Building your personal reading 'Primer on India'
A toolset to navigate online discourse on India, its history, politics, and socio-economics
There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.
—Russian Proverb (h/t libertyrpf.com)
Over the years I have spent countless hours reading, thinking, and opining on matters related to the country of my birth: India. Its history, culture, politics, and socio-economic happenings. Initially, my opinions were primarily rooted in my consumption of the discourse that the media, intellectuals, economists, and historians had edified over the years. However, upon getting over the cheap-talk hump of daily outrage and electoral outcomes of parties and politicians, I grew to appreciate and started delving into the complexity of analyzing issues related to a continental-sized, civilizational state that is India.
More recently, the social media driven 24x7 outrage/discourse cycle has spread itself to India and its fast growing internet consumer base; as soon as an event of socio-political importance occurs, many addicts of this outrage cycle line up dutifully to defend and argue on behalf of their respective tribes, and the discourse is quickly overrun by shallow voxsplainers. Within a few hours they have a 5-bullet point analysis available of any situation at hand, on their Instagram story, to be shared and consumed by their fellow shallowly informed outragers.
While the 2012 me would be excited that friends and family members from the Republic of South Bombay©, DefCol, and Koramangala are looking beyond the tip of their nose to understand how politics drives their environment, unfortunately this awokening based on Whatsapp forwards and Instagram stories is but a chimera of knowledge, driven by a shallowness of thought contributing to presumptuous half-baked opinions on topics of un-lived experiences. This is encapsulated in the common black pill many have swallowed these days: “Tribes matter, nothing else matters…” But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Over the last year or so, multiple friends have asked me for reading recommendations on India, its history, and socio-politics. At each occasion, I have been surprised at the ask given how well articulated these folks have been on topics related to India on Twitter and elsewhere on social media. However, this just goes back to the 24x7 outrage cycle - it might expose you to ideas and suck you into the online discourse, without necessarily equipping you with the tools necessary to analyze those ideas and finding truth for yourself. And that is where this post germinated.
Below you will find a short list of seven books that have helped me create a better framework to understand the complex dynamic system that is India. Books should serve as portals into new worlds where people can make new meaning. These books, of course, don’t have all the truths, but they offer the curious individual, appropriate mental models that will provide the reader with the chops to go out and learn for oneself. They synthesize Locke and Hobbes, use heterodox fields from geology to genetics for better historicity, just so that you don’t have to to spend months taking a pol-sci course at school or spend time in a dusty library going through it all on your own. These books are also less dense than let’s say a S. N. Balagangadhara’s magnum opus. At the least, they should give you the confidence that the Facebook post you’re about to re-share has gone through a robust mental filter that has consumed something more nutritious than a 24x7 outrage junk news cycle.
‘Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography’ by Sanjeev Sanyal
Any commentary on India that focuses on the modern republic without delving into its past is lazy at best and disingenuous at worst. Today’s India is a derivative of ideas that emerged in a cultural milieu that goes back to a time when the Yamuna flowed into the now defunct Sarasvati, when Takshashila in India’s Uttarapath produced knowledge that would allow Indian and Greek civilizations to understand each other and propel human civilization forward. Before understanding ideas that emerged in this milieu, one must understand the contours and geography of what makes India different, and its problems unique. This book along with the author’s subsequent book (Ocean of Churn) are best suited for the uninitiated reader with limited background on India’s history. It provides jumping off points, which can be taken up by the curious individual to more fully satiate their knowledge of specific points in Indian history.
‘India: A Wounded Civilization’ by VS Naipaul
Nobel Laureate, VS Naipaul’s searing account from 1976 who’s every word serves as a prosaic sword piercing through the reader’s mind. Numerous books and famous intellectuals have tried to psychoanalyze the Indian mind since independence. Some anthropological, others broad-brushed as if in a rush to match the speed of India’s progress. From Amartya’s Sen’s Argumentative Indian to Shashi Tharoor’s Pax Indica, they do a good job analyzing who we are and attempt to dissect why as a nation, we act in the way we do. However, for reasons that the discerning reader soon figures out, the coyness of these intellectuals in honestly assessing India’s history and its impact on the Indian psyche renders this psychoanalysis useless. Naipaul pulls no such punches when he stares directly at the darkness within and without mincing words, delivers a brutal but honest account of what plagues India, its administration, its healthcare and education systems, and mindsets of its constituents. Still if read carefully, one can feel a glimmer of hope in this third and final book in Naipaul’s writings on India; he was able to see the aspirational Indian arriving on the scene and rebuilding the nation in the decades to come.
