TheDaak review

Ants Among Elephants – An untouchable family and the making of modern India by Sujatha Gidla, London: Daunt, 2018, 320 p., 13.8 x 2.6 x 19.6 cm, ISBN:1911547224, 10,99 £.

by Konstantin Mallach

Sujatha Gidla’s book Ants Among Elephants describes the personal and political developments in and around the author’s family in the 1940s until the early 1960s.  It provides insights into the life of a Dalit family during big shifts of power within Indian society. While the aim of the book is not intended to be a lesson on intersectional feminism, Gidla’s piece entails deep insights about the social position of a Dalit woman[i]. A lot of social dynamics are displayed in the book, leading to tremendous changes within the social fabric, but discrimination against a Dalit woman is the “stable” theme of the book. This review will focus on a few sections of the book contextualising those fragments with ideas about intersectional discrimination.

Early Years and norms of Gender and Caste

Manjula (Sujatha Gidla’s mother), the protagonist in the book goes through different periods of her life, beginning with her childhood and the development of her social position during the 1930s. At that time, she profited from her brother’s intellect and a high social position owing to her father’s employment in the army. For a Dalit family like Manjula’s, social ascent by wealth was often connected to well-paid jobs like one in the army. In Manjula’s case, she was even regarded as “the master’s daughter” (p 113). Still, Manjula had to follow certain rules based on her gender and caste. For example, when Manjula started attending college, her family made her look as “unattractive as possible” (p 113) to keep her away from boys in general and boys from other castes in particular. To enforce rules, Manjula was slapped by her brother Carey. Her oldest brother Satyam tried more subtle methods like gossiping about girls who did not follow the social conventions. In this way, Manjula learnt the specific manner in which a young woman was expected to behave. In general, this shows how the role of women was mediated to her so that she internalised certain behaviour and thoughts for the rest of her life. 

Internalising certain actions and her own social position is a key theme of the book. It also comes up in the context of class-related behaviours. For example, Manjula and her friends of lower castes who visited the school for the first time did not even notice that they were being ignored during the breaks and could never join conversations with the other students. Interestingly, caste-based discrimination played a bigger role in the early childhood of Sujatha (Manjula’s daughter). The family could not keep the high-army income, and the deterioration of their finances was reflected in their social status. While Manjula grew up in more protected neighbourhoods where she was somewhat regarded as an equal,  it was different for Sujatha. The neighbours’ children harassed Sujatha and her siblings. They entered the family house while Manjula would be away for work and cut the sister’s hair with carpenter tools as they felt that Dalit children deserve such treatment (p 136). A backward economic position made it hard not only to protect the family from incidents like these, but also from ill health as doctors and medicine were hard to reach. 

This reflects a form of exclusion specific to lower-caste (and poor) women that scholars like Sharmila Rege have pointed out specifically (2018; 1998). They underline that feminist movements and anti-caste movements did not address these kinds of intersections. Thereby they left many perspectives unacknowledged and ignored the possible solidarity between many more groups. Ants Among Elephants reflects exactly these dynamics, telling the specific stories of poor, Dalit women which can not be subsumed under either the story of a poor person, a Dalit or a woman.

Economic Discrimination and the double-burden of women in (Dalit) families

In the following section, I take on the economic dependency of women within Sujatha’s family. Starting with a scene of an injured  Marthamma, the grandmother of Satyam, Carey, and Manjula. Carey was angry at Marthamma, who asked him for help in household chores. In his anger, he pushed his grandmother and she fell and broke her hip. At that time, Carey was unemployed and seeking to finish his degree and Satyam was the sole breadwinner. Due to her old age, Marthamma could not recover fully. After discovering this, the situation appeared clear for the family – as Gidla puts it in two sentences:

“[W]ho was going to cook and clean for the three of them [Carey, Satyam and Manjula]?
It was time for Satyam to get married.” (p 158)

During Satyam’s marriage, he made some demands which were equal to the tasks which Marthamma handled before. On the one hand, this showed how dependent the entire household was on one person. On the other hand it also revealed the degree of a woman’s dependency on the family which was produced through different means. It was maintained structurally in society by obstacles to access education and jobs. And it was upheld within homes through threat and fear of domestic violence. It was harder for women to get a job even with an equivalent degree of education as men. Further, the chance for the same education was also worse, women were to be much less likely to be sent to school.

