Editor’s Note: The debut book by US-based Dalit writer Sujatha Gidla, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Creation of Modern India, has won this year’s Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. Gidla’s book is an autobiography, in which she provides vivid accounts of lives lived in abject poverty, amid violence and discrimination based on caste and gender. Gidla also talks about the struggles of women like her mother, who strived for a career despite many obstacles.
Here is the introductory passage from Gidla’s book, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
By Sujatha Gidla
MY STORIES, THE STORIES OF MY FAMILY, were not stories in India. They were just alive.
When I left and made new friends in a new country, the things that happened to my family, the things we had done, became stories. Stories worth telling, stories worth writing down.
I was born in South India, in a city called Khazipet in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
I was born into a lower middle class family. My parents were college teachers.
I was born untouchable.
When people in this country ask me what it means to be untouchable, I explain that here caste is the same as racism against blacks. But then they ask, “How does anyone know what your caste is?” They know that caste is invisible, just like skin color.
I explain it like this. In Indian villages and towns everyone knows everyone. Each caste has its own special role and its own place to live. The Brahmins (executing priestly functions), the potters, the smiths, the carpenters, the laundresses, and so on—each have their own separate dwelling place in the village. The untouchables, whose special role – whose hereditary duty – is to work on other people’s land or do other work that Hindu society considers filthy, are not allowed to live in the village at all. They have to live outside the boundaries of the village proper. They are not allowed to enter temples. You are not allowed to go near sources of drinking water used by other castes. It is not allowed to eat sitting next to a Hindu caste or to use the same kitchen utensils. There are thousands of other such restrictions and humiliations that vary from place to place. Every day you can read in an Indian newspaper about an untouchable person beaten or murdered for wearing sandals, for riding a bicycle.
In your own town or village everyone already knows your caste; there is no escaping it. But how do people know your caste if you go somewhere else, to a place where no one knows you? There they will ask you: “Which caste are you?” You cannot avoid this question. And you cannot refuse to answer. According to tradition, everyone has the right to know.
If you’re educated like me, if you don’t seem like a typical untouchable then you have a choice. You can tell the truth and be ostracized, ridiculed, harassed – even driven to suicide, as often happens in universities. Or you can lie. If they don’t believe you, they will try another way to find out your true caste. They may ask you certain questions: “Did your brother ride a horse at his wedding? Was his wife wearing a red sari or a white saree? How does she wear her saree? Do you eat beef? Who is your family god?” They may even ask for the opinion of someone from your area.
If you make them believe your lie, then of course you can’t tell them your stories, your family’s stories. You can’t tell them about your life. It would reveal your caste. Because your life is your caste, your caste is your life.
Whether they know the truth or not, your untouchable life is never something you can talk about. So it was for me in Punjab, in Delhi, in Bombay, in Bangalore, in Madras, in Warangal, in Kanpur, in Calcutta. When I was twenty-six I came to America, where people only know skin color, not birth status. Some here love Indians and some hate them, but their feelings are not influenced by caste. Once in a bar in Atlanta, I told a guy I was untouchable, and he said, “Oh, but you’re so touchable.” It wasn’t until I spoke to some of the friends I met here that I realized that my stories, my family’s stories, are not shame stories.
NO ONE INFORMED ME THAT I was untouchable. It’s not the kind of thing your mom should tell you. What I was told was that we were Christians. Christians, untouchables – it came down to the same thing. All Christians in India were untouchable, as far as I knew (although only a small minority of all untouchables are Christian).
I did not know a Christian who did not become servile in the presence of a Hindu. I didn’t know a Hindu who didn’t see right through a Christian man who stood before him as if he didn’t exist. I accepted this. No questions asked.
I watched the adults in my family scramble to their feet, straighten their clothes and wring their hands as a certain hunched, cross-eyed, drooling Hindu man passed us. I saw our Hindu neighbors walk past us without even registering our presence. accepted. No questions asked.
I knew the cross-eyed, salivating man was fucking my aunts (both of them), fathering children with them, but not marrying them because they were Christians. I knew a Christian boy who was pushed in front of a train because he was in love with an upper-caste girl. Christians are humble. Hindus are superior. Christians are weak. Hindus are powerful. I understood it. I accepted.
That was the natural course of events. The questions started when I was 15 and someone took me and my sister to a movie. Then they got into a flood that wouldn’t stop for years. In a way, they still haven’t.
(The following excerpt is published with permission from HarperCollins. Written by Sujatha Gidla, the hardcover of Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India costs Rs 599)
