STILL THE WARRIOR
There was a time when ‘social juctice warrior’ was not a term of derision and Gita Ramaswamy’s affecting memoir will remind you of those days—if you’re old enough. Her complex if not entirely unfamiliar trajectory—from Tambrahm civil servant’s daughter, to student naxal to
‘disillusioned idealist’ and renewed commitments in politically engaged publishing and with a collective of agricultural labourers in Ibrahimpatnam—is recounted with sentiment but without sentimentality. The passage describing her sojourn as an ‘Underground’ member of the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Party during the Emergency years is brief but remarkably cleareyed. Yet this is not merely a political narrative but a story of the passions and compassions of a full and considered life. ■