▪️Valentin Hénault, a 32-year-old French documentary filmmaker, arrives in India in August 2023 with a romantic “Indian dream” of mysticism and spirituality, but soon confronts harsh realities of exploitation, poverty, and caste oppression.
▪️He shifts to documenting atrocities against Dalit women (Untouchables), who endure routine beatings, rapes, murders, and systemic discrimination, interviewing victims and reviewing case files of horrific crimes by upper-caste perpetrators with police impunity.
▪️Hénault joins activist Seema Gautam, a young Dalit woman, who rallies landless peasants in Uttar Pradesh villages, demanding one acre of land per family, fair wages, and an end to dependency on upper-caste landowners.
▪️On October 10, 2023, while attending the peaceful Ambedkar People’s March in Gorakhpur for Dalit land rights, he is violently arrested by police on charges of visa violations and alleged political interference (e.g., fomenting unrest).
▪️He spends about one month in overcrowded Gorakhpur Central Jail, placed in the “pavillon des fous” (mentally unstable ward), enduring extreme filth, noise, lack of space (inmates sleep sideways), physical torture, and daily brutality.
▪️Prison life starkly reflects India’s caste and religious hierarchies: Dalits and lower castes near toilets or in worse conditions; Muslims segregated; the Indian Constitution ignored in favor of ancient discriminatory codes like Manusmriti.
▪️As a white foreigner, Hénault gains minor privileges but faces exploitation; he secretly records inmates’ heartbreaking testimonies of innocence (many poor undertrials jailed for blackmail, love jihad, or silencing), vowing “shame on me if I forget.”
▪️Released on bail after delays, he leaves India in May 2024; the 16-chapter memoir blends personal horror, political critique of caste “internal colonialism,” and empathy for the marginalized, challenging Western romanticized views of India.