ABSTRACT
The book Ants among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla is an addition to the repertoire of books speaking of caste. It dissects the different warring factions of the left threadbare through the perspectival bio-sketch of the Andhra revolutionary, S. M. Satyamurthy. Gidla brings to the fore the importance of land and its significance to the dispossessed. Gidla presented her as a meek dutiful girl doing what she was told to do. She was foolish enough not to hold on to herself or be so meek as to get an innocent boy, recklessly bashed up by her brothers and friends, signalling tensions to escalate further. Gidla wrote that everything exciting and progressive in the 1950s and 1960s was associated with communism, something rather a bit unsettling. Gidla’s own perception too was highly localized rather uncharacteristic of other parts of India except for the caste issue.
