Sanatan

by Sharankumar Limbale, Padmaja Ghorpade (Translator)

हिन्दू धर्म ने अस्पृश्यों का और आदिवासियों का कल्पनातीत नुक़सान किया है। इसका हिसाब अभी तक लगाया नहीं गया है। तो मुआवज़ा कैसे दिया जायेगा? यह उपन्यास इसी नुक़सान के सम्बन्ध में कुछ कह रहा है। आपदग्रस्तों को मुआवज़ा दिया जाता है। यहाँ तो हज़ारों की तादाद में लोग सदियों से गरीबी और अज्ञान में तड़प रहे हैं। उनके विस्थापन का हिसाब लगाना होगा। अतल तक खंगालना होगा। अधिक देर तक इसे नज़रअन्दाज़ नहीं किया जा सकता। यह उपन्यास इसकी ओर संकेत देता है। किसी एक धर्म की बात करना यानी समूचे भारत के बारे में बात करना नहीं होता। यह उपन्यास ख़ासकर दलितों के बारे में कुछ कहना चाहता है। सभी धर्मों ने, प्रदेशों ने, भाषाओं और संस्कृतियों ने दलितों को सहजीवन से ख़ास दूरी पर ही रखा। उनको अपवित्र माना। उन&

Genres: India, Fiction

187 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 10, 2020

About the author

Sharankumar Limbale is a Marathi language author, poet and literary critic. He has penned more than 40 books, but is best known for his autobiography Akkarmashi. Akkarmashi is translated in several other Indian languages and in English. The English translation is published by the Oxford University Press with the title The Outcaste. His critical work Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature (2004) is considered amongst the most important works on Dalit literature.

Reviews

[Dr. Charu Panicker · Rating 2 out of 5]

മഹാർ എന്ന സമുദായം ഒരുപക്ഷേ കേരളീയർക്ക് അപരിചിതമാവാം. നമ്മുടെ ഭരണഘടന ശില്പിയായ ഡോക്ടർ ബി ആർ അംബേദ്കർ ജനിച്ചത് ഈ സമുദായത്തിൽ ആയിരുന്നു. ഭീമനാക് മഹാറിന്റെയും വർണ്ണ വ്യവസ്ഥയ്ക്ക് പുറത്ത് നിൽക്കുന്ന അയാളുടെ വംശത്തിന്റെയും ചരിത്രമാണ് ഈ പുസ്തകം പറയുന്നത്.

