Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

by Sujatha Gidla

The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary

Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible life—how he became a famous poet, student, labor organizer, and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society.

A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.

Genres: Nonfiction, India, History, Memoir, Biography, Politics, Indian Literature

316 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 2017

About the author

Sujatha Gidla is an Indian-American author. Gidla is known for her book Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India.

Reviews

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a five-star book by my usual standards. Yet I am giving it the full rating... because it opened a window to a life which I can never imagine living.

Sujatha Gidla is my age. While I was living my pampered life as the young member of an upper-caste, upper class family in Kerala (my only worry being whether I would be able to buy all the books I wanted with my pocket money) she was living in a Dalit colony in nearby Andhra, malnourished, surrounded by filth, her body racked with disease, bullied by the local boys, and sexually molested by creeps. While I graduated from college, got a job, married and made a life for myself, she joined a revolutionary outfit for justice, was arrested and tortured. And I never knew she existed until she wrote this book in 2017. This is the reality of India, where multiple nations exist in the same subcontinent without touching one another. This is the reality of the thing called caste, which marks out every Indian from his/ her birth. Its chains are invisible, but extremely strong. It is, without doubt, the greatest social evil ever.

This book is a memoir of Gidla's Dalit Christian family, starting with her Grandfather Prasanna Rao Kambham. It comprises mainly the tale of Sujatha's uncle Satyamurthy (SM for short), a Maoist revolutionary, and her mother Manjula - mainly because they were the two people she could talk to at length (the other uncle, William Carey, was an alcoholic and the family never-do-we'el). SM's tale is a rousing one: starting with the uprising against the Hyderabad Nizam, continuing through the Telengana revolutionary movement, the Naxalite movement of the late 1970's... it charts the rise and fall of armed communist movement in India. However, the tale of Manjula, doubly handicapped by being both a Dalit and a woman, is more poignant and touching. As the reader moves through the intertwined narratives, she gets a panoramic view of a country being born: a democracy in theory, but a feudalistic oligarchy in practice.

Sujatha's family were better off since they had converted to Christianity, and so got support of the Church - but in India, a Dalit is a Dalit, and social ostracism remained. One feels that Satyam would have gotten through college and would have become a professor or writer, if his father had enough money. But the crushing poverty that is the lot of most Dalits in India, plus the awareness about his lowly status in society for the first time, made him lose out on his academic pursuits and discover revolution.

In Slatter Peta the difference between his family and the rest of the malas was small. They were all ants. It mattered little if one was a bit bigger than the others. But here at AC College, Satyam was an ant among elephants.

The book paints a less than flattering picture of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, and Indira Gandhi. From the point of view of a revolutionary, they were part of the capitalist establishment who ruthlessly steamrolled genuine demands of the downtrodden. Communists were regularly shot out of hand and such killings were marked as "encounters". As a revolutionary, an ordinary life was denied to Satyam. He stayed on with the Indian Communist Party, as it split and split again, always staying with the wing which supported armed revolution and by its extension - China. And as Communist parties became mainstream and armed insurgence became more and more irrelevant, Satyam became the embittered member of a marginalised minority.

In the case of Manjula, she was fighting a battle on three fronts: against caste discrimination, against patriarchy, and against the Church who saw her family as Godless communists. Throughout her college years, she had to endure the ridicule of the upper-castes (including the so-called "upper-caste Christians", mostly from Kerala) and active venom from her upper caste tutors and superiors, who genuinely hated a Dalit getting education and ahead in life. One or two incidents are worth sharing.

On the day they were to leave for Vizag, Manjula made a special visit to her old history lecturer Mr Rama Prabhu’s home. He wouldn’t let her into his house. Standing outside the gate, she thanked him: ‘Sir, without you pushing me hard the way you did, I never would have passed, let alone received a first class.’

She meant it. She had the demented notion that this man had humiliated and terrorised her with no other purpose than to make her study hard. As though Rama Prabhu were a stricter version of Sambasiva Rao, with the same ideals of uplifting untouchables but with different methods. Manjula wasn’t aware of her tendency to prostrate herself before caste Hindus, especially brahmins. Throughout her life – in this and other ways – she coupled rebellion with obeisance.

***

Professor R. S. Tripathi was old and doddering, but his renown as a historian was such that he was welcome to keep his position at the university as long as he liked. Inside his office, Manjula saw her own instructor, Professor Pathak, sitting to one side with a broad smile on his face. He proudly introduced Manjula as the most brilliant student in his class.

