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India in a dozen books
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India has come a long way in the 70
years since 1947, especially in the last quarter century when changes in
social attitudes and mores, and in cultural, political and economic
institutions have been rapid and momentous. How do we make sense of them?
Where do we go from here? With a mind to the feelings of nationalism in the
run-up to Independence Day, Gargi Gupta picks out a dozen of the most
original, interesting or important recent ‘India books’ that tackle — like
the blind men with the elephant — some aspect or another of the country’s
complex reality
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A Feast of Vultures – The Hidden Business of Democracy in India;
Josy Joseph (HarperCollins, 2016)
Corruption has been the buzzword in
public discourse since the ‘India Against Corruption’ (IAC) movement of 2011.
IAC didn’t make a dent in corruption but it reaffirmed the perception most
have of politicians and bureaucrats as unscrupulous self-seekers. Josy
Joseph’s book – the result of two decades’ experience as an investigative
reporter negotiating the corridors of power – not just confirms this
impression but lays bare exactly how corruption works. Read about how it was in
2003 that the home ministry ignored telephone intercepts between Dawood
Ibrahim and Jet Airways’ promoter Naresh Goyal so as to give the airline
security clearance, and other stories of the seamy underbelly of today’s
India.
The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture
and Identity: Amartya Sen(Penguin, 2005)
This is an erudite and absorbing
cultural history of India. Sen unearths and describes an essential and
defining characteristic of Indian culture since ancient times, one that
explains its astonishing syncretism – the vibrant culture of public debate
and intellectual pluralism. But there’s also another way to look at this book
that is a compilation of 16 essays – as a political tract reminding
contemporary Indians of what they seem to be losing fast, and the dangers of
it. No wonder, this book by the Nobel prize-winning economist has been
invoked so much in recent times, especially during the so-called “intolerance
debate”. This is essential reading for our times.
Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India: Akshaya
Mukul(HarperCollins, 2015)
Hindutva as a political agenda is a
fact of Indian democracy today. But Hindutva didn’t just begin with the
demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. It has been a growing undercurrent of
the political consciousness among large sections of people, especially in
north India, even before Independence. And Gita Press, a little known
publisher based in Gorakhpur, UP, that specialises in publishing editions of
the Ramayana, Gita and other Indian scriptures, has played no small part in
marshalling the simple piety of Hindu masses into a suspicious and fanatic
programme that’s seeking to change the basic tenets of Indian democracy.
Senior journalist Mukul’s history of Gita Press is thus essential reading to
understand the rise of communal politics in India.
India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in 21st Century: Ira
Trivedi(Aleph Book Company, 2014)
An account of the immense changes in
sexual mores that’s been sweeping India, especially since the economic liberalisation
of the 1990s. Trivedi, a former fashion model, speaks to students in schools
and colleges across India, couples – married, on the verge of it, living in,
or of the same sex – their parents and guardians, marriage counsellors,
astrologers, divorce lawyers and moral vigilantes to give a comprehensive
picture of this revolution that’s lifting the veil on many centuries of
repression. The picture, however, is not all rosy – the greater
licentiousness is mostly limited to the cities, while the rural parts lag
behind, given to less freedom for women and violence.
India’s Long Road, The Search for Prosperity: Vijay Joshi
(Penguin, 2016)
‘Aspirational Indians’ – may their
tribe increase! – love to believe that theirs is the world’s “fastest growing
economy”. Sadly, the reality of India doesn’t quite square with their
optimism. Sure, we are more prosperous than before, but will we ever get near
the West or beat China? A number of recent books have attempted to answer
this question but none with such candidness as this one. Or with as much
lucidity. Joshi, whose impressive credentials as a long-time teacher at
Oxford University are bolstered with stints at government and business
houses, not only analyses what’s wrong with the economy but also gives a
fairly practical roadmap of “radical reform” to get more Indians to a higher
level of prosperity.
Incarnations: India in 50 Lives: Sunil Khilnani (Penguin, 2016)
This book, by one of India’s most
astute contemporary historians, is a comprehensive history of India presented
as the story of the lives of important men (and very few women). Khilnani
packs a disparate cast of characters – starting with Ashoka to represent
ancient India followed by Rajaraj Chola, Akbarand Shivaji. The moderns,
closest to us in time and mindspace, are represented by Gandhi, Jinnah,
Sheikh Abdullah, Indira Gandhi and Charan Singh. Khilnani also includes
spiritual seers such as Buddha and Mahavira and Mirabai have had as much of a
role as have scholars such as Kautilya, Aryabhatta, artists Nainsukh and
Amrita Sher-Gil, writers Saadat Hasan Manto and Rabindranath Tagore, and
filmmakers Satyajit Ray and Raj Kapoor. Pop history at its best.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai
Undercity: Katherine Boo (Random House, 2012)
Boo’s book may be set in a slum in
Mumbai, but it is one of the most powerful evocations of contemporary India.