[Rahul Vishnoi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sanatan is written by Sharankumar Limbale and translated from the Marathi by Paromita Sengupta. The story of Sanatan starts with Holi and moves to Diwali, but the events in between couldn’t be far away from the joy these festivals bring. There is no main character to whom a reader can attach themselves except Sidnak and Bhimnak who come and go as the story progresses.
Sanatan tells the story of Maharas, the untouchables who live in Maharwada: a repugnant peripheral designated at the end of the village for them to live in. The story jumps from one Mahar to another, tying them in the vicious shackles of caste-based discrimination practiced in Hinduism. According to Mahars, ‘The world is going to drown in a deluge. But how does it matter to us? Let the landowners worry. What have we to lose?’
To give a brief idea of the deplorable crimes committed against the untouchables, here’s how they lived their lives: Mahars spent days doing menial jobs for the upper castes in the village and during the night they patrolled the village as watchmen. They were not given any monetary compensation for the work they did but had to beg for stale food, going from home to home and sometimes had to snatch rotis from dogs’ mouths. The author writes: ‘What is the job of a Mahar? Keep waiting for food for all the twelve months. And what are the wages for his work? Stale food!’
If an animal died, they were supposed to take it away and eat it. They wished so in their prayers because a dead animal meant full stomachs for them. ‘The death of an animal was a festival for the Mahars’. Sometimes upper castes accused them of killing the animals just so they could eat and so Mahars ended up being beaten within inches of their deaths. While walking, they couldn’t let their shadow fall on upper castes as that would pollute the latter. In some regions, especially in peshwai (ruled by Peshwas), they had to tie a broom to their behinds so it could wipe off their footprints lest they polluted others. There is even a mention of a human sacrifice of a Mahar in the foundation of a tower to prevent it from crumbling repeatedly.
They were not even spared in death. The upper caste denied them entry to their fields so that they could bury their dead. Such was the injustice meted out to them that even in their prayers, the Mahars wished to be reborn ‘from the womb of a cow.’ They couldn’t even pray to be reborn as a human. When a Brahmin dies, mentions the author, his soul takes a new body through a new birth. He finds salvation. But a Mahar has no soul! His spirit wanders about endlessly. He never finds salvation! When a Mahar dies, he becomes a ghost.
The Mahars who thought converting to a different religion would ease their suffering were wrong. The ones who converted to Islam faced discriminations in their new religion too as ‘the village was clearly divided between Hindus, Muslims and untouchables.’ When missionaries started preaching Christianity and converted Mahars, they couldn’t find the equality they were promised. The white Christians didn’t have anything to do with them. They had trouble marrying their children. Neither the Mahars not the Christians considered them their own. But the conundrum of taking these people into Hinduism was even more nuanced: ‘People are converting to become Muslims, Christians. No one is converting to become Hindu. Even if someone did, which caste would he be taken into?’
The following conversation sheds some light upon the dilemma of conversion amongst Mahars:
‘Who are you?’ Biru asked.
‘I’m Philip Bush.’
‘Why such a strange name?’
‘I’m the same Sidnak Mahar.’
‘Oh, you have changed your religion, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, I became a Christian.’
‘Do you get money to become a Christian?’
‘No.’
‘Then? What do you get?’
‘We get humanity.’
‘True. We treated you like dirt! You should all leave!’
‘That will happen in the days to come.’
‘It will be good . . . Hinduism will get rid of its dirt.’
The author has held Hinduism responsible for the inhumane plight of Mahars. He writes: ‘Religion loots the soul of human beings, and power loots their rights. Religion and power are evils that have eclipsed human life.’ According to one story, Lord Shiva produced a child who began to eat a dead cow. He thus cursed him to eat the flesh of dead animals. This was how the Mahar caste was born.
The author writes that where the untouchables must live, what they must eat,  what they must wear, in what kind of houses they must live, what  ornaments they must wear, what language they must speak, what  language they must hear, what names they should call themselves  by, how they should be punished, everything is well documented  in the Hindu scriptures. Untouchability is the worst part of the Hindu practice. The untouchables will have the courage to reject these rules only when they understand the scriptures.
Even the stories that upper castes share amongst themselves carry ludicrous details. A character is seen thinking about a story where an upper caste woman got pregnant listening to the laughter of a Mahar and gave birth to a tortoise. He mentions ‘Shambuk-vadh’ from Ramayana where Ram murders a lower caste ascetic Shambuk for doing penance. The story of Amritnak Mahar and Rani Keertimati is the most absurd of all. A Mahar is sent to find a lost queen. When he comes back with her, people accuse him of defiling queen’s modesty. He asks the king to bring a small box he had given him when he left. The box is opened, Mahar’s cut penis is found inside. When the king asks Mahar to name his reward, he says: ‘all I want is the fifty-two rights charter for our untouchable people. We Mahars have been subjected to a lot of injustice.’
The story streamlines itself along the events that dot the struggle of independence to highlight the never-changing lives of Mahars. It begins around the time when Maharas come to know that the East India Company is recruiting untouchables in the army and giving them weapons. The author mentions the historical landmark of opening of a girls school in Pune by Mahatma Jyotiba Phule in 1848 and in 1852, a school for the children of the untouchables in Vetal Peth. The story moves to the revolt of 1857, the assimilation of East India Company rule into British Raj, and ends around Marley Minto reforms in 1918 at a somewhat hopeful note when BR Ambedkar, a professor in Sydenham College sent a petition to the governor, asking him to be made a representative of the untouchables.
While the colonial rule was viewed as oppressive and unjust, Mahars had a separate view. Since it considered them humans and accorded them a dignity they had long been denied, they championed it. A Mahar remarks: ‘To take away the broom and hand a cannon to the Mahars is nothing short of a miracle.’ When Tehsildar George Thomas, who firmly believed that in Hindustan, people killed each other in the name of religion, asks the village sardar why untouchables are not allowed to fill water from the lake, he has no reply. However, when the power shifted from East India company to the Crown and the British Raj prevailed after the revolt of 1857, it led to the removal of almost all the untouchables from the army to appease the upper castes. Learning from the failures of East India company, the Crown decided not to meddle in the affairs of the upper caste Hindus.
As far as upper caste are concerned, I feel the rank discrimination also arose from the economic point of view. It suited them to keep Mahars oppressed as they were being exploited as indentured labour. Even the Raj sends thousands of Indians to UK to serve as indentured labour. There, all of them are brown-skinned and the gora is their boss. Such is the level of rift in the society and dirt in mind that an upper caste man, distressed to share a ship with the untouchables, jumps to his death.
Mahars had learnt to live with the hatred. They thought they were paying for the sins they committed in past lives. The continuous oppression had hardened them. The author writes that wherever the untouchables went, they put up a brave fight. They were so used to poverty and discrimination they could cast their roots even on a cliff. They remained alive in the most challenging environments. They were never obliterated. They knew that it is useless to complain about torture and injustice, and would bear their sorrows with laughter. They never lost hope. Every day brought with it new hope. They could do any work for a handful of bread. They did not know how to say ‘no’. Perhaps non-violence was born of the untouchables’ resilience to centuries of torture and pain.
The story also details the harassment and killings of the Adivasis. The bheels who lived in forests were ousted after the forests were razed to make way for civilization. Their lands were usurped and their women raped. The simmering unrest led to the killings of the British by the Adivasis.
The writer talks about harassment and rape of lower caste women. In Moustache Hareesh S wrote about the caste discrimination faced by Namboothiri women in Kuttanad region of Kerala who were not allowed to cover their breasts. Similarly, Limbale has written about a breast tax paid by the untouchable women. They had no respite even after being bare-breasted. Women with larger breasts had to pay a higher tax.
The upper caste Hindus had Kunbeen women in their homes, who could be exploited and raped at their pleasure. The children borne out of this union were routinely discarded.
In his short story collection ‘The Birth Lottery and Other Surprises’, Booker winner Shehan Karunatilak writes: ‘What is God’s grace? It’s all just shit luck. Where we were born. Which houses we get. Nothing is planned. Everything is a sweep ticket.’
It is all luck indeed. Where we end up taking birth, which religion to follow, nothing is under control. And yet the violence and the crimes continue. If you pick up a newspaper, you come across the crime of a human sacrifice of a two-year-old boy in Hathras. Reports of lower caste men being beaten and killed are fairly uniform. It seems we have learnt nothing from the history. It is unfortunate and shameful.

