There is no more excuse. The pandemic has brought us ample time to read the books that have been adorning the shelves or occupying digital space. I am writing to share the experience of five books that I read during this time that holds some potential to better the world.
Ants Among Elephants (Sujatha Gilda): "If it doesn't bother you, that proves your privilege". As emancipation leader, Ambedkar endorses education as the only tool of liberation, it has quite rightly been so. Yet, even after education, the barriars remains. These are attached to the colour, physique, social cultural and financial capital. This is important for liberals to read to revise their notions as how individual tortures are actually system oriented.
I've identified that India is peculiar for four features: unity, romace, food and Bollywood. India's tagline "unity in diversity" is installed in every Indian as they born. The romantic love gestures manifesting and living in forms of Taj Mahal or entrenched in traditions such as Karwachaut exemplifies love. The spicy food is as much loved as feared by the bland taste buds of White European and American tongues. The action Bollywood movies defy all physical, scientific and natural laws and provokes even children to jump off roofs replicating their favorite action hero: Shaktiman.
This book captures all these elements. The diversity of India is expressed and entrenched in the caste, that describes the heterogeneous groups living together. The lower caste or the outcastes who are so defile that they do not even fit into the caste system are strongly fabricated with the upper caste to provide their free labor. The author, Sujatha Gilda describes the discriminatory settlements. A father has to take his son for a extra-long journey to home because he wants to (foolishly) conceal him of the reality of segmented caste-ruled settlements, where upper caste live in the centre of village, peripheried by hierarchially declining social groups.
The book starts with a desire for revolution, an armed struggle because the state machinery has failed to eradicate caste, class and associated inequality. While the story progresses towards it, the revolution has not been attained. It is crushed, as soon as it sprouts.
A pig looks at the sky only when it's tied and taken, ready to be roasted. Pork has been the most delicious delicacy among the dalits, that is prohibited among all other castes and religions. Perhaps this achievement of pig, attained only at its death is a sad note at dalits who will only be liberated at their death.
It has love stories of various characters, guided and supervised by the caste norms. Lovers have dared to love outside the caste boundaries and now are threatened of its repurcurssion. Some have been aided by the communist associates; some were forced to bid their forbidden lovers goodbye.
This is not merely an autobiography, but a history of not just her family, but traces and describes the history of India's caste that has been sustained since centuries.
Joyful Militancy (Carla Bergman & Nick Montgomery): After either being rejuvinated with struggle or feeling cynical with the world and system, you can recharge your fighting spirit with Joyful Militancy. You can turn to any page in the book, point to any paragraph and I am sure that you will find peace, happiness and courage in it. It's not a motivational book, rather a perfect blend of communist ideas, academics and aesthetics.
I was introduced to the book by a friend of a friend who walked towards us with a old torn covered book in the narrow laned, vibrant shelter of Majnu ka Tila. The book, faded red in color, yet that didn't dampen the spirit of the book. The carrier’s enthusiasm while narrating and reviewing the book induced in me a desire to read it and feel the same joy.
"Happiness is revolutionary". Being happy is inherently happy as it challenges the system that plots to sadden the masses to indulge it in consumerist pleasures. The path and process of revolution, change or action is itself happy.
The book takes a revolutionary approach to happiness. We have been dissected as individuals in our separate cells of sadness. This is true not only for the ignorants trapped in the capitalist system, but even for the defiants of capitalism. In fact, this is a book for the rebels of system who unfortunately start to lose the flame of joy in the road to revolution. Inspired from multitude socialist, communist, feminist and indegenous thinkers, writers and activists; the book can said to even theorise happiness and present a simplistic perspective of political economy of happiness. It lets the happiness reflect and radiate from us to others.
Uncivil City (Amita Baviskar): Now that we've rejuvinated our fighting spirit, let's look at the problem of society again. As Hegelian dialectics goes- thesis, anti thesis and synthesis; or the double movement (Polanyi) suggests that to act of oppression there'll counter oppression; reminding us to be happy yet aware of social reality.
