About
Author: Sunil Khilnani (India)
Genre: Political
Setting
Place: Indian
Time: 1900s
My Rating (see what this means)
My Subjective Rating: 4
My ‘Objective’ Rating: 3.58
Introduction
Sunil Khilnani’s book – The Idea of India was written in the late 1990s. It was a time of great flux in India’s politics. The broadly centre-left dominant core had given way to more fractious coalition politics less than a decade ago – and the right was at the precipice of power. India had just celebrated its 50th anniversary – so, the book came at an opportune time to look at the successes and failures a novel political experiment – Democracy – with full suffrage to a very poor, very uneducated country of Asian sensibilities.
25 years hence, Indian politics is again at a churn – when the now dominant centre-right core of the past decade is again giving space to a (somewhat less) fractious coalition politics. So, I picked the book again to see how prescient the author’s expectations were.
Unfortunately, in the book, the author had not really done much crystal-gazing. Fortunately, the book was still marvellous and informative writing that made for a great read anyway.
Review
The book raises and tries to answer some super interesting questions – which remain as relevant today as they were 25 years ago –
- How did democracy arrive in India? What has it done to India, and what India to it?
- What has moulded India’s visions of economic possibility? And how well have they served Indians?
- What are the various conceptions of Indian cosmopolitianism?
and finally…
- Who is an Indian?
The author give a very comprehensive argument for each of these questions – with cogent insights brimming with fascinating history – which with reasonable balance recounts the successes and failures of the Indian story.
A Critical Choice
The final chapter – written in the 1990s – had at the top of its mind – the most significant political event of the decade – the demolition of Babri Masjid (a mosque, arguably, built on the site of an ancient Hindu temple) by a mob.
India’s history has shown two broad possibilities of dealing with (India’s) diversity: a theoretically untidy, improvising, pluralist approach, or a neatly rationalist and purifying exclusivism. India’s history has also, for the first time in all its millennial depth, given the present generation of Indians the responsibility to choose between them. They must decide what they wish to build out of the wreckage of Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid.
25 years hence, we know the choice Indians have made – a grand Hindu temple was inaugurated on the disputed site in 2024 – with great pomp and circumstance. However, what could have arguably been the settled reality of purifying exclusivism received a tough blow from the untidy, pluralist democracy when the builders of the grand temple suffered a tragic election defeat just a few months later – in the very same Ayodhya, from the very same Indians.
Thankfully… After fifty years seventy seven years of an Indian state, the definition of who is an Indian is as passionately contested as ever.
Picture Credits:
- Cover Picture: Malgudi Days
- https://openthemagazine.com/cover-stories/who-is-an-indian/, Picture Credits: Saurabh Singh