India, Sept. 3 -- Denied entry into temples, they did not argue - they carried Ram on their skin instead. TWF-IBNS correspondent Souvik Ghosh traces how Chhattisgarh's Ramnami Samaj, a Dalit devotional community that began tattooing the name of Ram across their bodies in the 1890s as a quiet act of resistance against caste exclusion, has travelled from the margins of religious history to the heart of this year's Durga Puja - where their extraordinary story of faith, identity and defiance is the centrepiece in Chaltabagan, one of North Kolkata's most celebrated pandals.

There was an almost palpable sense of awe in the room as three members of the Ramnami Samaj walked into a star hotel in Kolkata, their bodies carrying a story that needed ...