As Professor Tripathi gazed at her, his face darkened; his eyes shrank into black slits. He was revolted by the sight of Manjula. One look at her and he knew she was poor and untouchable. The Mary in her name made it unmistakable.

‘She is the one I told you of,’ Pathak explained. ‘You wanted to meet her.’ But Tripathi merely stared at her coldly and said nothing. Humiliated, Manjula excused herself.

She left the office feeling dizzy. As she walked to the library, she could feel the venom of this poisonous man spread through her veins, shutting down her heart, her brain. She was on the point of collapsing. She ran back to the hostel and fell on her bed. She stayed in for a week.

This Tripathi, later, purposefully gave Manjula low grades so that she was denied a first class and therefore, employment prospects.

(These incidents are not wholly of the past. Even now, there are many reports of Dalit students being targeted in many of the prestigious Indian universities, sometimes even leading to the suicide of the student. Which is really worrying, because even after affirmative action in the form of reservations, the downtrodden are kept at the bottom by the invisible social walls.)

Even with all these constraints, Manjula managed to graduate and get employment. But then, the fate of almost every Indian girl of her generation befell her. She got married to a man who considered her only as an object to satisfy his lust, bear his children, and take care of him. The slightest resistance from her was met with violent reprisals, which her mother-in-law gleefully supported. Even her hard-earned salary was wasted by this blackguard. Sujatha has vivid memories of her father beating up her mother, while everyone including the neighbours looked on.

Sujatha and her two siblings grew up impoverished, diseased and bullied. But she had learnt a lesson - keep quiet, whatever happens. She did so even when the neighbourhood boys spun tops on her head, and when a neighbour exposed himself and forced her to masturbate him. It seems that she followed this policy of silent acceptance until in college, she suddenly woke up to the revolutionary genes in her and joined student resistance. However, a stint in jail and subsequent torture seems to have broken her spirit. She somehow completed her engineering degree and left for the USA at twenty-six years of age. And this story ends there.

***

I have heard the statement somewhere that all lives unknown to us are fiction. That was true for me, before I started reading up on Indian society. Now, I can attest to the veracity of the old saw, "truth is stranger than fiction". And in the case of Dalits, much more distressing.

The caste whose occupation is the most degrading, the most indecent, the most inhuman of all, is known in coastal Andhra as pakis. In print, they are called manual scavengers or, more euphemistically still, porters of night soil. In plain language, they carry away human shit. They empty the ‘dry’ latrines still widely used throughout India, and they do it by hand. Their tools are nothing but a small broom and a tin plate. With these, they fill their palm-leaf baskets with excrement and carry it off on their heads five, six miles to some place on the outskirts of town where they’re allowed to dispose of it. Some modernised areas have replaced these baskets with pushcarts (this being what’s thought of as progress in India), but even today the traditional ‘head-loading’ method prevails across the country.

Nearly all of these workers are women. They don’t know what gloves are, let alone have them. As their brooms wear down, they have to bend their backs lower and lower to sweep. When their baskets start to leak, the shit drips down their faces. In the rainy season, the filth runs all over these people, onto their hair, into their eyes, their noses, their mouths. Tuberculosis and other infectious diseases are endemic among them.

***

The madigas are forced to eke out a living by trading in dead animals. When an animal falls dead in the village of disease or old age, a madiga comes to haul it away. The carrion flesh is sold to untouchables as meat, and the hide is tanned and made into leather goods. Not all madiga families engage in this occupation, but even if only four or five of them do, the whole madiga goodem is polluted by the festering piles of guts on the ground and dripping pieces of flesh hanging in the sun. The smell of the blood is everywhere.

These two are just samples. There may be hundreds more, along the length and breadth of India.

India is knocking on the doors of the developed world, clamouring entry. We are competing with China in Asia as an economic power. We have put satellites on both the moon and Mars.

But unless we tackle this social evil in our backyard, no amount of economic and technological advance will help. The concern for humanity must trump our thirst for advancement on the global arena. Then only can India call itself developed.

[Subashini · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars, so went with 3.5 stars rounded up. But what the hell do stars matter, in the end. I would recommend this book to anyone, and especially so if you want to learn about the ingrained brutality and injustice of the caste system in India. It's also a great look at radical politics and the social values that continue to trip up revolutionary movements (casteism, patriarchy, bourgeois leaders). I found it incredibly illuminating, and the sections about what women in particular had to endure were both infuriating and heartbreaking, as is always the case.

