Born in Ajmer on February 5, 1986, Yashica Dutt or Yashica Dutt Nidaniya is an Indian writer and freelance journalist based in New York. She completed her graduation with a B.Sc. Program from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, in 2007, and her master’s degree in arts and Culture Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2015. She spent a decade covering fashion and the arts before publishing her memoir Coming Out as Dalit (Aleph Books, 2019), which won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2020. The memoir was prompted by the death by suicide of a young Ph.D. scholar at the University of Hyderabad, Rohith Vemula, in January 2016. Rohith left behind a searing letter talking of his unfinished dreams and how he felt his “birth was his fatal accident.” Vemula’s death galvanized a movement that highlighted systemic oppression and institutionalized discrimination around caste to the forefront of public social life in India. Protests erupted across university spaces in India as a call for action, demanding social justice and Dalit rights and representation.