[Yallesh Rangapure · Rating 1 out of 5]

खूप पात्रांची भाऊगर्दी आणि एकाच व्यक्ती रेखेची 2-2 नावे यामुळे गोंधलायला होत.
लेखक नक्की कोणाबद्दल काय सांगतो आहे तेच लवकर लक्षात येत नाही.

लेखकाचा हिंदू धर्माबद्दल पूर्वग्रदूषित दृष्टिकोन सतत जाणवत राहतो.
हिंदू धर्मातील अनिष्ट रुढी परंपरा समोर आणताना त्याच वेळी इतर धर्मा बद्दल मुग गिळून गप्प बसल्याचे धोरण पदोपदी दिसून येते.
हिंदू धर्माच्या चुकीच्या चाली रिती मुळे दलितांवर शेकडो वर्ष अन्याय झाला हे खरेच आहे परंतु त्याच वेळी काळाप्रमाणे बदल सुद्धा याच धर्माने स्वीकारले आहेत हे सुद्धा नाकारता येणार नाही.
याच्याशी तुलना करता मुस्लिम धर्मात अशा प्रकारे बदलाचे नाव सुद्धा घेऊ शकत नाही आजसुद्धा. मग ही सुध्दा आपल्या हिंदू धर्माची केवढी जमेची बाजू आहे हे सुद्धा लक्षात घेतले पाहिजे.
निव्वळ मागील काळात चुकीची वागणूक मिळाली म्हणून आजच्या हिंदू धर्माचा द्वेष करून चालणार नाही. त्यामुळेच अशा अनिष्ट प्रथा नव्याने निर्माण करणे म्हणजे जे आधी चुकले त्यांचेच अनुकरण करण्यासारखे आहे.

