If anything has lived, we will eat it," my father once boasted. We could make choices that, as Shahu Patole indicates in his book, Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada, were not available to people like him at the bottom of Hindu society. Patole’s book deals primarily with the lowest of Dalit subcastes in the Maharashtra region of Marathwada: the Mahar and …
Days after Shraddha Walkar’s brutal murder, another case of humiliation in an interfaith relationship surfaced in Maharashtra on 18th November 2022. After that, we had this love affair, Sana lured me into marriage and said, ‘I want to marry you, you embrace Islam, recite namaz, read the Quran’.” Dipak Sonawane further wrote in his complaint, “I told this to her …
The Bombay Inferior Village Watans Abolition Act, 1958 aimed to protect Dalits’ access to land. “Ownership of this land would benefit lakhs of Dalit families.” *** Dwarkabai remembers how, as a young girl, she’d frequent the village watan land. “We grew enough to last us the whole year.” Her family’s land is part of a single plot of 660 acres …
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