Growing up Untouchable in India: a Dalit Autobiography

Vasant Moon's autobiography presents us with a powerful personal and collective memory of caste oppression and struggle in India from the 1930s to the 1950s. In the decades after India's independence from the British in 1947, several trenchant testimonies by writers from India's formerlyuntouchable'castes have been published, but few have been translated into English. During the anti-caste political resurgence of the 1970s, many Marathi language writers from untouchable castes in the Indian state of Maharashtra, including Vasant Moon, began to call attention to an oppressed status by identifying themselves asDalit', an old Marathi word meaningground'orreduced to pieces'. Since then, the term has gained currency as a self-chosen name of political and cultural identity for former untouchables throughout the country. The translation of Moon's work from Marathi brings to a broader audience what has been a …