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Sanatan: A Novel’ is an intergenerational saga about the Mahar community of Marathwada. Though the author, Sharankumar Limbale, has set the story in specific villages and it has specific protagonists, it could be the story of any village, and the residents of the Maharwadas in each of those villages. The story is set in the 19th century, and spans roughly a century from the years immediately before Bhima Koregaon to the period where Dr. Ambedkar starts pushing for a separate electorate for Dalits. Though it might appear that many social, economic and educational reforms for the upliftment of the Dalits were initiated during this period, the novel shows how little, if anything, changed for the people on the ground.
The story starts at an undefined point of time, and no dates are mentioned anywhere in the story, except in the one section where the entire historical timeline is described. In addition to being vast, the timeline of the narrative also appears to jump back and forth in time. While this is confusing at first, as the novel progresses, you realise that it has been done deliberately, because it underscores the fact that while times might change, the condition of the Dalits never does.
The Mahar community believes that they are cursed because they incurred the wrath of Shiva, and they accept their place outside society. They do not question why they are expected to perform the jobs that nobody else wants to do, or why instead of being paid in cash or kind for their services, they are expected to beg for food. The Mahars are the recipients of physical, sexual and verbal abuse inflicted by people belonging upper castes, yet they do not rebel. There are descriptions of violence, both physical and sexual, against the Dalits and the Adivasis. Life is cheap. People from these communities are killed for trivial reasons. There is reference to at least one human sacrifice. A Mahar man who is required to perform a service for an upper caste woman runs the risk of being punished on the mere suspicion that they might have taken advantage of the upper caste woman. Discrimination is so rampant that upper caste women fear that they might get pregnant and give birth to a tortoise if they hear the laughter of a Mahar man! Mahars are even denied dignity in death when they are prevented from burying their dead in the traditional burial grounds.
At the end of the first chapter, two young Mahar boys get recruited into the British Army. The upper caste people resent this, because they fear that if this continues they will no longer have access to free labour. One of the two soldiers even converts to Christianity in the hope that they will then escape the oppressive caste system. However, throughout the book, the Mahars realise that regardless of the system, there is the oppressor and there is the oppressed, and that the Mahars remain the oppressed. While Christianity doesn’t recognise caste system, the converts realise that they can never hope to be considered equals by the white Christians, and that in the eyes of the rest of society, they remain Mahars.
The book begins with the families in Maharwada having a feast because a cow has died in the village, and the meat is customarily divided between all the Mahar households. This leads the Mahars to pray that more animals will die, because it would then mean they sleep with a full belly. However, while the Mahars were resting after the feast, they are rounded up and trashed, because the villagers decided that the cow could only have died because one of them poisoned her! The book ends with another dead cow being brought to Maharwada, leading to a fresh act of violence, which completes the cycle of oppression and violence.
The most powerful voice in this entire narrative, strangely, is not of a Mahar, but of a Brahmin widow. Despite being the daughter-in-law, the wife and the mother of men well versed in the scriptures, her status as a widow keeps her at the lowest end of the system. She can empathise with the Mahars, and tries her best to teach others to question whether such discrimination is right or not. She summarises the essence of the book when she says-

“Forget me. Think of the untouchables. If not today, they will ask for an answer a hundred years later.”

And

“Until and unless the untouchables write their own history, they will have to sing the glory of Brahmins. But the untouchables will write. Today, or tomorrow!”

This book is an attempt to write the history of the Mahars through stories. The timeline is, perhaps, kept deliberately vague because these are not the stories of individuals; they are the stories of the entire community. This is what all of them have gone through, and what they continue to go through.
The book is translated from the Hindi translation of the original Marathi novel. While the translator Paromita Sengupta does say that she worked closely with Sharankumar Limbale to ensure that she got the nuances right, in my opinion, the book doesn’t flow as well as it possibly could. This is understandable because the book went through two translations and a bit of spontaneity would have been lost both times. Despite that, this is am important document, because it shines light on an issue that remains relevant even today.
The book has been shortlisted for the JCB Prize, and in my opinion, it is a favourite to win, not because of the quality of writing, but because of the subject matter and the nature of the narrative.

