Born into a family of landless bonded laborers in the dustbowl of Sathgaon in western India, Namdeo Nimgade is 14 when he finally manages to attend his village school where, being an untouchable , he has to stand on the hot verandah and listen to lessons through a window. Inspired by Dr B.R. Ambedkar, he steadfastly pursues his education. Graduating from Nagpur, Nimgade goes on to complete his Ph.D. in soil science from the University of Wisconsin in 1962 becoming the first dalit after Ambedkar to earn a doctorate in an American university.

In the 1950s, studying at the Indian Agriculture Research Institute in Delhi, Nimgade gets to spend a lot of time with Dr Ambedkar. Throughout his life, Nimgade remains singularly committed to the Ambedkarite movement. Nimgade narrates incidents in his life with candor and delightful humor whether he is recounting his great-grandfather Ganba's combat with a tiger in a forest or his forbidden love for a nondalit woman. Moving away from the framework of victim hood narratives, Nimgade's life is an inspiring story of triumph against odds. Up until his death on 22 November 2011 in Nagpur, Nimgade lives with his love, his wife Hira, in Nagpur.