The reveals the contradictory nature of urbanisation and associated modernity. The title, uncivil city suggests the irony, not merely or actually of existing slums or poverty in cities, but more accurately of the modes of production (and accumulation). It has brought out elite environmentalism that now dominates the public perception and academic discourse of environment conservation.
Environment and its issues has being limited and narrowly guided by aesthetics. This has led to the concealment of slums, jhuggi jhopris, privatisation of Yamuna and common resources.
The book unfolds the paradoxical nature of the city (Delhi in case) and the development. Through the picturesque writing, this book almost reads like a fiction novel that is spun by a modern Wordsmith as the author paints the picture of Delhi from her memory and experience, and academic analysis of the city. She has dicussed the meaning of space as they are defined, gets refined and are constantly contested. The question of environment is posed from a class perspective. In the pre-liberalisation period, inequalities, undoubtedly existed, but the commons were shared. This commons sustained the urban ecology.
However, the ecological imbalances seeped in as the middle and upper classes started accumulating from the privates: privates being selectively open and accessible to few.
The author has placed the environment question in emerging liberalisation and privatisation. The cost and market of real estates were shooting high, which caused industrialists to sell industries rather than initiate green reforms. The NGOs that targeted the industries for pollution not only ignored workers concern, but quite conveniently overlooked the proliferating car problem in Delhi. Thus, the working class suffer due to loss of jobs and proletarisation; but middle and elite class pay no cost for environmental conservation.
The book captures how the environmental discussion today has been segmented as: basic and luxurious. What seems basic to the professional class like clean and green environment is quite luxurious for the workers who barely sustain their livelihood.
Death With Interruptions (Jose Saramago): The Covid-19 pandemic has gripped the world with unprecedented and uncertain death and ailment. Death is the most inevitable fact. Plants, animals and all living forms are destined to die. But, what happens when death takes a holiday!
Immortality would be considered a bliss. But the story depicts the journey of initial relief and joy as no one is dying, and then a tale of chaos as no one is dying. The phase of un-dying times provokes the economists, politicians, religious groups, philosophers and even the criminals. The state is concerned with managing the increasing dependent population, creating and managing booming hospices and hospitals. The insurance companies are losing business, but criminals have formed a mafia to smuggle old and ailing across the border to profit from killing. In this, philosophical questions are raised regarding the death, death of humans and how it relates to the overarching universal Death of all living beings, is death only postponed or completely denied.
The interruption of death even challenges the form of government. The has aristocracy rule the royal family over the country is threatened as civilians ponder over moving to democratic governance with rule of people with fixed terms.
The holiday of death assumes a utopia to brings us closer to the question of living: the way humans are organised, aspire and function. When death returns from the holiday, things are not the same either. Similarly, we cannot simply return to the same time. The defiance of death taught us important lessons that needs to be preserved and actively worked on, without simple reversal to previous times.
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism ( Kristen R. Ghodsee):
This book is about love, sex and money. The financial constraints have controlled women towards wedding and settling for money matters. This is because of the financial dependence on the counter men. The men have been wary of gold diggers who might marry them for money, but with no genuine concern for them as a lover or partner. She shows that when Soviet Union enabled gender equality through promotion of fair education and employment opportunities; women were independent and sincere to follow their true hearts and make more genuine love choices. They were more satisfied and happy with their friends and lovers. Lovers were not merely family-oriented decisions with the end goal of settling to propogate a family and a fananical assurance, rather, they were friends and comrades. Further, subsidised care and reproduction services such as i-pills,
The book brings into the light the role of labor in differentiating between genders. The reproductive labor of women goes unrecognised, even naturalised as natural care givers to negate their work and effort.
The book argues for promotion of public goods like education, transport, food, shelter, child maternal and old heathcare. Lack of maternal care discourages women from pursuing career. They have to make a choice that men are never subjected to: family or career. This is the major reason for non-hiring of women.
The socialist state has promoted sharing responsibilities between the male and female partners. The East Germany instituted "mother and child" housing at universities that enabled single, out of wedlock women to gain education and seek employment to be self-sufficient and prosper. This is contrasted to the capitalist system where single mothers were destined for poverty and destitution.
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