‘This literature explodes that popular bhadralok myth that caste does not matter in Bengal’, states Sekhar Bandhyopadhyay in his insightful Foreward.

From 1872, the namashudhras began to mobilize politically and later opposed the Congress-led nationalist movements. Undergirding their political assertion was the evolution of the Matua religious sect, which questioned the caste system and instilled the ides of self-worth. Writing movingly about his deprived childhood, where his single-minded search for education is remarkable, Biswas depicts a people facing a precarious existence with solidarity that encompassed Muslims. The interview in the second part of the book throws light on Biswas’s activism, accomplishments and reflections on Partition as a Dalit refugee.