Mata Prasad’s 2002 autobiography attributes the emergence of Indian na-tionalism to the everyday humiliation experienced by the English-educated Indian elite under colonial rule. Like earlier Dalit authors, Prasad argues that the origins of Indian nationalism must be located in the nationalist leaders’ personal experiences of colonial humiliation, during which they were treated s second-class citizens both in India and England. Furthermore, Dalit writ-ers like Prasad insist that Indian nationalism cannot be explained merely as an outcome of economic inequity; rather, they argue that colonial conditions of social and cultural exclusion motivated middle-class Indians to launch a nationalist struggle. Prasad illustrates the question of humiliation by dis-cussing at length Mahatma Gandhi’s experience on a train in South Africa in 1893, which was a formative incident in his politics. Gandhi was evicted from the first-class compartment, despite his English attire, his education in England, his status as a lawyer, and his legal right to be in the compartment because he had bought a first-class ticket. Prasad further argues that the Dalit struggle is against caste Hindu discriminatory practices that have humiliated Dalits for centuries. Using experiences of racism and exclusion as the main lenses for understanding the emergence of Indian nationalism, Prasad draws parallels between Indian elite experiences of humiliation at the hands of the British and Dalit experiences of humiliation at the hands of caste Hindus. As Prasad shows, experiences of humiliation similarly form a crucial explana-tory role in fights for dignity in Dalit narratives.