didn't we? Can't fight the whole village!' she'd say...whenever Kalu asked her how she

and Udho coped with [the] insults.

In the year 1952, Kalu escaped Banjhan Kalan in Punjab's Hoshiarpur for

Bedford in the British Midlands, hoping to find a life of dignity that he had been

denied because of his caste. He was in his late teens and had grown up believing

in Sikhism's tenet of equality preached by Guru Nanak and Ravidas, a principle

the villagers never sincerely practised.They had maimed his father, accusing him

of stealing a zamindar's ox; they had thrown father and son out of a Quit India

rally; they had mercilessly thrashed young Kalu himself for daring to enter a

temple. He had never been allowed to forget-even by his schoolmates-that

he was a Chamar, destined to skin dead cattle like his ancestors.

England promised a new life of respect and opportunity. But Kalu's fellow

expatriates had brought caste along when they came to that country, and he

would be forced to adhere to its degrading rules just as he was in Banjhan.

Determined not to bend-as he had refused to do back home-Kalu fights back,

but his resoluteness in the struggle will put him and his family at serious risk.

The Past Is Never Dead is not only the story of a rural Punjabi family's search for

a better life, it is also a powerful depiction of the stranglehold of caste over

Sikh immigrants in Britain. But even as it exposes the horror and obstinacy of

caste, the novel pays tribute to the courage and tenacity of the human spirit

and its capacity for hope.