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Review of "Ants among Elephants" by Sujatha Gidla

Article · September 2017

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Amitrajeet A. Batabyal
Rochester Institute of Technology
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 Review of

Gidla, S. 2017. Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the

Making of Modern India. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, NY, Hb,

306pp, US$28.00, ISBN 978-0-86547-811-4

by

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal1

                                                            
1
  
Department of Economics, Rochester Institute of Technology, 92 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY
14623-5604, USA. Internet aabgsh@rit.edu

1 
 
 The author’s mother never told her that she was an untouchable. It was

not something an untouchable mother would need to tell her daughter. What

she was told is that in their family, they were all Christians. Even so, the

author figured out relatively early that whether she was a Christian or an

untouchable made little practical difference in her quotidian life in India. In

this book, the author tells the story of her family in post-independence India,

specifically the story of two individuals who greatly influenced her---her uncle

Satyamurthy and her mother Manjula. We learn about the abject poverty in

which the author grew up, the frequent insults that she and her family were

subjected to by caste Hindus, and the tremendous resilience that her family

members displayed in the face of economic adversity that most of us have

never witnessed.

In spite of these multiple privations, the author’s parents went on to

acquire an education that qualified them to be college teachers and, for her

part, the author obtained a Master’s degree before moving to the United States

for further studies. This book contains a poignant tale of the kind of life led by

some of India’s weakest citizens. It sheds powerful light on the indomitable

spirit of the author’s family and its ceaseless quest for both a respectable life

and a more just society.

2 
 

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