Kali's Daughter - Raghav Chandra

Fiction

Read It!

This is the first novel I've seen from Raghav Chandra. I'm still on the fence on if I would like to see another one from him. 

The novel opens on an obviously sucessful woman looking back at an old photograph. She somehow cracked the Civil service exam in highschool and was accepted in to the Indian Foreign Service. The photo is from a training camp that all sucessful Civil Service candidates attend. 

We go back in time to learn about a deep dive into the main character's caste and background, including changing of name to avoid caste and certain caste assumptions. This was interesting to me because I never understood why people didn't try this more often - changing their name. I won't go into the details, but the author clearly outlines why it isn't all that effective. Most of the novel is her time at the training camp and the politics and relationship dynamics that result in a study of caste. The main character has earned her way in, not utilizing quotas for backward castes, and finds that her hard work and brilliance do not erase other's perceptions. 

As someone who has never had the experience of having a caste and has stayed away from the discussion altogether being married to an Indian, it was an uncomfortable book to read. It's very difficult to prevent ones self from making trite and unnecessary mental comments on something I know nothing about. Coming from a society that doesn't practice caste, the concept of one not having the same inherent value as another is difficult for me to understand and accept. In the end, the main character is wildly sucessful, well traveled, and comfortable financially. It doesn't go much into the outcome for her or her family, but very much delves into the idea of quota, names, caste, adn people's assumptions upon hearing names. I'm sure it would hit differently if an Indian were reading it, and different yet if it were an Indian who has faced similar struggles. Always good to expose yourself to experiences different from the ones you're comfortable with.

~Becky~ 

Caste Matters - Suraj Yengde

NonFiction

Meh

Caste isn't something that I can ever access aside from second hand knowlege. However, I still think it's important to educate ones self about, and this book seemed to fit the bill to build my knowlege further. Both the term and concept of "Dalit" was explored.

As I've mentioned previously, when an author is close to a subject and has an emotional tie to it, writing objectively becomes incredibly difficult. This book was a prime example of this theory. A self identified Dalit, the author definitely has strong feelings, and understandably so. The subject of reservation and special privilege/lack of it is a time worn argument in India. Some scream that "low caste" people have too many support systems, others agitate beause they have too few.

I was shocked (although I'm not sure quite why) to find out that becoming very sucessful in life is looked own upon, even though it may elevate someone to a more comfortable lifestyle. I have seen this in different societies where less fortunate people resent those who have somehow removed themselves from a difficult situation. This was also surprising for me because coming from the US, the prejudice was more economically based, rather socially. Even if you come from the poorest background, once you have money no one cares. Caste is very much more complicated than that. 

I could not figure out how and where Brahminism fit in with castism, aside from propigating the discrimination, but perhaps that's simply my ignorance. It was an interesting read, but overall I felt quite biased. Disappointing but not surprising. This book is worth a read because the only qualified people to talk about something like castism are those who have experienced it, especially not on the dominant side of the spectrum. 

Read It.

~Becky~

Godaan - Anurag Yadav

 Fiction

Read it if you like Village Life Novels

I picked up this novel because it proclaimed "Masterpiece of Hindi Literature" on the cover. I figured that I would check it out. While a little slow in places and extremely fatalistic, it's a good read.

The story takes place in a small village somewhere in northern India outside of Lucknow. Anurag Yadav has a field day pointing out the differences in class and mentality between villagers, the village head leader, and a group of cosmopolitan friends who occasionally run into the villagers. It's all done in a very matter of fact way without excuses for anyone. 

Hori, our main character, is a farmer. He has a wife and 3 children who are almost grown. Hori struggles to improve his situation throughout the book with no success, dragged down by circumstance, malice, and taking loans, a common plight of farmers who end up paying interest long after the loan should have been done. He fights tooth and nail - usually with only his pride left - to hold on to his land and his status as farmer, only to be trample on until all he can claim is that he is a laborer. The village head makes all his excuses about how difficult it is for Zamindars and how he should be excused from any responsibility at all for collecting taxes and fines. The cosmopolitan friends soar above it all, neither worried about money nor how their actions affect anyone.

Spoiler alert - Hori dies in the end from being over worked, a condition that I'm sure many farmers and laborers can understand well. There's absolutely no happy ending for any of the characters, so typical of Indian authors, nor is there any feel good about Hori or his circumstances and how people remain in poverty. Since not many of the people reading this book will be from a village or living in such poverty, it's an interesting exercise in awareness. 

Read it.

~Becky~