How can we understand India today, fifty years after Independence and only months after its nuclear tests outraged the world? The novelist Arundhati Roy has written, specially for this collection, a fierce denunciation of the Indian nuclear program, which serves as an introduction to nine essays on India, all originally published in The New York Review of Books. In this volume, seven distinguished writers offer penetrating insights into the complexities of the subcontinent. Roderick MacFarquhar reflects on the legacy of Empire and Partition, Ian Buruma considers secularism and Indian democracy, Pankaj Mishra remembers life in Benares, and Christopher de Bellaigue writes on a violent Bombay. But the volatile intersections of history, politics, and culture on which they focus haunt Indian literature too, as shown in essays by Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen on Rabindranath Tagore, Hilary Mantel on Rohinton Mistry, and Anita Desai on Indian women's writing.
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First Sentence
ONE OF THE oddest bits of information I picked up in Chandigarh, the capital of Haryana and Punjab, designed more or less from scratch by Le Corbusier in the early 1950s, was that none of its trees is from India. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
ONE OF THE oddest bits of information I picked up in Chandigarh, the capital of Haryana and Punjab, designed more or less from scratch by Le Corbusier in the early 1950s, was that none of its trees is from India. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
By "rajubaba"
Format:Paperback
Writers like Arundhati Roy love to write about conflicts.... the left in general loves the idea of a class struggle... because that is how the society in the West was for many years and still is in certain ways.. India has never been about that.. what one sees in India at every turn is reconciliation.. the amazingly accommodating nature of India enabling us to accept people from all religions, from all backgrounds etc. I believe that the essential nature of India is love... sadly, very few people recognize this and this book is the result.. shallow and abusive... We no longer seem to have the awe and respect for beauty and greatness... the "everyone and everything is equal" philosophy has destroyed our understanding of the world. As Adi Shankara says, we are all equal but only when our mind evolves to the stage where we can conceive of the world in that fashion. A materialistic loony who has plastic surgery every six months is not equal to Adi Shankara no matter what anyone might say. As they say in my hometown, Kahan Raja Bhoj, Kahan Gangoo Telli?
Format:Hardcover
Tunku Vardarajan in the India today says, India: a Mosaic is a con job. The word "mosaic" suggests a variety in the book. Instead the book talks about "bleeding-hearted" essays. According to him, the articles in the book were published elsewhere and are "profoundly stale." From my reading of the book i found the book to be a "do not buy."
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1.3 out of 5 stars
3 reviews
10 of 18 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Read the names of the contributors and you can skip the book
Jan 6 2004
By Murli Nagasundaram
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
The contributors to the book all consider themselves to be leftists. The Indian contributors are all Westernized and many live in the West. They have a long history of being unremittingly critical of Indian culture and traditions. One of the contributors, N. Ram, openly supports the Chinese destruction of Tibet, her culture and civilization. Amartya Sen should stick to economics, his specialty; but even here, his embracement of Marxism, a failed ideology, makes his opinions suspect. Pankaj Mishra is the author of a very badly written sneering travelogue on India called Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. He is also "credited" with "discovering" Arundhati Roy, who has written the introduction. Given that the contributors form a Mutual Admiration Society, you will get a perspective that completely lacks diversity: not the Mosaic promised. Most importantly, nearly all the writers write from a highly political (leftist) perspective. This makes for shrill, and ultimately very annoying reading.
Spare yourself the trouble. Visit India yourself and make up your mind. You are likely to come away with a much more positive impression than the one this book seeks to project.
5 of 13 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
crap
May 18 2004
By "rajubaba"
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Writers like Arundhati Roy love to write about conflicts.... the left in general loves the idea of a class struggle... because that is how the society in the West was for many years and still is in certain ways.. India has never been about that.. what one sees in India at every turn is reconciliation.. the amazingly accommodating nature of India enabling us to accept people from all religions, from all backgrounds etc. I believe that the essential nature of India is love... sadly, very few people recognize this and this book is the result.. shallow and abusive... We no longer seem to have the awe and respect for beauty and greatness... the "everyone and everything is equal" philosophy has destroyed our understanding of the world. As Adi Shankara says, we are all equal but only when our mind evolves to the stage where we can conceive of the world in that fashion. A materialistic loony who has plastic surgery every six months is not equal to Adi Shankara no matter what anyone might say. As they say in my hometown, Kahan Raja Bhoj, Kahan Gangoo Telli?
5 of 30 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Bleeding Heart Essays
Jun 26 2000
By Abhilash Puljal
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Tunku Vardarajan in the India today says, India: a Mosaic is a con job. The word "mosaic" suggests a variety in the book. Instead the book talks about "bleeding-hearted" essays. According to him, the articles in the book were published elsewhere and are "profoundly stale." From my reading of the book i found the book to be a "do not buy."
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1.3 out of 5 stars
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