Description:
How did mainstream Indian history miss such a watershed event that subterraneously set the tone for all protest movements in India for the last 90 years? The same dominant social forces that fashioned Dandi into a defining project of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, nationalist movements also erased all traces of Mahad from mainstream history. Gandhi and Dandi are alluring dominant narratives, almost myths, that are told and retold every day, to drown the din of the Mahads being launched every day.

There are many such stark insights in this book that only Bojja Tharakam could have offered:

Dandi was projected as an urgent need whereas Mahad voiced a millennia-old concern.

The Dandi marchers did not break any law, whereas, at Mahad, the ‘laws’ of Hindu society were broken.

A very complaisant state looked the other way when Dandi was being planned and executed, while Mahad had to face both an openly antagonistic society and a dilatory government.

Dandi happened at a stage when the colonial state was actively mulling over ‘independence’, while Mahad was the battle that started the continuing war for total freedom for all marginalised sections of India