India, March 5 -- Anita Agnihotri's A Touch of Salt, translated by Arunava Sinha from Bengali, is an outstanding portrait of the salt makers of the Rann of Kutch. Their multigenerational story captures the historical and political struggles surrounding salt production in both pre- and post-independent India.

The novel follows the life of Tribhuvan Patel, a 15-year-old who runs away from home to take part in Mahatma Gandhi's historic Salt March to Dandi in 1930, and culminates with Tribhuvan's grandson Azad taking on a business magnate to get justice for the neglected salt makers in modern India.

When Tribhuvan meets "Gandhibaba", the "uncrowned emperor of India", as a self-appointed representative of the saltmaking Agaria community of K...