Virtual Cover - August 2025
Anupam Debashis Roy remembers a tale his grandmother told him. Roy grew up in Bangladesh in a Namasudra family, members of a Dalit community and deemed lower than the lowest caste in the Hindu order. In Bangladesh, as in so much of Southasia, their caste placed them firmly in the crosshairs of discrimination. But his grandmother used to say that their ancestors were Brahmins who rebelled against the misrule of Laxman Sen, a 12th-century king of the Sena dynasty in Bengal, and as a result were driven out towards the Sundarban. While travelling through the thick mangrove forests of the Ganga delta to get to Khulna, in what is now south-western Bangladesh, their paitas – the white threads that Brahmins wear around their torsos – were torn away by thorny plants. And so they were shunned from Brahmin society as Namasudras.
Roy calls this family myth his “first inheritance” from his grandmother, and one that empowered his journey of education. In a deeply personal and hugely powerful essay, he recounts how his family upended its social destiny by creating its own stories and myths – and, in doing so, created better lives for its children.
Roy writes of his grandmother who never went to school but taught herself to read the Mahabharat, of his great grandfather who borrowed a paita and learned the Gayatri mantra just to be able to attend school, of his father’s overseas quest for education, and of his own defiance of caste boundaries.
Himal’s virtual cover for August 2025 presents Roy’s memoir of how his family became “Namasudra Brahmins” by creating myths about their antecedents to counteract unjust social and religious practices. The cover photo features his self-taught grandmother along with Roy (third from right), his aunt, his sisters and his – all of whom benefitted from formal education because the family refused to abide by restrictive caste rules.
Alongside it, we present three more pieces from the Himal archives that offer rare insight into an unjustly neglected subject: the battles for caste dignity in Bangladesh.
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All best
Roman Gautam
Editor, Himal Southasian