Literature as Liberation: Caste, Gender, and the Ethics of Resistance in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You and Sujatha Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants

Abstract

Contemporary Indian literature has evolved enough to facilitate the intellectual dialogue of social justice, it is thereby confronts the conventional force that institutionlize caste, patriarchy, and structural violence. Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017) and Sujatha Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (2017) exemplify the ideational shift through their account of personal trauma exposing its impact on society, thereby converting it into political critique. Thanthai Periyar E. V. Ramasamy’s assertion that “Caste is the greatest enemy of humanity” (Periyar) is resonated in the personal accounts of the authors Meena and Sujatha. While Meena testifies the intimate violence of marriage and ideological patriarchy, Sujatha exposes generations of Dalit struggle and inherent caste oppression, labor exploitation, and political disillusionment. This article, as a resistance literature, intend to call for actions against institutional violence, hegemonic forces, and envisions social justice rooted in dignity, equality, and self-respect.