A Women’s Day special, courtesy Ibrahimpatnam
This International Women’s Day we are proud to announce a new paperback edition of a Navayana bestseller. This is Gita Ramaswamy’s Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary. The new edition features a dashing and colourful new cover by artist Anurag Jadhav which depicts some of the most affecting episodes from the book.
This is the story of a woman who broke free from the shackles of a brahminical family, became a Naxalite revolutionary, faced the Emergency, ran a pioneering Telugu language publishing house and then joined the struggle of landless dalit labourers against cruel reddy landlords. But more than narrating her own self, Gita Ramaswamy makes it the story of a people. We enter Ibrahimpatnam—an hour’s drive south of Hyderabad. When Gita first visited the village in the 1980s, it was dominated by reddy landlords who brandished whips, lathis and guns like movie villains. The dalit labourers had been doing back-breaking work for generations, living in the thrall of their feudal lords, punished and exploited, cheated out of land and all rights.
On Gita’s arrival, the villagers began a movement for fair wages, which then became a struggle for land. The new cover chronicles this protracted fight. There is the story of Bandi Ramaiah, whose son Sriramulu was thrashed for using a well reserved for savarnas. When Ramaiah, an ex-army man, heard of this, he ‘jumped into the well, clothes and all, shouting, “If I am an untouchable, all this water should disappear”.’ Sriramulu was equally defiant:
An incident in 1971 shaped Sriramulu’s future. In a hotel run by a caste Hindu, there were fourteen separate tea glasses—the seven glasses for the malas were marked yellow and the seven for the madigas marked red. For six years, Sriramulu took the glass of tea served to the malas, threw away the tea each time, and paid up. One day, his mood changed. He drank the tea and broke all the fourteen glasses. When he asked for another cup of tea, he was told there were no more glasses. He then snatched the tea served to a reddy and drank it. A group of caste Hindus caught him and thrashed him. In the ensuing fight, Sriramulu took a burning log and smashed all the tea glasses in the hotel. More reddys gathered and beat him with cycle chains and sticks. They threw an unconscious Sriramulu into a disused house. On hearing this, Ramaiah did not go to his son. Instead, he went to the hotel and set it on fire. When a reddy tried to remonstrate with him, he chased him up to his house and beat him too. Only after this did he go to see his injured son.
Gita tells us the powerful effect that Gaddar, the revolutionary balladeer who emerged from the Naxalite movement, had on anyone who came to listen to him. His songs commanded such respect and fear that even landlords rushed to applaud him every opportunity they got.
Land, Guns, Caste, Woman is the story of wizened old women like Gattu Ramulamma who gave leadership to the movement brewing in Ibrahimpatnam: ‘Ramulamma was old enough to often forget things. Apart from advising me how to dress, how to talk, how not to get angry, and how to view complex village affairs, she sometimes forgot whom she was talking to and would tell me about Gitamma, the young woman who walked about the villages to support the madigas.’ The effect of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s teachings among the villagers, the horrific events of the Karamchedu massacre in 1985, and the heartening solidarity that emerged in its aftermath, all are presented in vivid first-person detail. So is the mind-numbing process of court battles, the everyday negotiations that go into sustaining a people’s movement, the mistakes and blind-spots of privileged activists like Gita.
A painfully honest memoir that is at once lively and poignant, Land, Guns, Caste, Woman shows how to effect a revolution without a gun. It is a testimony of the power of people living in extreme deprivation when they decide to come together for a fight. It is the story of women like Pandi Yellamma who sang songs that brought down the mighty reddys.
The book is now available on the Navayana website for Rs 499.
Get your copy today!