[Rehana · Rating 4 out of 5]

There comes a time in everyone’s lives when they get to discover eye-opening details about their own people or place or language or country which will completely shift their perspective for the better. It can be anything—maybe a newspaper article read in a tea stall, a friendly conversation with a neighbour, a clip from an underrated movie no one knew existed or maybe a book. A book like Sanatan! 

Sanatan is a powerful and intriguing title which had my attention from the very beginning of its release. Getting shortlisted for the JCB Prize 2024 only increased my determination to get to it stronger. I went into it after reading about the author without any preconceptions about the book. I knew it had to have harrowing details because the author’s works were primarily Dalit literature. And to no surprise, this book definitely has become one of my top reads this year.

My knowledge of the Indian caste system is considerably basic, to say the least. But to learn about it in great depth starting from the Puranas explaining people’s hierarchy based on their caste is my first. I did not know there existed a difference between Vedic (Aryan) and non-Vedic Hindus, to start with. I didn't know the subtle difference in the strategies of the East India Company and the ‘divide and rule’ British regime over India. I didn't know every celebrated ruler ever was once a casteist irrespective of their religion.

This book speaks about the atrocious crimes committed by the upper-class Hindus against the Mahars in pre-independent India, many of whom chose to convert to other religions out of compulsion even though they didn't want to betray their own. Though this book says, it is about the story of Bhimnak and Sidnak, they only appear for a short while. It touches upon the lives of many without one particular protagonist, while the antagonist is the caste divide and hatred looming in people’s hearts. The translation isn't very smooth and neither does it use any fancy terminologies, but the story will speak for itself. In a historical context, this book stands tall and unbeatable. 

The ending however, felt a little redundant and unfulfilling because the book should have ended with the disclosure of Manik Mahar’s story. But it is an important book to understand the history of the Indian caste system, an unmissable read on the agonising lives of Mahars, and a book that doesn't discriminate against humans unlike humans themselves. 

[Ashish Pathak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt like 2.5/5 overall.

Giving it fewer stars for what I felt wasn't a great translation, which I'll get to later. But talking about the story itself, it feels refreshing to read narratives set in historical context from actual Dalit perspectives. I had never dived into Dalit writings before and I thought of correcting this with Sanatan and was heavily rewarded in terms of what is kept hidden from mainstream accounts and how sanitised even the account of atrocities are if they are written by those upholding oppressive systems. How even our mythologies are sanitised to the point that I had never in my life heard of the story in Ramayana about Ram beheading Shambuka (a shudra who dared to break his caste). Some things are really eye-opening even when you are aware of what is going on around you.

Now, about the translation -- if you can read and understand Marathi, I would recommend go for the original. Rating a translation is always tough for me, esp. in this case, for I can understand Marathi quite well and I could clearly see how the original text would have read. Plus, this isn't even a direct translation -- it's a translation of a Hindi translation. Sentences were translated quite literally as-is, that didn't carry the rhythm of the original -- I could imagine how those lines would have read in Marathi and it fit perfectly when I thought of those lines in Marathi, but in English they just sounded awkward and kept pulling me out of the book. This isn't even about retaining some original Marathi words which the translator says in the introduction, the whole rendition just felt clunky.

[David - marigold_bookshelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

“No religion stands on the foundation of humanity. They all stand on the concept of God. We talk so much about gods. But do we ever talk about humans? We must! We talk a lot about heaven. But how much do we talk about the society we live in?”.

So speaks a Brahmin woman to her son, asking him to reflect on how appallingly their community have treated the untouchables in their village. The novel is written by award winning Dalit author Sharankumar Limbale. Centred mainly on a small village in a rrural district of Maharashtra, it describes how the “untouchable” Mahar caste have been treated deploringly throughout history. Whilst the author uses fictional characters, they are set against the background of established customs, real events and historical figures, which creates a book that is at the same time a novel and a historical declamation.

