Ma Naina Balaiah

About This Book

This is the extraordinary narrative of an ordinary story of a Dalit family in southern India. Twenty-one-year-old Narsaiah loses land gifted to him to a feudal lord. This triggers his migration from Vangapally, his ancestral village in the Karimnagar district of Telangana - the single most important event that would free his family and future generations from caste oppression. Years later, it saves his son Balaiah from the fate reserved for most Dalits: a life of humiliation and bonded labour. A book written with the desire to make known the inhumanity of untouchability and the acquiescence and internalization of this condition by the Dalits themselves, Y.B. Satyanarayana chronicles the relentless struggle of three generations of his family in this biography of his father.