Homes without Windows - Chandu Maheria -2026

Reading Homes without Windows, I frequently experienced flashes of deja vu. Although unlike

, I grew up in a village setting in Maharashtra, the experiences of Dalits are essentially not very dissimilar. In addition, I was well acquainted with places and most people that figure in the book. It evoked memories of my own encounters with caste and communal violence in Gujarat. One episode returned vividly to mind: during the anti-reservation riots of 1981, while I was a student at IIM Ahmedabad, I found myself trapped by a mob in Bapunagar. The IIM campus was an elitist island that remained insulated even when the city around it burned. Yet the social activist in me often ventured into working-class neighbourhoods to understand events first hand. I had befriended several Dalit activists across Ahmedabad and regularly attended their meetings. One afternoon, in the thick of the riots, riding my Vijay scooter towards the Buddha Vihar in Bapunagar, I was stopped by half a dozen men armed with sticks and wearing the ferocious expressions of a riotous mob. When I told them where I was headed, they began manhandling me and seized my scooter. For a few moments, I genuinely thought I might become the next day’s newspaper headline. Suddenly, however, a group of 15 to 20 Dalit youths, blue scarves tied around their foreheads, emerged from a nearby basti. The attackers quickly dispersed, and I was saved. Read more on thewire.