As a novel, I found the narrative a little too disjointed. But from a historical perspective it is as informative as it is horrific in the depiction of the deep injustice and cruelty inherent in the caste system. I have read other books on the subject, such as Mulk Raj Anand’s fabulous novel, and yet I was still shocked by many issues that I was previously unaware of. Such as lower caste women not having the right to wear a blouse, forcing them to go bare-breasted: “it was the upper-caste man’s right to stare at the bare breasts of the untouchable woman”.

Effectively translated from Marathi by Paromita Sehgupta, Sanatan is an informative and worthwhile read.

[Mehran Singh Katoch]

Sanatan for me is a masterfully written portrayal of Dalit life in a Maharashtrian village, distinguished by its refusal to adopt the usual voyeuristic or moralizing gaze that often accompanies narratives about the marginalized. Rather than leaning into the overplayed “eat the rich” or in this case “romanticise the poor” trope, Limbale opts for a grounded, unembellished depiction of lived experience—one that is far more powerful for its restraint.

What I found especially compelling was the author’s conscious avoidance of overt sympathy. Instead, he crafts the narrative with such clarity and emotional intelligence that the reader is naturally led toward empathy. This is no small feat. Equally striking is his nuanced treatment of internalized oppression — how some characters are shown grappling with personal fears and psychological barriers that prevent them from transcending caste-based limitations. These internal struggles are as potent as the external ones, and Limbale renders them with remarkable subtlety.

A special mention must go to the translator, who has done an exceptional job of preserving the original’s tonal integrity. The language feels true to the setting and emotion, without slipping into either romanticism or sensationalism. 👏

[Vijay · Rating 3 out of 5]

शरणकुमार लिंबाळे यांच्या 'सनातन' कादंबरीचा हा अनुभव मन हेलावून टाकणारा आहे — ही केवळ कथा नाही, तर दलित जीवनाच्या वेदनांचा दस्तऐवज आहे.

📖 'सनातन' – शरणकुमार लिंबाळे
'सनातन' ही शरणकुमार लिंबाळे यांची एक अत्यंत प्रभावी आणि अस्वस्थ करणारी कादंबरी आहे. ही कथा आहे भीमनाक महार आणि त्याच्या कुटुंबाची — पण त्याचबरोबर ही कथा आहे संपूर्ण महारवाड्याची, दलित समाजाच्या शतकानुशतकांच्या वेदनांची, आणि जातीय अत्याचाराच्या सनातन चक्राची.

कादंबरीची रचना वर्तुळाकार आहे — जशी वेदना संपत नाही, तशीच ही कथा एका पिढीकडून दुसऱ्या पिढीकडे वाहत जाते. होळीपासून सुरू होणारी ही कहाणी दिवाळीपर्यंत जाते, पण या दोन सणांदरम्यान घडणाऱ्या घटना आनंदापेक्षा अधिक वेदनादायक आहेत.

"माणूस म्हणून जगण्याचा हक्क मागणं म्हणजे गुन्हा ठरत होता." — ही ओळ मनात खोलवर रुतते. लिंबाळे यांनी दलितांच्या श्रमशील शरीरावर झालेल्या अमानुष अत्याचारांचे वर्णन इतक्या जिवंतपणे केले आहे की वाचक अस्वस्थ होतो.

"आम्ही धर्म बदलला, नावं बदलली, गावं बदलली — पण आमचं दु:ख मात्र तसंच राहिलं." — ही ओळ 'सनातन' या शीर्षकाचा अर्थ स्पष्ट करते. ही वेदना, ही जात, ही असमानता — सना���न आहे.

'सनातन' वाचताना अनेकदा डोळ्यांत पाणी आलं. काही प्रसंग इतके असह्य होते की पुस्तक मिटून ठेवावं वाटलं, पण त्याच वेळी वाटलं — हीच तर गरज आहे, हीच तर लिंबाळेंची ताकद आहे. त्यांनी आपल्याला अस्वस्थ केलं, विचार करायला भाग पाडलं.

