Daya Pawar’s Baluta (translated into English by Jerry Pinto in 2015) stirred the literary world, beginning the tradition of Dalit autobiographies that are equal parts communal and personal. Published in Marathi in 1978, it shed light on the lives of Mahars in Maharashtra, letting the readers in on the oppression that they are a part of. The shock, the horror, the terror — it showed the lives of untouchables of the Mahar-wada with deep honesty and grave intensity.
In 1986, Baby Kamble became the first Mahar woman to publish her autobiography, The Prisons We Broke (translated into English by Maya Pandit in 2008). She dived into the doubly oppressed lives of Mahar women by caste and patriarchy, describing the domestic lives of women in great detail with a focus on the ritualistic celebration of various festivals and weddings.
