Introduction In the canon of Indian literature, few novels smell as strongly of blood, soil, and gunpowder as Anna Bhau Sathe’s Fakira (1959). To the uninitiated, it is an adventure story—a historical romance about a daring outlaw who roams the Sahyadri mountains, looting the British treasury to feed the starving. But to read Fakira merely as an action novel is to ignore the fire that forged it. This text is a manifesto. It is a revolutionary document that serves as a...