ही कादंबरी केवळ दलित समाजाची कथा नाही, तर ती आपल्या समाजाच्या अंतरंगात डोकावणारी आरसा आहे. 'सनातन' वाचल्यावर आपण अधिक सजग, अधिक संवेदनशील होतो — आणि कदाचित अधिक माणूसही.

ही कादंबरी वाचणं म्हणजे इतिहासाच्या जखमा उघडं करणं — पण त्या जखमा समजून घेतल्याशिवाय आपण खऱ्या अर्थाने बरे होऊ शकत नाही.

✍️ थोडा लेखक परिचय
शरणकुमार लिंबाळे हे समकालीन दलित साहित्याचे एक महत्त्वाचे नाव. त्यांचा जन्म १ जून १९५६ रोजी महाराष्ट्रातील सोलापूर जिल्ह्यात झाला. त्यांचे बालपण अत्यंत हालअपेष्टांमध्ये गेले. त्यांच्या आत्मकथनात्मक कादंबरी 'अक्करमाशी'ने मराठी साहित्यविश्वात खळबळ उडवली होती.

लिंबाळे हे केवळ लेखकच नाही, तर एक विचारवंत, समीक्षक आणि दलित साहित्याचे सिद्धांतकारही आहेत. त्यांनी 'दलित साहित्याची संकल्पना' हे ग्रंथ लिहून दलित साहित्याच्या चौकटी ठरवल्या. त्यांच्या लेखनात अनुभवाची तीव्रता, सामाजिक वास्तव आणि परिवर्तनाची आर्तता दिसून येते.

विजय
१३-११-२०२५

[Abishek Sekar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in the pre-independence period, the story is centred around the plight of an individual and his family across 3 generations who belong to the Mahar community, the erstwhile untouchable community in Maharashtra. The many forms of violence and discrimination that occurred during the period are combined with the real time events to produce a very interesting and gut-wrenching novel. The author Sharankumar Limbale has dealt with the topics of caste discrimination, Brahminism, religious conversion, tribal issues, indentured labour, gender issues and the many myths/beliefs surrounding the Hindu religious scriptures in a lucid manner. The novel is a social document of Dalit history which has long remained a neglected space in the country's literature.

[Kathiravan Annamalai · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're interested in how history looks from the other side, pick up Sharankumar Limbale's Sanatan. Following three generations of a Mahar family during colonial India, this novel completely flips traditional historical narratives by showing how Dalits actively participated and shaped history. It creates a powerful counter-narrative that recovers voices long erased from official histories. Its fragmented storytelling perfectly captures how marginalized communities maintain their histories despite systematic erasure - a must-read for anyone interested in subaltern perspectives on Indian history.

[Akhil Prabhakaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

സനാതൻ ‼️

മഹാർ ജനാവിഭാഗം നേരിട്ട വർണ/ ജാതി വിവേചനത്തിന്റെ കൊടും ദീകരമായ ജീവിതാനുഭവങ്ങളുടെ നേർക്കാഴ്ച.

ഇന്ത്യൻ മഹാർ ജനത ഭൂരിപക്ഷവും മനുഷ്യത്വത്തിനു വേണ്ടി, മതം മാറി ജീവിക്കേണ്ടി വന്ന യാഥാർഥ്യം.... ആ കഥ ഒരു വല്ലാത്ത കഥയാണ് 🔥

Must read.....

[Sumana · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOT an easy read, but essential.

[Manu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the English translation of this.

Sanatan’ by Sharankumar Limbale is a powerful and poignant novel offering the perspective of the Mahar community who faced historical oppression.

It’s a sharp critique of the caste system and the religious diktats which sanction discrimination. The theme is relevant even today.

You attain sharper consciousness of social injustices when you yourself become a victim of oppression.

There is a moving passage from the work, where a young woman, ostracised due to widowhood, feels solidarity with the untouchables.

‘Sanatan’ deserves more public discussion.

[Vallabh Desai · Rating 3 out of 5]

BOOK NOT TO BE MISSED...


Good! Worth reading by every Indian to enlighten them. Let them know the social, cultural, & political history of a nation.