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August 314 AD: the cosseted world of Rome’s rich and powerful is rocked by a series of violent abductions, as the elite’s children are kidnapped and held to ransom. Meanwhile, veterans of Constantine’s army are being barbarously murdered; the killings reminiscent of the gruesome practices of the Picts whom they fought many years before. Empress Helena demands that Claudia, her secret agent, resolve these macabre occurrences. But Claudia has her own problems. The perfectly preserved corpse of a young Christian woman has been disinterred in her uncle’s garden and it falls to her to investigate this too. Now she must track her way through a murky tangle of politics, religion and violence, ever aware that the slightest mistake could cost her life.
Government Brahmana is the English translation of the Kannada autobiography of Aravind Malagatti. The autobiographical narrative is in form of a series of episodes from the author’s childhood and youth. These episodes function as what G.N. Devy calls "epiphanic moments" in a caste society. The author reflects on specific instances from his childhood and student days that illustrate the normative cruelty practised by caste Hindu society on Dalits. We encounter all the tropes of (male) Dalit life: isolation in school where even drinking water is an ordeal; life in the village where Dalits perform the filthiest tasks but are denied access to common wells, lakes, where they cannot step into shops and therefore have their purchases thrown at them, where they have to cut their own hair because no barber would touch it; consuming dead-animal meat and innards; doomed love affairs with ‘upper’ caste women. A painful, disturbing, thought-provoking memoir, this text is conversely full of vitality, even tenderness. In its structure and purpose — as a series of notes towards a Dalit autobiography — Government Brahmana appears to be anticipated by Ambedkar’s own autobiographical sketches.
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