Sulochana Dongre

Sulochna Dongre was born into a Mahar family in the 1930s and 40s. Dongre became a notable advocate for female emancipation. Initial affiliated with the All India Women's Conference, Dongre - along with other Dalit leaders - broke away from the conference, feeling it was too heavily dominated by the upper castes. She would go on to become a leader of the All India Depressed Classes Women Congress, and chaired a large-scale conference held by the congress in 1942.^[2] That same year, Dongre (along with Shantabai Dani) spoke before a crowd of 25,000 women at the women's conferences of an All-India Scheduled Caste Federation meeting in Nagpur.^[3][4] Dongre also chaired the Dalit Mahila Federation, the last Dalit feminist group to form before Indian Independence.^[5]

Notably, some sources describe Dongre as the first Indian leader to call for nation-wide access to birth control, a measure she supported.^[5]

Dongre's biography and exploits were included in Urmila Pawar's 1989 work We Also Made History.^[6]