My problem was that the writing/style was occasionally choppy and brusque. I think I understand why this is the case--Gidla was transcribing oral history, basically, and as an author I think maybe it was a conscious decision not to "fill out" or pad out sentiments and thoughts of characters in the story in order to make it more readable. Because she's not making up this story and the author has a responsibility to the truth. But on the other hand an editor could have maybe helped to polish or smooth over those rough edges.

It's a minor complaint. And I'm seeing some reviews here by people living in the West who are referring to Satyam, her communist uncle, as a "bum". It's not controversial to say that no one has any right to call a Dalit who organised labourers and peasants and went to prison for his political beliefs a "bum". Especially if you're judging his life from the comforts of your chair while reading a book. A sexist wanker? Yes, most likely. But not a "bum". The lack of self-awareness among reviewers reviewing a person's LIFE is astonishing, especially among readers with privilege who never had to live in the circumstances Gidla's family was subjected to because of both caste and poverty. I mean, fuck off. So to counter ignorant negative reviews, I'm giving this 4 fucking stars.

[Jerrodm · Rating 2 out of 5]

As an American English reader with an admittedly limited background in Indian history and culture, I found this book hard to read. That said, I learned a lot from it and would recommend it to people who are interested in learning about the ways that caste continues to operate in Indian society, and the history of the development of Marxist/Communist politics in India in the 1950's and 60's. This book is pretty imperfect from the perspective of both family memoir and political history, but what it lacks in writing style and in contextualization it makes up for in authenticity.

We read this for our book club, and I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have picked it up otherwise. The author, Sujatha Gidla, recounts in the book the early life of her parents and especially of her uncle, who was an early political leader and organizer in Andhra Pradesh state in India after their independence. The book tells the story of their family, their grinding poverty and their subjugation to the caste system as untouchables.

Gidla has collected a wealth of stories about the generations that came of age during India's early independent years, but these stories seem to be told very much as they were related, without any attempt to probe events or people from different perspectives. So statesmen and women like Nehru and Indira Gandhi come across as one-dimensional badguys. Strangely, even the main characters in Gidla's tales come across as flat from a development perspective - we hear story after story of things that Satyam, her uncle, and Manjula, her mother, but we never get a sense of what kinds of people they were - everything feels slightly distanced. Maybe that's just her style of writing, but it was striking how little connection I felt to the characters in the story at the end of the book.

During our book club someone remarked that they had much preferred Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo's non-fiction book about a community of untouchables who live in abject poverty on the outskirts of Mumbai, because of how deftly she showed the humanity of the characters in her story. I had to agree that I found Boo's book much more compelling, and much better written, but I also felt uncomfortable that I was valuing the voice of a Westerner talking about poor outcaste societies in India, rather than a voice from within those same communities.

I think we all often prefer that the people who deliver us messages, especially hard messages, look and sound like us, and find it hard or threatening when they don't. But that's something we should try to push against, and I thought Gidla's book was worthwhile for that reason. Of course it's worthwhile in its own right too, but I appreciated that these are her people's tales told in their own voice, and that she did not decide to Anglicize/Americanize them to make us more comfortable with the presentation. Worth a read, especially for anyone who is interested in India.

[Asha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps I had the wrong impression of what this book was about, I had thought it was about how an untouchable family rose above odds and stigma to 'rise like elephants' and achieve success in life despite obstacles; but found instead a very boring political book about family joining in, and rise of the communist party in India and all the things wrong with congress party. 300+ pages of this. Gidla could really had written a more inspiring book, maybe even about herself and how she pulled out of untouchables to live life in America. This book was not my cup of tea.

[Pond skater · Rating 4 out of 5]

**SPOILER ALERT**

This is a stunning biography of an untouchable family involved in the Naxalite insurgency in 1940-70's India. The author's uncle was a leader in this revolutionary movement and the author herself, now working as a subway conductor in New York City, was a student agitator in her youth, who was imprisoned and tortured at the age of nineteen. After interviewing her family members, she's written a portrait of their lives, their harrowing poverty and their decision to join the communists. The most searing portrait however, is of her mother, who opted for a professional career as an academic and for domesticity, after having a rushed arranged marriage and raising three children under taxing conditions.

