Plain Speaking: English 2020

The memoirs and lectures of A.N. Sattanathan, presented here in a fully annotated edition, with a critical introduction, constitute a key literary-historical document of the caste struggle. Sattanathan's autobiographical fragment is a unique record of non-brahmin low-caste life in rural South India, where the presence of poverty and caste prejudice is the more powerful for being understated. As the experience sparsely and beautifully rendered of the low-caste but not stereotypically untouchable villager, it is, quite simply, revelatory, and will make an impact as such on the English-educated reader, to whom that experience has been so far unavailable. In a complementary narrative, Sattanathan's lectures on The Rise and Spread of the Non-Brahmin Movement as the most outstanding event in South Indian History in the twentieth century offer a lucid summary of the cultural and historical conditions that find more personal and immediate expression in the memoirs.