Ranganayakamma


Muppala Ranganayakamma is a leading Telugu feminist-Marxist writer and critic.
Ranganayakamma was born in Bommidi village near Tadepalligudem in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. She passed SSLC examination in 1955. She could not continue her studies because her parents could not financially afford to send her to a far-off college.
Her marriage was a traditionally arranged one. Due to contradictions, she left the first marriage after 12 years and came to be known as "Ranganayakamma".

She has been writing since 1955. To date, she has written about 15 novels, 70 short stories, and many essays. She published about 60 volumes in all. The main theme in her works is gender equality and the depiction of women's family life in India.
She came into contact with Marxism in 1973 and began to write from that perspective since then.
She is best known for her work Ramayana Vishavruksham, published in 1974, criticizing the Hindu epic Ramayana from Marxist point of view. This book was a three volume series and is now available as a single volume with 746 pages in Royal size. This book is now available in English. According to an article featured on her own website, she "receives letters from readers saying that they have converted into rationalists and Marxists after reading ."
Another important writing of hers is the Marx Capital parichayam, an introduction to Marx's Das Kapital in 3 volumes. The first volume was published in 1978 and there were no Telugu translations of Das Kapital available at that time. She wrote a three-volume novel Janaki Vimukti, arguing that Marxism is the correct path to gender equality.
The most outstanding feature of Ranganayakamma's writings is that she writes in the most lucid manner, and even her opponents acknowledge this fact. Her readers and friends maintain a website hosting details of her works.
She won the Andhra Pradesh Government Sahitya Akademi Award for the novel Balipeetam in 1965. However, since she came into contact with Marxism, she started opposing awards, whether governmental or non-governmental.
She minimised writing novels as she felt there is a lot of work to do for marxism and introducing Marxism to Telugu people.She emphasised the fact that unless the proletariat knows the basic ideology of communism,Any revolution will not sustain.Her point of view is well reflected in her works like China lo Em Jarugutundi and Soviet Russia lo em jarigindi.Both books are introduction for Charles Bethalham's works.

Literary works