About Me
I am Somnath Waghmare, a documentary filmmaker and researcher born to a rural Dalit-Buddhist family in Malewadi, Western Maharashtra, India. My mother worked as an agricultural labourer and my father was an ex-mill worker in Bombay, though both have retired because of old age. In 1990 when the mill was shut down in Bombay my parents shifted to my mother’s village.
With limited resources and social capital I have made two documentary films ‘I am Not a Witch’ (2015) and ‘The Battle of Bhima Koregaon: An Unending Journey’ (2017). The first film is about witch-hunting in an Adivasi community in Nandurbar, Maharashtra. The second is a timely documentation of the annual Dalit –Bahujan gathering of Bhima Koregaon near Pune city and history’s politics in contemporary India. Both documentaries have been screened in different cities of India and abroad and have gained wide critical acclaim.
In my current work, I continue to explore and document the histories and cultural politics of marginal communities in India. My film “Chaityabhumi”, presented by Filmmaker Pa. Ranjith’s Neelam Production, is now in post-production. It is about Chaityabhumi in Mumbai, the cremation place of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Lakhs of people congregate twice a year from across Maharashtra and India to pay their respects to Babasaheb, the father of India’s Constitution and an emancipatory global human rights leader whose work against India’s oppressive caste system still has an impact on and inspires millions of people.
My ongoing project is titled ‘Gail and Bharat’, a documentary biopic of Dr. Gail Omvedt and Dr. Bharat Patankar, a noted activist and academic couple from Maharashtra. Dr. Omvedt was a US-born Indian activist scholar. I spent time with the couple from 2018 to the date of Dr. Omvedt’s nirvan, in August 2021. I hope to edit this project soon. The film is a tribute to our mother Gail and her invaluable contributions to the field of Dalit studies and Dalit human rights.
Documenting the political, cultural, and social assertion of historically marginalised communities in India is at the heart of my work.
In my research and films, I am interested in caste and cultural politics of India. I have been interviewed by the BBC Marathi, The Indian Express, The Times of India,The Print, Silverscreen India, Vice and various news outlets about my work and vision about Indian cinema. I have also given numerous talks and been a panellist in talks organised by universities, community associations and human rights organizations and media outlets. I was one of the speakers at The Media Rumble 2022 by Newslaundry for the panel “Who tells our stories: Why the storyteller’s identity matters.
In my research and films, I am interested in caste and cultural politics of India. I have been interviewed by the BBC Marathi, The Indian Express, The Times of India,The Print, Silverscreen India, Vice and various news outlets about my work and vision about Indian cinema. I have also given numerous talks and been a panellist in talks organised by universities, community associations and human rights organizations and media outlets. I was one of the speakers at The Media Rumble 2022 by Newslaundry for the panel “Who tells our stories: Why the storyteller’s identity matters.
‘The Ambedkar Age Digital Bookmobile’, is a project I am working on with Smita Rajmane to document rural Dalit singers across Maharashtra. We has been awarded public grant by the FICA Delhi.
At present, I am pursuing PhD in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. I completed my M. Phil research in 2019 on the Caste and Cultural Politics of Contemporary Marathi Cinema. I have done my Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at Shivaji University Kolhapur and my Masters in Media and Communication Studies from Pune University. I have worked for two years as a contract employee at the FTII Pune and as an apprentice with Amnesty International India. Before that, I lived in the caste ghetto of my village for 22 years.