What does it mean to be an untouchable in India? Why do some Indians despise the touch of others? Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956), one of India's foremost revolutionaries, recounts his experiences of growing up untouchable and being routinely discriminated against: in school at the age of 10, in Baroda after his return from Columbia University, and while traveling.

Battling odds, Ambedkar drafted the Constitution of India and eventually embraced Buddhism. Experiences similar to Ambedkar's continue to haunt a majority of India's 170 million dalits. They are still denied water, shelter and the basic dignities of life. In this ground-breaking work, Pardhan-Gond artists Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam interweave historical events like the Mahad satyagraha with contemporary incidents. Defying conventional grammar, they infuse fresh energy into the graphic idiom through their magical art mounted on an epic scale.

Author Bio:

Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam are Pardhan Gond artists belonging to the same clan as the legendary Jangarh Singh Shyam. The artist-couple lives in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Durgabai has won acclaim for her paintings and for illustrations for several books. Subhash is an accomplished sculptor and has worked with many media. This is their first graphic book and their first book together.

Reviews:

"The pages I have seen are wonderful, their figures and clothes drawn in intense patterning, faces mainly in profile with large single eyes, and their pages divided into panels by curving, decorated borders. Accusing, pointing fingers are repeated in one panel. Even the balloons have shapes and tails uniquely their own: bird-like outlines for regular speech; a scorpion's sting as the tail for venomous dialogue; and a distinctive eye in the thought bubbles to represent the mind's eye. What better art to retell this tale today?" - Paul Gravett, the London-based graphic art curator

"Unusually beautiful. Unforgettable."- Arundhati Roy

"An extraordinary book.... A conference of corporeal experience across generations, full of pain and empathy."- John Berger