There are many things wrong with this book, but they don't detract from how worthwhile a read it is. Firstly, the title and reviews are deeply misleading. They suggest that this is a plain-vanilla anti-caste diatribe about discrimination by the upper castes against the lower. However, the reality is far more nuanced. Caste plays a role in the challenges the author's family faces; even after getting an education, their untouchability follows them like a bad smell, resulting in continuous harassment by employers. However, the perpetrators of this discrimination range from the British, to the Nizam of Hyderabad, to the police and even the democratically elected Nehru government. This leads me to a major flaw in the book. While the family anecdotes are riveting, they appear almost transcribed verbatim and convey no context about the political situation beyond the immediate concerns of the narrator. In fact, the book repeatedly describes the awfulness of the untouchables' living situation, but glosses over how the communists/Naxalites came into being and took the decisions they did. For instance, in one anecdote, Prime Minister Nehru speaks in modern-day Telengana and the communists sabotage his speech by cutting off his microphone. The author's uncle then tries to grab him. All this is presented in a haze of emotion - the brave, starving young man who joins the communists and almost yanks the prime minister of India off his feet. But why? What had Nehru done? There is an allusion to the Indian government's attempt to ram Hindi as a national language down the throats of South Indians, but no context provided as to the reasons behind this decision. I've got to assume that the author, who worked as a research assistant at IIT and subsequently studied in the U.S., had the capability to research and make her case. What she has done is present a deeply moving portrait of poverty, but an extremely one-sided account of the rebels, with little explanation as to what they are fighting for and how they propose to go about it. At one point, China invades India and the communists even take China's side, because it is a fellow-communist country. There is an ongoing assumption throughout the book, that the reader will automatically side with the insurgents, simply because they are presented like Robin Hood fighting Ming the Merciless.

One strength of the book is its unflinching portrayal of the author's family. They are depicted warts and all, which only makes their sacrifice and resilience stand out all the more. It is horrendous to learn about the author's uncle starving and wasting his time throughout his college days, because his family could not afford to feed him. The author's grandfather, a schoolteacher, is at one point, caught with his family in a hurricane in which their house is washed away. The other castes within the village provide them with shelter in a rat-infested shed, because of course it is unthinkable that they might actually invite them into their homes. At times, the author's family, particularly her uncles and mother when in young adulthood, seem to careen precariously close to the edge. One of the uncles is utterly wild and gropes a girl in a temple, of all places. Her grandfather, for reasons that were incomprehensible to me, did not want the author's mother, his daughter, to marry an upper-caste man who was in love with her, because Christian untouchables apparently believed it was wrong to marry for love. His son, the revolutionary leader, refused to allow a pig to be slaughtered at his wedding, in keeping with untouchable custom, because he had come to regard it as 'uncultured and barbaric'. Instead, he insisted on serving vegetarian food, in mimicry of the upper castes. I read these sorts of anecdotes and didn't know what to make of them. There is so much that is messed-up and deeply human here, that I can only applaud the author for her honesty. Furthermore, several of the men in her family are revealed to be selfish and unreliable; at one point, the author's mother, in desperation, leaves her children with a relative for childcare, with the result that her eldest daughter ends up sexually molested. And on and on...the problems of poverty compound atrociously.

All in all, this is such a gripping read that I can only recommend it. But more explanation and historical context would have transformed it from an emotional diatribe into a more persuasive and cogent argument. Ultimately I could sympathize with the author's family, but remained unconvinced about the righteousness of the cause they were fighting for.

[Arthi Jayaraman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a difficult read for a practicing Hindu. I felt guilty all through its 300 odd pages. But the story is not about that guilt. It's far far more important. What it means to be an untouchable in India. Sujata Gidla writes factual prose. The emotions are there, layered throughout. The passion for the communist cause that runs through the family and their differing perspectives on caste & class are educational. Please do read this book. I can't say I completely understand what it meant and still means to be untouchable and underprivileged. But I definitely have more perspective on this. More importantly, this story needs to be heard, to be known.

[Kavita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sujatha Gidla is from a Dalit Christian family, from a caste that was considered untouchable in Hinduism. Her ancestors converted to Christianity through Canadian missionaries but the caste system remained in place. Ants Among Elephants is not Gidla's memoir, but a memoir of her family, especially her mother's side of the family. It focuses mostly on her mother and her uncle, Comrade K.G. Sathyamurthy, a communist and revolutionary who worked for the Dalit cause.

