Malika Amar Shaikh was the daughter of the Marathi Communist trade union leader and folk performer, Shahir Ahmed Shaikh, and his wife who came from one of the original communities of Mumbai. The child of an inter-caste marriage, Malika grew up in an atmosphere of activism and music and instinctively turned to poetry.
Into this turbulent life burst the poet, Namdeo Dhasal, famed for his raw, smouldering verse that scorched the world of Marathi literature and for creating the Dalit Panthers based on the Malcom X model. Something. . .