‘The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies’ by Thomas McEvilley
As the title itself suggests, this is a historiography of Indian philosophy; that shaped human experience via its early CE expansions led by the Buddhist missionaries into the East and through trade and commerce with Rome and Greece, the forbearers of western thought and civilization. A dense read that doesn’t have to be read cover-to-cover but worthwhile bedside companion that serves as a great reference resource of early India, something that is tough to come by given the lack of scholarship on India’s past and its contributions to human thought. And while I only recently read this book, and therefore would not consider it to be formative to my worldview, I do think that if I had read it a few years ago I would have shortcut my knowledge of ancient India, especially as viewed from outside in.
‘A New Idea of India: Individual Rights in a Civilisational State’ by Harsh Gupta and Rajeev Mantri
From thinking about specific policy ideas to shaping a socio-economic worldview that not only accepts intellectual challenges but thrives from it, ‘A New Idea of India…’ provides tools to understand the complex dynamic system that is India. Harsh and Rajeev have been my intellectual north stars ever since I met them on twitter almost a decade ago. During this time I have closely followed how they have developed a intellectual framework, molding their worldview based on continual learning and sharing it publicly without fearing labels of hypocrisy or other similar frivolous criticisms that come with changing one’s mind on social media. This book is therefore a result of their intellectual journey through this Samudra Manthana of ideas. Whether it is the scourge of faith-based incentives propped up by consociationalism-chasing politicians, or those looking to hegemonize language and dietary restrictions of a minority across a larger population, this book is a big step towards building a modern identity of an ancient civilizational state. The book is unique especially because prioritizing individual rights atop a Dharmic bedrock without the need to force-fit society within a narrow and fragile western-liberal framework, is a luxury unavailable to most modern nation states. And one that India is lucky to be able to leverage in its journey.
‘Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India’ by Venkat Dhulipala
Dhulipala’s book that emanates from his doctoral thesis, goes into the germination of the Pakistan movement, which ended up partitioning India and includes lessons that could help the modern Indian republic not repeat the same mistakes it seems to be hurtling towards again. Partition is a reality that many elites and huge sections of the population simply wish to ignore in their analyses. On the one hand, nurseries of those ideas that created the first partition continue to plant seeds for future partitions. While on the other hand, the infantile arguments of vasudaiva kutumbakam brush the fissures under the carpet, making a mockery of millions of families that are viscerally connected to one of the bloodiest episodes of human history. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We are reminded by this book how it only took a few decades of tactical machinations by a small school of thought to eventually result in a bloody moment in history that continues to fester open wounds till this day.
‘Getting India Back on Track’ by Bibek Debroy (editor), et. al.
After covering the bases of history, philosophy, and India’s rich cultural milieu, for anyone interested in seeking out more targeted solutions to problems facing India’s cities, villages, administrative system, education system, farm sector, healthcare, etc., this book written in 2014 offers rich detailed analyses and solutions that serve as a playbook for anyone looking for medium-to-long term fixes to India’s economy and politics. Each chapter written by a subject matter expert is well-researched and more importantly well-articulated for the lay reader who has experienced the issues first hand. The rationale for protestations by various lobbies and rent-seekers when it comes to reforms pushed by different governments over the years, become clear when you read about the bottlenecks throttling India’s progress in this book. The book does a yeoman services to understand why certain reforms are sorely needed to get India to the next growth cycle and avoiding the middle income trap.
‘Walking with the Comrades’ by Arundhati Roy
Her long time critic (but probably a recent ideological bedfellow), Aatish Taseer, famously described Arundhati Roy as someone who has a prurient fascination with the enemies of India. While Aatish’s assessment is not too far off the mark - simply based on her incendiary record of promoting regime change and bloody revolt in India over the years - I think that is exactly what makes reading her ever more important. Knowing reasons for discontent against you, especially if articulated well can be a source of new knowledge that is otherwise tough to encounter. As India charts her path forward, ensuring the existing discontents are pacified or nullified and minimizing future fissures will be important to create a confident nation-state that can thrive and deliver poverty alleviation and create wealth for all members of society. America had to go through a civil war before it had even fully expanded its current geographical extent, so while we can cut some slack for a young nation-state like India, the lessons need not be too early to learn.
P.S. While the above are books focused primarily on India and about India, there are other notable books that offer lessons on thinking about economic reforms, social dynamics, and thinking more critically about their interrelations. I will likely have another post on this, but in the meantime, Joe Studwell’s ‘How Asia Works’ is one of the most relevant books that comes to mind.