Synopsis This book is a comprehensive document of dalit movements, their leadership, assertion, aspiration and new horizons they have achieved during centuries of their struggle. It highlights the quantitative and qualitative changes in the nature and scope of their demands. The book probes shifted their assertion from individual to communitarian rights and then now to global level. The author has recorded the structural changes brought by Dalit movement in Uttar Pradesh in particular an thereby how it has strengthened the Indian democracy and process of nation building. In sum the book captures the phenomenon, how Dalit assertion is working for the construction of a positive image of the erstwhile stigmatized identity of the, Dalits.