Product Description
The key book on India in the postnuclear era, with a new Introduction by the author.Our appreciation of the importance of India can only increase in light of the recent revelations of its nuclear capabilities. Sunil Khilnani’s exciting, timely study addresses the paradoxes and ironies of this, the world’s largest democracy. Throughout his penetrating, provocative work, he illuminates this fundamental issue: Can the original idea of India survive its own successes?
A big let down this one. Sunil Khilnani is clearly the sort of tiresome know-all NRI who writes about India with only academic knowledge: he knows nothing of the real India, and his writing comes from book-learning not observation. You get the feeling he is trying to jump on the Indian-writing-in-English bandwaggon, but is just not up to the job. And his writing is dead on the page. Don’t believe the blurbs on the cover: this one is really hard work.
Rating: 1 / 5
The title of the book is very inviting but, unfortunately, the author doesn’t prove equal to the challenge of the subject. Mainly, he reiterates ideas of the colonialist-leftist school of Indian history.
Rating: 1 / 5
A good source of reference for those who wish to familiarize themselves with the typical prejudices and arrogant misjudgements of India by a Nehruvian intellectual. The author would rather talk about his own idea of India, depending on how closely India abandons her own uniqueness to imitate the west, than the actual idea behind India. One who truly wishes to familiarize himself with the true ‘Idea of India’ must keep a safe distance from this articulate regurgitation of traditional elitist misrepresentaions of India. On the other end of the spectrum is ‘Foundations of Indian Culture’ by Sri Aurobindo, the essential master-work for anyone who truly wishes to understand the idea of India.
Rating: 1 / 5
A good source of reference for those who wish to familiarize themselves with the typical prejudices and arrogant misjudgements of India by a Nehruvian intellectual writing from “somewhere in England”. The author is to be counted as one of those all too common “brown apes of the west” who would rather talk about their own idea of India, depending on how closely India abandons her own uniqueness to imitate the west, than the actual idea behind India. One who truly wishes to familiarize himself with the true “Idea of India” must keep a safe distance from this artticulate regurgitation of traditional elitist misrepresentaions of India. On the other end of the spectrum is “Foundations of Indian Culture” by Sri Aurobindo, the essential master-work for anyone who truly wishes to understand the idea of India.
Rating: 1 / 5
This book will not provide any insight into India, but perhaps it will do so into the mindset of the Macaulayite Indian who is completely cut off from his tradition and is trying to make sense of things about him using Western categories. It takes us nowhere understanding the idea of India.
Rating: 1 / 5