The Idea of India

I believe that this is one of the most intelligent and articulate books on Indian politics ever written. Sunil Khilnani, a professor of politics at Cambridge, brings unyielding subtlety and sophistication in a book which well matches the complexity and contradictions of Indian politics. He artfully demonstrates and corrects such simplistic and prevalent misconceptions as surrounding the nature and origins of India's early state-led industrialization or the nature of its democracy.A somewhat longish extract will illustrate the subtleties of various concepts that the author elegantly develops in this magnificient work: QUOTE In India, democracy has had to function in a society of peculiar complexity where many different temporal and historical plans coexist. Indian continues to be a predominantly agrarian society, whose people are not indifferent to religion, and where the individual does not have a strong political or social presence. But towering over that society today is the state. This state is far from supremely effective: it regulalry fails to protect its citizens against physical violence, it does not provide them with welfare, and it has not fulfilled its extensive ambitions to transform Indian society. Yet it is today at the very centre of the Indian political imagination. Until little over a century ago, the social order of caste had made the state largely redundant...The past fifty years have trenchantly displayed the powers of the state and of the idea of democracy to reconstitute the antique social identities of India - caste and religion - and to force them to face and enter politics.UNQUOTEIf you have wondered why so many books have failed to effectively unravel and interpret the intricacies of political evolution of this entity called India, Khilnani's analysis will be a welcome eye opener.

In an era that abounds with superficial books on South Asia, Khilnani's is an insightful and sensitive book, though perhaps somewhat out of sync (and this is not a criticism) with the contemporary Indian urban middle-class mood, which delights in denigrating all things perceived as "Nehruvian"; some of the other reviewers have categorized Khilnani as part of the "old school" of Indian historiographers, vaguely dismissed as "leftists"or "Nehruvians"; nothing could be further from the truth: while the book displays an empathy with Nehru's idea of India, it is far too sophisticated to accept that conception as anything more than one of a number of competing ideas, albeit one that has exercised great power over many in the country's urban elite. Hindutva is another such idea of India, and Khilnani offers a nuanced appraisal, far removed from both the fascistic infatuations of the right and the unthinking denunciations of those on the Indian left. Finally: the book is particularly useful on Indira Gandhi, and Khilnani persuasively links her "mass democratisation" of the late 1960's and 70's to the rise of both the saffron parties and the lower-caste mobilizations of the last fifteen years, though the most intellectually stimulating chapter remains the one on the architecture of the colonial city, conceptualized by Khilnani as, among others, the site where colonialism was acted out, the site, in other words, of the Indian's subjection.

India, as many misty eyed Indians might claim is a great culture. These idiot savants espouse the greatness of Aryan India: Vedic culture etc., the glorious Hindu period, Buddha, Aryhabhatta, and the Indus Civilization. What these half wits are unwilling to admit is that to define India is a feat by itself. Thus,I would argue along with the author,is that the Persians (Taj Mahal and the ghazals), the Arabic invasions (architecture) and the English Empire (English, railways and National Unity) are all part of India as their Hindu and pre-Hindu predecessors. I applaud Khilnani for willing to engage his readers in such contentious topics such as the definition of India and the paradox of India as the largest democracy and its caste system. How can a country with a large population subjugated by poverty also have a contender with Hollywood for a place in the entertainment world. Indeed,is democracy right for India? Are countries like China,India and Russia best suited for governments with authoritarian tendencies? Would India have been better if Nehru had not imposed Stalinist ideology on a primarily agrarian society? Would India be better off not as a single entity called India but Nation states with self-governing bodies like the United States? Would the South be better off as a partition than having an alien culture rule it? Finally, what is an Indian? Is it a South Indian Brahmin, a Kashmiri, a Sudra, a Sikh, a Malyalee or a tribal person from the Andaman and Nicobar islands? Read this book. Khilnani provokes one, especially those in the West (who think that every Indian is a disciple of Ghandhi's principles) and those of the nationalistic persuasion (BJP and the whole wretched lot) to examine of what India means as a nation state.

These thoughtful and well-written essays explore some of the major trends in modern Indian politics. Khilnani is especially concerned about the emergence of religion- and caste-based "identity politics" and the growing tendency of the Indian state to resort to coercive measures as a means of containing political challenges; in this regard, he treats the populism and authoritarianism of Indira Gandhi as a watershed in modern Indian politics. Everything he writes is worth pondering, though some of the essays presume a considerable knowledge of Indian history.

The author uses keen observation and brilliant insights from the history of India to synthesize a personality for modern India. This is a book about India today. The past is studied only to gain insights into the present. Reading this book was a pleasure. Check it out!