It’s about residents of Annawadi slum, where Boo spent more than three years
researching, who constitute the salt of our nation, the not-too-pretty
reality that most of us pretend does not exist. Boo describes the goings-on
in Annawadi meticulously – the squalor, cramped tenements, abusive
relationships, the violence and harassment by officials – but it’s not
“poverty porn” like the Mumbai represented in films and books. There’s
understanding and dispassionate sympathy in the account that gives Boo’s
subjects dignity and individuality so they transcend their circumstances,
rather than be bogged down by it.
A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces: Extraordinary Short Stories
from the 19th Century to the Present: David Davidar (Aleph Book Company,
2014)
Fiction, often, has a better handle
on reality than history. Davidar includes the choicest of short fiction by
the most acclaimed writers from India, written in the last century. Not only
does he include all the known writers – Saadat Hasan Manto, Khushwant Singh,
Ruskin Bond et al – but also translations from little-known stalwarts such as
Gopinath Mohanty in Oriya, Paul Zacharia in Malayalam, UR Ananthamurthy in
Kannada, Vilas Sarang in Marathi and Harishankar Parsai in Hindi. As a whole,
the collection, though marked by differences in caste, economic standing,
language, gender and religion but held together by a universality of human
feeling and experience.
India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest
Democracy: Ramachandra Guha (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007)
It’s the answer to your quest for a
single book that covers the history of independent India, recounting major
events from before the British left in 1947 down to the 21st century. Guha’s
book gives not just factual details, but also a sense of perspective as it
strings together the jumble of events into a coherent narrative of how an
“unnatural nation”, as Guha calls India in the prologue, has managed to stay
together despite many challenges – external aggressors, secessionist
movements, the fissiparous forces of language, religion, caste, economic
disparity, threat from authoritarianism and internal distortions such as
communal ill will, corruption and nepotism. A bravura effort that should find
place on the shelf of anyone who wants to understand present-day India.
Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India: William
Dalrymple (Bloomsbury, 2009)
The West loves to portray India as
the land of spirituality – so much so that we’ve started to believe it
ourselves. This book is Dalrymple’s attempt to map the many dimensions of the
phenomenon in this travel book – Hari Das, a Dalit labourer in Kerala who
personifies a deity when he occasionally performs the Theyyam dance and has
his feet touched by Brahmins; Prasannamati, a Jain nun who has renounced the
world but decides to embrace Sallekhana, voluntary death, when her friends
dies; Tashi Passang, a Buddhist monk who fought the Chinese, and so on.
Dalrymple has the unique advantage of the insider-outside – having lived here
more than three decades he’s very familiar with India and its ways and yet
retains the unfamiliar eye of the foreign born.
Another Way of Seeing: The Magazine of New Writing: Granta 130
(Granta, 2015)
This is only the second time that
literary magazine Granta has devoted an entire issue to India, the first time
being in 1997 to mark the golden jubilee of Independence that year. That
issue lived up to the 118-year-old British quarterly literary journal’s
reputation for bringing forth the best of contemporary writing with pieces by
Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Anjum Hasan, Raghu Karnad, Amit Chaudhuri,
William Dalrymple and Urvashi Butalia. So does this one with an impressive
line-up of new writers such as Hari Kunzru, Deepti Kapoor, Aman Sethi, Raghu
Karnad, Karthika Nair, Anjum Hassan and so on. Read it to get a sense of the
plethora of voices writing in English today and the varied stories they have
to tell.
2 States: The Story of My Marriage: Chetan Bhagat(Rupa & Co,
2009)
Bhagat has as many detractors as he
does acolytes, but there’s no doubting that he succeeds spectacularly in
crystallising the spirit of the times. This is true of all his novels, and
especially so of this one which tells the story of love triumphing over
regional divide. The divides of language, caste and religion mean much less
to today’s generation, it is true, than it did to earlier ones. But what
resonates even more with the times is the reversal of traditional gender
roles that Bhagat depicts – it is the wife who holds a regular job while the
husband stays at home and writes, and neither he nor she think less of each
other because of it. It might be a simplistic and limited view of
contemporary Indian society, but it’s also a more egalitarian one.
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Gargi Gupta gargi.gupta@dnaindia.net
DNA14AUG16
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