First, I think there is a lot to learn and understand from books like these. I got interesting insights into the lives of people who were considered outcastes by the rest of society. Their culture is a completely different one, and has a strong historical context to it. These were the parts that I enjoyed and felt a connection to the author.

However, I don't understand why Gidla would want to portray everyone in her family as absolutely disgusting people. Her own uncles, her mother, her father, her paternal grandmother, maternal great-grandmother, and random relatives and family friends are all portrayed variably as thieves, liars, neglectful, and everyone is abusive. Surely, every single person Gidla has ever known couldn't have been abusive?

The book's core focus is on Sathyamurthy, her maternal uncle. But instead of depicting him as a hero, she basically shows him up as a bum, who can't cut his own nails. He marries a distant relative in order to provide a maid for his brother and sister, and basically lays down conditions that she has to slave away for his brother and sister, as well as take his brother's abuse. He is authoritarian with his sister and controls her every movement. He is unable to provide for his family but keeps having child after child. He is a bully with a war-mongering instinct. Now, what communist worth his salt would behave like the worst religious patriarch?

Author and historian, Chinnaiah Jangam has criticised this depiction of Sathyamurthy and claim that he was a much better man than Gidla thinks. Who knows the truth, but if this is Gidla's attempt at telling the story of a hero, she failed. He appears more a bum and a low-life thug on the pages than a revolutionary. His comrades are similarly portrayed. For example, Gidla claims that another man called Goru Madhava Rao kicked his wife who was prostrated in front of him and called her 'daughter of widow', widow being the worst thing possible for a woman in Hinduism. If these are communists, give me a religious patriarch any day. At least, you know where you are with one of those and no such hypocrisy.

The title of the book is also misleading: Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India. For a subtitle that talks about the making of modern India, there is remarkably little about mainstream politics of the time at all. Without that broader perspective, the characters just appear to be small time local goons with some ideas about taking up arms and nothing more. Basically, a male wet dream.

However, this is still an important book and a significant social history document. The fact that these are Christian Dalits adds an extra layer of interest because their situation is unique. They are better off, even the women, because they were provided opportunities for education by the Church that Hindu and Muslim Dalits didn't have. This allowed them to rise above their 'ordained place' in society and do interesting things like become teachers and lecturers.

Unless the culture shift happens and India begins to provide these people with equal opportunities and equal treatment, including the women, there will be no development, no progress, no future for the country.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

The word that kept coming to mind while reading this book was chaos--unbelievable chaos in the lives of those depicted, but also in the writing. Fascinating subject bogged down by style. Glossary and family tree would have been helpful.

[Adarsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A better formatted of this review is available at http://www.thefreudiancouch.com/2017/...
"Your life is your caste, your caste is your life."
Sujatha Gidla was born a Dalit-Christian - an untouchable. She had to move to a different country, the USA, to realize the unfairness of her life in India. Her opening lines in Ants Among Elephants are "My stories, my family's stories, were not stories in India. They were just life". I can relate to this; moving to Qatar taught me that I had been on the nicer side of the unfairness. This acceptance does not come easily though, and -- to use a phrase favoured by Sujatha Gidla -- "even to this day", I have the tendency to get riled up or turn defensive on this topic. There is no surprise in the fact then that when Sujatha Gidla remarks "all Christians in India were untouchables, as far as I knew" and adds that "I knew no Christian who did not turn servile in the presence of a Hindu", my immediate reaction was to deny the exaggeration. But then, my unawareness of the caste system is by itself a manifestation of my privilege, and it is time that people like me listen to voices like Sujatha Gidla's. After all, "even to this day", caste plays a significant, life-changing role in large parts of India.

The two principal characters of Ants Among Elephants are Satyam and Manjula; the writer's maternal-uncle and mother respectively. Satyam is K.G. Satyamurthy, a revolutionary, an intellectual, an acclaimed poet (going by the pen name Sivasagar), and a founding member of the left-extremist People's War Group ("the most notorious, famous and successful Naxalite party, a thorn in the side of Indian rulers"). Manjula is a woman growing up in India as an untouchable. Their struggles are equally dramatic and arresting.