Gidla further accounts the economic dependency of wives on their husbands against the backdrop of specific social dynamics. In this regard, Manjula’s economic dependency on her husband, Prabhakara Rao, could be observed in the early years of her marriage. She relied on Prabakhara’s money and had no big influence on how it was used. Instead of spending the money in a fair split, Manjula suffered severe medical problems while Prabhakara Rao consumed luxury products like tea. Due to major social changes, it was possible for Manjula to find a job and become independent financially. As a reaction to this, her husband started using violence to not feel subordinated and to protect his self-esteem: 

“Prabhakara Rao only defended his mother’s “authority” against Manjula. Other than that, he never did anything for her. He never brought her things she liked to eat, never walked her to church, never even talked with her much. Yet he chased and beat up his wife to champion his mother.” (pp 260- 261)

In the end, Manjula had to work to earn money and ensure the health and comfort of her whole family. In general, economic dependency seemed to be a factor of suppression, as it helped the husband to control the spending. But further, the book reflects on the misguided male pride. Since the husband was not the sole breadwinner due to his wife’s economic position, violence became the new means of control.

Manjula did not want to marry but outside the institution of marriage there was no other way to ensure her safety. Her first marriage failed because of an exorbitant demand for dowry. Dowry demands are a unique way of ensuring caste and class endogamy.  Being engaged once, Manjula’s social position had dropped. Gidla writes: 

“After all, engagement is practically marriage. Something had gone wrong with a girl for her to be discarded at such a late stage.” (p 307)

This meant that she had to take any man to maintain her economic and physical security,  which for her resulted in a situation of domestic violence. One major way out of this situation was Manjula helping her husband to get proper education and the resources to earn money. Ironically, by this she took the responsibility which her husband Prabakha Rao should have taken to overcome the injustice for which he was responsible in the first place. All these scenes of domestic dynamics connected the economic and social realm to the dependency of women on their male relatives. Gidla’s account shows that some of the demands of more (social) liberties and formal equalities did not transform into the domestic realm. Rather at times, the violence or the increased work of women formed part of the reaction to such changes. 

Public Institutions as Places of Subordination

Further on, Gidla reflects the injustice faced by Dalit women in public institutions. Manjula was discriminated against in various situations and ways during her educational life. She was mistreated and she suffered more punishment than girls from other castes. Later, when Manjula was accepted in University, she was noticed by other men more than before. Sujatha Gidla describes a scene involving a “modern” female student, called Rajeswari:

“When Rajeswari walked by, the boys made fun of her strong talcum-powder scent and loose braid, while at the same time tripping over each other to catch a glimpse of her bra strap through her blouse.” (p 201)

The student was part of Manjula’s batch in the University of Andhra. She was devalued at first, only to give the men the power to objectify her as a sexual object later. This creates the classic pattern of simultaneous disempowerment and exploitation. Here, it is less connected to the necessary care-work but more to sexuality. Also, it leaves the domestic area, showing that the internalised norms are present in public institutions despite public sentiment and discourse which calls for formal equalities.

Conclusion

 In  Ants Among Elephants, we find vivid storytelling with sudden turns. Sometimes scenes are described in great detail while (e.g. scenes which contain images of domestic violence which where “burned in my [Gidla’s] memory” [p 233]) some major changes (especially the political ones) are regarded as a given. 

This makes it seem like an authentic display of Gidla’s very personal memory about her family. Also, the sentences are neither boring nor do they entail many frills. This authenticity is what makes the book a real page-turner. Through my recommendation, I want to add to this reception that the book manages to display many specific characteristics of suppression of Dalit women with immense clarity and especially the persistence of discrimination against the backdrop of radical political change. Gidla’s piece conveys to a broad audience how Dalit women were marginalised in a Hindu-majoritarian, patriarchal society which was supported and stabilised by the British Rule. Still, after the independence of India, many internalised behaviours, language and power resources did not change dramatically or persisted through new ways. Ants Among Elephants does not raise bigger ethical questions explicitly, but rather shows the overwhelming injustice faced by Dalit women in the past, giving a clear picture of the lack of political measures until the present. The vivid story of her family and the specific choice of scenes is helpful to understand why Dalit women continue to strive for justice today and how political change must be looked at closely. 

Further References 

Rege, S. (2018, originally 1998): A dalit feminist standpoint, in: Seminar, Vol. 710

Vishwanath, R. (2015): Caste and Untouchability. B. Hatcher (ed.) Hinduism in the Modern World. Routledge, pp. 257-274.

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[i]  In the Following, whenever I refer to Sujatha Gidla as an author, I will use her last name. When I refer to her writings about herself (at a young age), I use the first name Sujatha.