The first time Yashwant Singh was paid to write was in the 1990s. A hormonal revolutionary with the All India Students’ Association, or AISA, the student wing of the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist, he had been sent to the Banaras Hindu University to propagandise for the party. “I wrote an article about how disputes were settled in villages,” he said. “And had given the example of my uncle, the arbiter in our village, who would favour the party that gave him more meat and alcohol.”
It was published in Saras Salil, a Hindi fortnightly whose commentary was as social as it was sexual, and Singh earned Rs 250 from it. “I got a call from my uncle a few days later,” he recalled. “He said if I come home, he’ll break my bones.”