Ants Among Elephants begins before the independence of India. While Sujatha Gidla promises us a tale of the cruelty of caste system, Ants Among Elephants is much more. The tales of Gidla's maternal family is actually a testament to the complexity of India as a country, where people are so abundant and lives so cheap that inhumanity does not take a single form. Lives are drastically affected by myriad macro-events - a flooding of the Godavari river; the Japansese bombing of Vizag; the presence of Razakars, a brutal army of Islamic militants serving the Nizam of Hyderabad; the suppression of this brutality by and the subsequent cruelty of the equally ruthless Indian Army; the Chattel system, which the Gidla refers to as "a modern product of the capitalist world market"; the vetti (forced labour) system; the struggle for the separate state of Telangana and much more. We see that casteism was omnipotent, with members of every caste (including the Untouchables) mistreating what they considered as the lower castes. The historical context is also educational in many ways. For instance, one of the many things I learnt was how the country began to get divided by linguistic barriers thanks to relentless protests in Andhra.

I felt that in her introduction to the book Sujatha Gidla came across as unemotional to the point of seeming cold. At one point, she remarks that "as of this writing, I do not know if this book's principal subject is alive or dead" (Satyamurthy died in 2012). But this detachment becomes an advantage, as she does not balk from the flaws of her subjects. So much so that the subjects become characters and we forget that these were actual people doing their best in troubled circumstances. All of us commit mistakes, but when you are at the bottom of the social ladder, your mistakes become irreversible. Sujatha Gidla is so impersonal that she even refers to her own birth in third person. This quality gives Ants Among Elephants an objectivity, allowing her to unflinchingly examine moments like her father's domestic abuse of her mother. On the flip-side, the fact that there are so many threads within the tapestry of Sujatha Gidla's work cause it to seem rushed at times. I wonder if the relatively shortness book (a little more than 300 pages) contributes to this feeling.

One of the many caste names Sujatha Gidla keeps referring to is "paki", which sounds very similar to a derogatory word in Tamil. I have a strong suspicion that the origin of the word is caste-based. The effects of caste system is not always explicit. Casteism has seeped into us in ways we can not even imagine. Like Arundathi Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Ants Among Elephants is a significant work that forces us to take an unflinching look at the past and present of India. After a low profile release in the USA, the book still managed to gather rave reviews and is being released in India now. I highly recommend this book, especially to the Indians who feel that historical injustice does not affect the present.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating family history: the author, who was born an untouchable in India, writes primarily a biography of her uncle and her mother, focusing on their young lives. This family had hard lives, despite being better-educated than most people of their caste; even while working as college lecturers, they barely made enough to live on, lived in poor housing and dealt with a lot of family strife. Satyam, the oldest son, who gets most of the page time here, became a communist and spent most of his life fighting for that cause, while Manjula, the daughter of the family, collected several degrees before entering into an arranged marriage. They face a lot of struggles in their lives but never become the simple victims common in fiction; they are always moving forward, making their own decisions in life.

I’m a little surprised to see that many reviewers have struggled with this book; to me it seemed written in the standard style of popular nonfiction, straightforward but vivid. The story is presented from the perspectives of Satyam and Manjula, without spending much time filling readers in on the historical background or questioning the reliability of their memories (though interviews with others allow Gidla to fill in information they didn’t know at the time), but that’s standard for family memoirs. My biggest criticism is that it wraps up very abruptly at the end, briefly summarizing the next several decades; it was unclear to me why the author stopped where she did. The book is a good length overall, but I would have loved to read more about the author herself, especially after the glimpses of her life at the beginning and end. Definitely a book I would recommend to those interested in India, and in what life at the bottom is like from a firsthand perspective.

[Dee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. BUT it was all over the place. It was neither a historical fiction, nor a historical non-fiction, nor a memoir. The author jumps around all over the place, between different people, times, and places. It was so difficult to follow and made me completely lose interest. I enjoyed the non-fiction parts but the narrative was ruined by combining the story haphazardly with people’s biographical accounts. Disappointing.

[Bonnie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not gonna lie, I didn't actually finish this book. I read it for book club, and I couldn't quite get myself to the end, but I was close enough in my opinion and gleaned details about the end from good reads and my book club friends. While I think the caste system is an interesting story, and Americans should strive to learn more about other countries and their systems of government, this story just couldn't do that for me. I went in thinking I was going to walk away with this vast knowledge of Indian culture, instead I felt like this book gave me a very negative view of their world. The caste system all around seems just shitty, but I don't think that Satyam's way of handling anything was good or worth it. Some would say: yes he is a flawed character, like we all are. I would say, he's a worthless tumor who feed of the generosity of others and his family. What kind of person can't even cut their own nails? If anything I spent the whole book just feeling depressed for these people who couldn't work hard enough to get out of the system, yet still seemed to just be putting themselves is bad situations over and over. I think maybe the writing, and the way the story was told just really made it dull. I feel like this story should have been edited down, quite a lot. I also agree with others who say they felt like the writer was trying to make Satyam seem like a Robin Hood character, and taking for granted that everyone would see him as a hero, instead of a bum. Unfortunately this was not a book I would recommend.

