Ants Among Elephants

The subtitle—An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India—provides a sober summary of the content of this memoir, but it deliberately underplays the harrowing stories told in lucid prose by the author Sujatha Gidla. The national tale is one of class-initiated and state-supported oppression of the lower castes and, in helpless response, the divisions in the Communist Party of India when it abandoned armed revolution to enter electoral politics. The family tale traces the transformation of an uncle into a famous poet and leader of a left-wing guerilla movement. The other hero of the story is a heroine, the author's mother, who comes into her own as a mother and teacher in the later part of the story. A wonderful aspect of this memoir is that it never lets you forget the impact of social upheavals on women. The author is, however, not concerned with hagiography. The different members of the family, including their circle of friends, are here depicted with warts and all.

I'm so glad that RVH recommended me this book. It will make for a great summer read for my XII elective on Anglophone literature from India. The other writers in the elective, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie, are all very different but they do share a common middle-class background. Ants Among Elephants provide a radical and necessary voice from below.

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