 "Bezwada Wilson")
“To those who say that these things do not happen here, to those who want to claim a superior status for the Indian civilisation, I say that only those who have suffered this anguish know its sting.”
— Om Prakash Valmiki in the preface to Joothan, 1997
Bezwada Wilson knew nothing of anguish in his early childhood years. “My parents worked hard to give me an insulated life, filled with love,” he recalls. Till he was five or six years old, he had no inkling of his place in the social order. Born to parents who were manual scavengers, Wilson
