Shivam is critical in his review of  “Khairlanji: A strange and bitter crop”

All Teltumbde wants to talk about is Shudra oppressors, neoliberalism, Naxalism and the State—Khairlanji being a mere symbolic peg on which to hang all these ‘larger’ issues. Which is why you are surprised to read, on the second-last page:

Khairlanji soon got transformed into a symbol — a symbol of atrocity —shorn of reality. Dalits ceased to see any other caste crime beyond Khairlanji. This tendency to create symbols out of reality, and to discard reality thereafter, can be easily seen among dalits.

There’s another problematic symbol used here. The book is part of a series on atrocities called ‘HoloCaste’. This is not just a bad pun; it devalues both the Holocaust and violence against Dalits. It is time to use our own idioms, to tell our own stories, because the Dalit movement is still waiting for its own Abel Meeropol and Billie Holiday.