In many ways, Sharankumar Limbale’s novel Sanatan is a history of the present, examining as it does the fate of several generations of a family belonging to the Mahar caste across parts of the 19th and 20th century — equal parts reclamative Dalit history and an account of the deep, enduring evil of caste violence in India. It has often …
If reading for you is an exercise primarily in pleasure seeking, then Sharankumar Limbale’s novel will make you deeply uncomfortable. The battle in question is the war waged by upper castes on the bodies of Mahars, and the disfigured book is a harrowing archive documenting that barbarity in the form of a novel: Sanatan. Throughout this sprawling work, Limbale shifts …
