Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Pankaj Mishra reviews ‘Ants among elephants’

God’s oppressed children  “The result is a book that combines many different genres—memoir, history, ethnography, and literature—and is outstanding in the intensity and scale of its revelations......At such moments, Gidla’s book achieves the emotional power of V.S. Naipaul’s great novel A House for Mr. Biswas, which describes the solitary struggles of a descendant of indentured laborers.....Rather, “it is a battle for freedom…for the reclamation of the human personality”—an arduous, never-ending battle in which Gidla’s book represents an all too rare victory.”
I have repeatedly mentioned and quoted from the book. There has been very little response from the upper caste bloggers so far. There are lots of posts about Trump or Vedas but this book has  eenstudiously ignored by the Indian netizens. Even among the Dalits, there is resentment among ambedkarites. She seems a difficult personality if her internet comments on all kinds of issues is any indication. But the book is excellent.

No comments: