Land, Guns, Caste, Woman

1980s. Ibrahimpatnam, Telangana, South India. Landless dalits are caught between a reddy and a hard place. The wealthy reddys are like movie villains, brandishing whips and guns.

Enter Gita Ramaswamy, thirty years old. In her teens, Gita had escaped the brahminical clutches of her family that tried to cure her of Naxalism with shock treatment and sedation. She has endured the horrors of the Emergency. She is disillusioned. But not without hope. Gita starts living with the agricultural labourers. They are in bondage, cheated out of land and all rights. They are in the mood to fight. Together, they take on the tyrannical landlords who brutalized the villages for generations. A revolution without a gun is in the making.

Gita writes with relentless self-reflexivity. This is as much a story of struggles and victories as it is a testimony of personal failings and regrets.

 

Gita Ramaswamy is best known for her work with Hyderabad Book Trust that has published over four hundred titles since 1980. HBT pioneered low-cost books and translations from across the world—from Alex Haley to Mahasweta Devi. She was earlier associated with the Marxist–Leninist movement in Telangana. Going underground during the Emergency in 1975 with her husband Cyril Reddy, she taught English in a dalit basti in Ghaziabad, near Delhi. Starting in 1984, she worked for a decade with the dalits of Ibrahimpatnam and helped them in their fight against bonded labour and landlessness. Gita has authored several books and has translated extensively from Telugu into English.

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In the media

‘Land, Guns, Caste, Woman is both an important book and a deeply pleasurable one’—Scroll

An excerpt from the book was published on Scroll.

‘Before Gita Ramaswamy told her story no other educated Brahmin woman, told us historical facts of Brahmin life’—Counter Currents

‘Gita Ramaswamy’s memoir eshews all formats and frameworks, it celebrates nuance and completely defies pigeonholing’—Business Standard

‘A book like no other … a fierce critique of what is wrong with the Indian Left, what ails the judiciary, and why the poor cannot get justice’—The Hindu

‘Beautiful … the personal and the political are intertwined tightly in Gita Ramaswamy’—The Wire

‘Remarkably clear-eyed. … A story of passion and compassion, of a full and considered life’—India Today

‘Riveting. Essential reading about the complexities of caste and gender relations that make up the intimate life of politics, citizenship, law and violence’—The India Forum

‘Ramaswamy used her privileges not just for the benefit of the underprivileged, but to rip out the accepted norm of extreme exploitation’—Frontline

‘Poignant, deeply moving. … A remarkable book’—Raiot

‘A compelling memoir. … A heady reminder to not give in to despair when confronted with seemingly intractable power’—Hindustan Times

‘A saga of relentless struggle against oppression: of caste, of family, and of feudal lords in Telangana’—The Federal

In Hindu‘s literary picks of the week. A feature in Mid-Day.

A conversation with Gita Ramaswamy in Maidaanam.

A report from the launch of the book at Ooty Literature Festival.

An interview with Aatika Singh on the movement and its implications, on TwoCircles.

 

An interview with Gita on Enquiry with Shoma Chaudhury:

 

Gita sits down for a conversation with Prof Chaman Lal, on his channel AmbedkarNaama:

 

The launch of the book in New Delhi at the Press Club, with Nandini Sundar

 

An interview on NewsClick:

A discussion of the book at the HLF