Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: English 2022

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