I testify that

Daya Pawar’s autobiography Baluta is a record of unspeakable humiliations in a caste-ridden society. I devoured it with great hunger, writes Amitava Kumar.

A letter came from Los Angeles. It had been written by an upper-caste Marathi chemist. From this letter, an untouchable poet in Maharashtra found out that Indians in America were treated like dogs. This, I imagine, was in the 1950s or early ’60s, before Ravi Shankar had played with the Beatles or Hollywood had used Gandhi to sell popcorn to millions.

Out of the huts of history’s shame: In Marathi, ‘baluta’ is the share of the village harvest owed to a Mahar (a caste that Hindus considered polluting) for the work done during the rest of the year. In his autobiography Baluta, Daya Pawar spares no one, and least of all himself. This is the book’s great strength.

One of the voices: In VS Naipaul’s India: A Million Mutinies Now, what made a great impression on me was conversations with Mallika Amar Shaikh, whose autobiography was sexually frank and honest about the failure of her marriage.