Somnath Waghmare is a Mumbai-based documentary filmmaker, visual researcher, and cultural practitioner from Malewadi village in Sangli district, western Maharashtra, India. Raised in a rural Dalit-Buddhist family, his early life was shaped by the socio-economic and cultural realities of post-industrial migration, caste segregation, and agrarian labour. His mother worked as an agricultural labourer, while his father was employed in Bombay’s textile mills during the 1990s. Following the collapse of the city’s textile industry, the family returned to their native village, where Waghmare completed his schooling and undergraduate education. Growing up within a caste-segregated settlement profoundly informed his understanding of caste, memory, labour, dignity, and resistance, themes that continue to constitute the intellectual and aesthetic foundations of his work.