{"id":18135,"date":"2018-06-18T15:15:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T19:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/?p=18135"},"modified":"2024-07-03T19:51:22","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T23:51:22","slug":"professor-chinnaiah-jangam-reviews-ants-among-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/2018\/professor-chinnaiah-jangam-reviews-ants-among-elephants\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Chinnaiah Jangam Reviews “Ants Among Elephants”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The following excerpt is from History Professor Chinnaiah Jangam<\/a>‘s recent review of Sujatha Gidla’s book Ants and Elephants<\/em> entitled “How Not to Write a Dalit Memoir<\/a>“.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shrouded lives of \u2018untouchables\u2019, also known as Dalits, in the form of life narratives are emerging as a niche genre in the Indian public sphere. This is because Dalits have emerged as a formidable political force, challenging their marginalisation and demanding social equality, dignity and right of representation. Even though historically, the anti-caste motif of Dalits as rebellious subjects existed for centuries in the form of everyday resistance, their access to writing culture under colonial rule added a new dimension to their politics of resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While contesting dehumanisation by the Hindu Brahmanical caste system, Dalits are writing personal and family narratives of experiences of subjugation as a way to represent themselves and recuperate stolen humanity. These accounts are testaments against Hindu Brahmanical philosophy which justifies inegalitarian social relations and valorised them as religious dharma<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both form and content, Dalit life narratives mirror counter-cultural narratives and provide a window into the everyday experience of Dalits as untouchables. They help us gauge the intensity of epistemic and ontological violence inflicted on them. For example, Bama\u2019s Karukku<\/i>, Viramma\u2019s Viramma: Life of an Untouchable<\/i>, Urmila Pawar\u2019s The<\/em> Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman\u2019s Memoir<\/i>, and Y.B. Satyanarayana\u2019s My Father Baliah<\/i> narrate stories of existential struggles and triumph against untold miseries. They also narrate the indomitable courage with which the protagonists strived and fought to sustain and build their self-identity and carved paths of emancipation. The recently published semi-autobiographical memoir of Sujatha Gidla\u2019s Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India<\/i> adds another leaf to the collective narratives of suffering and emancipation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following excerpt is from History Professor Chinnaiah Jangam‘s recent review of Sujatha Gidla’s book Ants and Elephants entitled “How Not to Write a Dalit Memoir“. The shrouded lives of \u2018untouchables\u2019, also known as Dalits, in the form of life narratives are emerging as a niche genre in the Indian public sphere. This is because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18136,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18135\/revisions\/18136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}