Saturday, July 29, 2017

My rant about Sujatha Gidla

My daily Sujatha. I am liking the possibly temporary popularity, of the book. It touched me as it is located in the area I grew up, I knew some of the people mentioned, wondered what happened to my Dalit classmates who seemed so bright in sixth grade. Due to endogamy and tendency to visit relatives, I lost touch with them. Then the age of social media came and got in touch with people back home. But they are mostly from similar caste groups and the general tendency seems to be to increase exposure, status, connections using the medium, praising each other and even giving prizes to each other. Still the exposure is limited and for many of those who want to make an impact on the west and get some recognition there, rewards are meagre. Often they do reasonably well financially but recognition of calibre is reinforced only among their own circles. Now comes an untouchable girl and suddenly produces a book which is reviewed by most of the prestigious western outlets. I think that this recognition may be temporary unless Sujatha follows up with more and meanwhile upper caste circles ignore and wait for it to blow over. I think she will not find much traction in Marxist circles since she is not a hard core Marxist and sceptical of her uncle's ideas. May be she won't care about all this and has a life to live.
https://thebrowser.com/popular 

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