[Manan Majithia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute rubbish.These books give reading and good writers a bad name.Pathetically written,the book talks about the routine and mundane and ordinary pettiness of the life of a man caught between standing up on his own feet and standing for a revolution the author does not bother mentioning the reason he loves it for.It s shame even in this era people are using the untouchable card to garner press and publicity for themselves.The author should not forget her caste itself has played a pivotal role in her going overseas.Absolute disgrace.

[Shari · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disjointed. Gave up. Rarely happens to me.

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I was born in South India, in a town called Khazipet in the state of Andhra Pradesh.”
“I was born into a lower-middle-class family. My parents were college lecturers.”
“I was born an untouchable.”

These three paragraphs from the Introduction of Sujatha Gilda’s family memoir “Ants Among Elephants. An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India” sums up not only the author’s family history, but also the reality that is India. As she puts it, “my stories, my family’s stories, were not stories in India. They were just life. When I left and made new friends in a new country, only then did the things that happened to my family, the things we had done, become stories. Stories worth telling, stories worth writing down.”

We want to avoid issues that are triggering. We don't want to talk about untouchability, caste oppression, patriarchy, poverty, domestic violence and child sexual abuse. But that is precisely why we should read this book- because these are issues we cannot escape.
This is a remarkable book on being born untouchable, on living in poverty despite education and on the status of women. Must read.
https://nuts2406.medium.com/book-revi...

[Bonnie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The reason I stopped reading this book is that I lost interest in the characters. The beginning is eye-opening. I had thought Gandhi got rid of the caste system. Its horrors continue. A problem with the book is that it uses Hindu terms without explaining them, and there's no glossary. Another problem is that the term "untouchable" is quite broad. Some, the lowest of the low, clean out latrines by hand. But others have been educated by Christians, and often are themselves Christian, and some of these are quite middle-class. So caste does not translate into skin color or wealth. It's a bit confusing for non-Indians and it isn't terribly well explained. But the main problem, as I say, is that the characters just aren't that interesting. I'm surprised it was so well reviewed.

[Uuganjargal A · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring.

[Sarah Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the December selection for the Book & Wine Club. They are a newsletter that pairs a book and wine selection every month for local groups to meet. It this month they decided to do a Zoom meeting, so my best friend and I joined.
This book was not as advertised, the blurb on Amazon's and good reads said it was the history of a family as they rose above their caste to become educated, leaders and an improved life. Eventually Gilda moves from India to America and writes her family's history. It was marketed as a rare family history from the lowest of the castes in India, and their move triumph and success. It was also supposed to be about the bonds of family. Wow that sounds enlightening and amazing right? Yeah I would love to read that book! Sadly instead I read this one. It wasn't about family and triumph, it was recounting the deeds of the the oldest brother Satyam as he became a political activist who founded the People's War Group, which sounded like a communist terrorist group to me
Which per my internet research is exactly what it is! I'm sure I'm now on some monitoring list for even looking it up. There was almost no discussion of the author's mother, besides when she was being mistreated first by her Father and Brothers, then by her husband. It definitely wasn't about woman's rights or gaining empowerment in India. This book was horrible and the description was do misleading I felt betrayed for it being selected.

For additional reviews please see my blog at www.adventuresofabibliophile.blogspot...

[Manish · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Ants among Elephants’ is an account of the travails of Gidla’s family (her uncles and mother being the principal characters) during the early 50s and 60s in India. The hardships of growing up as Dalits, the ostracization, love affairs and their involvement with the radical Communist movement get covered here. It was interesting to see the perspective of the Communist movement vis-à-vis the Congress’ during the 60s especially when the language movement was at its heights. It was also interesting to read of the Andhra-Telengana tension even during those days.

Overall, I found the book to be quite ordinary. Hailing from Kerala (a hotbed of Communism since the early 20th century) and belonging to the so-called backward caste, a lot of the stories and incidents narrated by Gidla were accounts that I too have heard (if not experienced) from friends, relatives and writings. It’s probably this ‘have-heard-this-before’ feeling that made the book quite dragging.

