Penetrating Caste

I have been trailing through various places in Europe, North America, South America, India, and Nepal. Reading is not a dedicated affair; books invite pauses, reflection, and theory. Still, yet, I carried a couple of books with me. Among the selected ones, Yogesh Maitreya’s Water in a Broken Pot: A Memoir was one of them. It is one of the rarest statements of a Dalit youth’s journey, written with passion and candour. The present book under review both educates and places a certain responsibility upon its readers.

The Dalit in the world of letters is predefined. It is within the structure of steel hierarchies that the Dalit needs to adjust. There are set paths that they need to walk on, and the directions are specifically mentioned. The signposts are not written for everyone walking on the path, but they are customised, especially for the specific Dalit person who is advised to follow and assimilate or face boycott and elimination.