black Power gave birth to Untouchable Power.”