[Sanjay Varma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm gonna have to stop without finishing. The lack of context and historical research makes it feel almost damaging to read this book.

The narrative voice reminded me of "The Warmth of Other Suns." It presents a person's life in a simple childlike tone, with no subtlety or complexity. The life events are quite melodramatic. It started off interesting as a history of Telangana, Hyderabad, and Andra Pradesh. Then the book devolved into badly told biographical anecdotes. The author claims that Communists were responsible for the protests leading to the creation of Andra Pradesh, a state which formed as the Telugu-speaking carve out from to replace the British provincial structure. I didn't really believe her. There was truth mixed in with the falsehoods but I did not know enough to separate the truth out.

[Bill Carmean · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was disappointed. I read this to gain insight into the life of dalits is in India. But "Ants" is more the story of one complex family, with a charismatic revolutionary communist uncle as the central focus, and less an insight into the life of dalits.

This is in part my ignorance: I understand so little about India and its caste system that I could not separate the story of this family from that of the oppression of communist revolutionaries (such as the uncle) or that of poor people in India, regardless of caste.

[Philip · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author tells the story from the perspective of her uncle, both untouchable and Communist. The history is written in the style of a person trying to get all the information available to the author onto paper before being stopped. I think it would make a fine addition to primary source materials for one studying the Indian dalit. It is not clear that it has expanded my understanding of the caste system or India's refusal to abandon it.

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

unless one is really knowledgeable about India, one cannot follow this book. a pity since I was relying on this book to enlighten me...

[Michelle Ule · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish.

[Jeanne Lucier · Rating 1 out of 5]

Described as more novel-like than the too confusing story it actually was.

[Shawn Persinger · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tedious, disappointing writing on an intriguing subject. I couldn't finish it.

[Mary Ann Bartholomew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Informative but dry

The author tells her family history. The story is informative but not engaging. The book reads like a well researched textbook.

[Aamil Syed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sujatha Gidla has written a stellar account of the life of her mother and 2 uncles. I can't imagine the work she must have done to compile these extraordinary stories into such a readable and coherent format. The exploits of her mother and uncles are so fantastic that for a good while in the book, I felt as if I was reading a fictional account!

I never expected when picking up this book, that I was also going to read about the communist party of India, it's various flavours and certainly not about the people's war group and naxalism, let alone its founder and hero, SM! That's mainly because I try to read as little about a book before I take it up, so I can read without any preconceived notions.. and a book like this is bound to be praised and hated in equal measure. Although unexpected, reading about these movements and this leader was riveting!

However, even more gripping was the account of her mother's life and struggles. In every fight of hers, I was rooting for her and hoping that she will get to see better days. I feel a sense of pride for her to have taken on the world for the sake of her family and living to tell the tale. I'm sure that a lot of this entire book is entirely her recollection of their lives and I am grateful to her for sharing that.

I thank Sujatha for sharing her family history with us and for doing so in such a forthright and enthralling manner.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading the first few pages of this book I thought I would really learn a lot, but found the writing choppy, all over the place, and was discouraged. Too many names to remember and the relationships, both familial and political. But I persisted to the end. Essentially this is a book about those who are at the lowest level of the caste system and about the communist movement in post India independence centering on then Andhra Pradesh and within that, Telegana. Now those two parts are separate states.

The author’s uncle was a political activist revered in his family, despite his failure to support his wife and children—leaving that task to his poor family while he pursued the higher goals of communism. His connection with the Naxalites was only at the very end.

The title leads you to believe that you will learn about the “making of modern India,” but concentrates on one area of India. Totally misleading. Except for a brief visit by Nehru, the main government of the time is largely ignored (except to arrest the communists) and you never get the big picture.

[Sarah Afraz · Rating 5 out of 5]

After two months, I did put it down. This isn't a book, as much as a lived account of a Dalit. While it's naked prose is beautiful, it needn't have to be. Nor did it have to be tightly edited or contextualise (well, maybe a little). It's ending, in fact, just tapers off. It needs to be more widely read in India because it is so easy to forget what we allow to fester. I understand that this book may not raise the passions of everyone who reads it. To me, though, this is the most scorching book I've ever read. Because we still let it happen. And because we don't scream ourselves hoarse talking about it every day.