The process of translating the literature of the Dalits, among India’s most oppressed classes, brings one face-to-face with the bitter realities of our society. …The situation changed significantly with the advent of printing technology. Books became available to every Indian, irrespective of caste and creed. As a result, a number of important voices began to find a wider audience. While social reformers like Jyoti Ba Phule, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr B.R. Ambedkar brought to the fore the injustices inherent in a social order designed to perpetuate caste-based exploitation, the freedom movement, launched to liberate the country from its British colonial rulers, played a vital role in the social awakening of communities that had, so far, been denigrated as the lower classes. These simultaneous developments would go a long way in contributing to the creation of a specific literary genre that eventually came to be identified as Dalit literature — the literature of the oppressed. 

( p. ix “A Note from the Translator”)

Ratan Kumar Sambharia Thunderstorm: Dalit Stories ( Translated by Mridul Bhasin) Hachette India, Gurgaon, India, 2015. Pb. pp. 246 Rs350