When a grandson is born to Methar Sarder (Head of the scavengers) Gurucharan, he chooses to name him Ramgolam, a hybrid neologism concocted out of blending two words from the registers of two faiths-Hinduism and Islam, hoping that his grandson would not be subjected to the humiliation and denial that was meted out to him and his fellow-beings for belonging to the Methars, a so-called low caste, the untouchables. He hoped that both the Hindus and Muslims out of deference to their respective faiths would spare Ramgolam the injustices heaped upon him and his class. But Ramgolam who succeeds his grandfather as the Methar Sarder gets no reprieve. As he launches a movement in his youth to safeguard the basic rights of his own community, he is caught in the tentacles of religious stigma, social prejudice and power brokering and is ultimately crushed. Like most tales of subaltern resistance, Ramgolam's story ends in further alienation and victimization for the socially, economically and racially marginalized.