By transforming themselves from a 'no-people' into a people with history, the Dalits have gained an identity. The Dalits seek to alter their status from that of the untouchable, inexperiential, into the real and ratifiable by finding their identity in their own history. Becoming the subjects of their own history is the keystone of the modern Dalit struggle. It is difficult to find a book on Dalit issues that does not give attention to the origins of caste and of the outcaste communities. This question was of vital importho realised that in order to gain distinct autonomy for the Dalits from Hinduism, the Dalits would have to reject Hindu historical perspectives and form their own.

To be identified as a Dalit is to deny Hindu identity. If the Dalits are not Hindus, then Hindu history is not Dalit history. The impact on the outcaste community is that caste should lose all meaning, since the architects of caste are of an alien race and religion. However, it is still a matter of choice. In order not to be Hindu, Dalit communities must actively declare it, making both an ethnic and religious decision. Ambedkar, inspired by Jyotirao Phule (1826 - 1890), a subaltern reformer, maintained that subalterns were assimilated into the Brahminist social frameworklidarity Programme of India, James Massey, sees the Dalits' attempt to record their own history as an attempt to salvage their identity, deliberately neglected by Indian and British historians and by Hindu scriptures.
I only want to affirm [...] that Dalit history is the only means which can help us recover our past, which has deliberately been destroyed by our opponents.

Reconstructing Dalit history presents the caste struggle with a seemingly insurmountable challenge. How do the Dalits reconstruct a history, which brings them pride and solidarity, from evidence left by those who wrote history to shame and segregate them as subalterns in the society? The only texts presently available to the Dalits are those of Hinduism, such as the Rig Veda, and the Manusmrtigregation and oppression and none of which provide a positive account of what we now call the Dalits.

Archaeology, in the Indus valley of north-west India, gives strong evidence that there was a (Dravidian) nation in the north before 2,000 BCE, and that these Dravidians gradually migrated to the forests and the south and south-east, because of disease, flood, and invasion. Passages from the Rig Veda confirm the idea that an opposing nation (Aryas), fought and defeated the Dasyus (Dravidians), whose customs and beliefs they considered ungodly, and less sophisticated than their own. Massey brings together these two sources to suggest that the Arya tribes were what we now know as high-caste Hindus, and may even be alien to the Indian subcontinent. The inference is orce, and subjugated by millennia of oppressive history. It would be useful for Dalits if Massey's assessment of Dalit history were as simple as it is laid out here, but there are many factors to consider, and many unanswered questions to explore. Historians do not agree on the origins of the caste system, whether the Aryas brought it with them or exploited or invented it when they arrived. We do not know how the fourfold Varna system, found in the Rig Veda, relates to the modern caste system, neither do we fully understand the layers of archaeology in the ancient Indus Valley cities, nor the meaning of the 'hieroglyphics' discovered there, for which there is no Rosetta Stone.
Though it is right to say that in th to the possible historical roots of the Dalits [...] reading between the lines [...] one can possibly reconstruct the possible story of the roots of the Dalits.

Much is being done in exploring Dalit origins in order to present a secure Dalit history. There are similarities between the Dasyu, described in the Rig Veda, and contemporary Dalits which strongly suggest a common ethnic descent. For example, the way Tamilian Dalit women dress compares to the dress of figures illustrated on excavated Dasyu pottery. If Dalits can reclaim the religion of the Dasyu as their own then they can create new symbols, reclaim others and find a solidarity tha for twenty years, admits with reservation.
In situations of social conflict, differing definitions of origins can be used to manipulate the emotions in order to inspire or to suppress political action [...] Under such circumstances how can a study of Dalit origins be anything but mere propaganda?

This is a fair assessment when one considers the comments of Theerta, written before Indian independence, on the history of 'Hindu Imperialism'. Theerta describes the invading Aryas as 'the lower classes with more physical stamina and animal courage than cultural attainments,' a speculatory assessment using a delibeke Massey, Ambedkar, and Theerta have tried to discern a genuine historical context for the Dalits. This identity is not intended to be mythological or symbolic. The Brahminist history empowers the caste communities through its cosmology in the Rig Veda, but Dalit historians and scholars have not countered this with their own myth of creation but with a version of history that disarms the Hindu myth. It does so by showing the myth to be born not out of revelation, but out of Dravidian imperialism. Korean minjung theology also sees the importance of making the people struggling for human dignity being the concepts of 'rememberance-idea' and 'prophecy-action'. This liberationist approach could be useful in the situation of the Dalits, who are also defining their past and using that knowledge as a weapon for bringing about a liberated future. For both the Minjung and the Dalits, history and myth are brought together. Historical facts, and historical speculation, become symbols of national identity. This is expressed in relation to other symbols such as the Old Testament Exodus, thus reinforcing the relationship between this national identity and a covenental relationship with God.