4 ideas
Converting to Christianity and gaining missionary education did not free the family from untouchability, because caste identity is read from ancestry, surname, and neighbourhood rather than from faith or income. Converts were treated as untouchable by both upper-caste Hindus and upper-caste Christians, so escape routes through religion or schooling only moved the stigma into new settings.
Satyam, the author's uncle, became a founding organiser of a Maoist people's war and was later pushed out by upper-caste comrades who kept the leadership for themselves. The episode shows how a movement committed to abolishing hierarchy can carry caste into its own command structure, because members bring their social rank with them into revolutionary organisations.
Seen from an untouchable family, national independence changed who held power but left intact the village hierarchy that decided who could draw water, own land, or be beaten without consequence. Measuring political change by how it altered daily life at the bottom, rather than by elite transfers of sovereignty, exposes the nationalist leadership's continuity with caste order.
The author's mother, Manjula, suffers caste discrimination from outside and patriarchal control from inside her own family and marriage, with each layer making the other harder to escape. Oppression is not a single axis: people subordinated by caste can simultaneously enforce gender hierarchy, so liberation on one front leaves the other intact.