Mevani May Be Sincere, But He Cannot Advance The Dalit Cause

Sujatha Gidla, 53, was born at Kazipet, a small town in undivided Andhra Pradesh, and now in Telangana. Her parents were college lecturers. Gidla studied physics at the Regional Engineering College at Warangal, and later worked as a research associate at IIT-Madras, on a project funded by the Indian Space Research Organisation.

- Rachna Tyagi

But, despite her upbringing and education, she found life in India difficult. The reason: She was born an untouchable. “Your life is your caste, your caste is your life,” Gidla writes in her acclaimed memoir Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India.

When Gidla was 26, she migrated to the US, “where people know only skin colour, not birth status”. It was only after speaking to her friends in the US that she realised that “my family’s stories are not stories of shame”.

For years, she worked as a programmer at the Bank of New York. In 2009, when the US was in the grip of an economic crisis, Gidla lost her job. She moved on to work in the New York City Subway, becoming the first Indian woman to be employed as a subway conductor. Ants Among Elephants, published last year, and her writings in The Oxford India Anthology of Telugu Dalit Writing, have made her the powerful new voice in dalit literature.

Excerpts from an interview: What drove you to write Ants Among Elephants? 

It started with my own questions about caste. Ever since I was a teenager, I wondered why some people have the misfortune of being born untouchable, and how my family acquired that status. But, I was too ashamed to ask anyone, even my own parents. It was only after I came to America that I managed to overcome this shame.