This Literature explodes that popular bhadralok myth that caste does not matter in Bengal', states Sekhar Bandyopadhyay in his insightful Foreword, adding that the lives and experiences of the dalit in Bengal depicted here reveal how 'caste discrimination worked, or still works in this linguistic region'. The author, Manohar Mouli Biswas, was born in a namashudra peasant family in Matiargati, a remote village in Khulna district (today's Bangladesh), in a vast wetland, bordering the Sundarbans, where there was no colonial governance: no railways, education, health care or police. 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 idea 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.