Beyond the ‘Crushed’ Identity of ‘Dalit’

It began with a simple question over morning coffee in 1976. We were in Varanasi then, living under the heavy, quiet shadow of political exile. My father, a high-profile democrat, was a marked man—his name was on the King’s list of targets back in Nepal. Because he believed in the power of the people, we were treated like criminals. In those days, being a democrat meant becoming a victim of a system that feared the ballot box more than the bullet.