Introduction

one evening in january 2003, as i was walking through a narrow alley amidst the mud houses of Dalit labourers in a village I shall call Dumari, Munari Das, ¹ a 60-year-old Dalit labourer, called out to me from his doorway. He led me inside his house, which was typical of most other Dalit houses in Dumari. In stark contrast to the two-storied pukka (brick walls and concrete roof) houses of the Kurmis—the landowning Backward Castes ² —Dalit houses have mud walls and thatched roofs, and stand less than 10 feet tall, with no more than two rooms. The rooms have no windows, but each has a small hole carved in the mud wall to let in air and light and which, during winter months, can be plugged with rags or hay. While my eyes were still adjusting to the darkness inside the room, Munari Das said:

This is the matti ka ghar [mud house] in which I fed and sheltered the comrades for more than 15 years. They would come to my house at midnight. I would then go around different houses and shops in the village to collect rice, wheat, potato, spices and other provisions to prepare food for them. Once, a shop owner refused to oblige. So immediately I put up a notice in the village telling the labourers not to buy anything from his shop. The boycott was total. It was our party and we cared for and sheltered the comrades in our houses. It was from here that the kranti [revolution] spread to the whole of Bihar. ³