Revolution without a Gun: Saga of Landless Dalit’s Struggle in Telangana

It is not every day that one comes across a revolutionary’s biography. Even though Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo, Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu, all have a memoir to their name, the majority of revolutionaries are, nevertheless, reticent when it comes to sharing their experiences and anecdotes of their adventurous life. This is especially true in the case of Indian revolutionaries. Barring Ajoy Ghosh and Mohit Sen, names one is able to recall immediately, memoirs by Indian revolutionaries are few and far between. Moreover, a large portion of the handful of autobiographies which have been written by these people relate primarily to the pre-1947 period. Those relating to the revolutionary struggles in the post-Independence period are more or less absent. In this sense Gita Ramaswamy’s Land, Guns, Caste, Woman: The Memoir of a Lapsed Revolutionary is important.