There's been a spate of world class Indo-Anglian fiction over the last two decades (Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Vikram Chandra, Rohinton Mistry, Anita Desai... the list grows at an increasingly rapid pace). However, I've long lamented the dearth of (quality) non-fiction in the Indo-Anglian stable. The only notable book over the last decade that comes to mind is V.S. Naipaul's "India: a Million Mutinies Now." This paucity of decent non-fiction might explain why I was so taken with Sunil Khilnani's "The Idea of India". I found it absolutely riveting, so much so that I finished the book in one reading. This monograph is actually a collection of four essays on the following topics: "Democracy, Economics, Cities, and Who is an Indian?"

I have a confession to make. I read a lot (perhaps more than is good for me). And while I'm no evangelist, I think "The Idea of India" deserves a wide audience. This is not a full-fledged review, given current constraints of time. I definitely plan to revisit Khilnani at some point in the near future, for a more detailed analysis. For now, think of this as a "quick and dirty" recommendation, based on a casual first read.

For starters, "The Idea.." is rather well written -- elegant prose without any of the tendentious word tricks that a couple of other non-fiction South Asian writers seem so fond of. His writing is far removed from the simplistic clichés on India that are all too easy to come by, given the sheer complexity and diversity of the topics. Khilnani makes a heroic attempt to project (some of) the subtleties and shades of the issues under consideration, while maintaining a coherence and internal flow.

His essays are the product of a thoughtful mind, rather than a potted journalistic attempt to bring out something to sync with India's 50th Independence anniversary. Has quite a few incisive comments and penetrating insights, worthy of debate and discussion.

Also, Khilnani's done a fair amount of dogged research -- intensive as well as extensive.

On the flip side, on a couple of times Khilnani's conclusions seem a trifle flat. For instance, "Cities": lots of background material, fabulous research, and engaging perspectives on India's major cities: Bombay, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Delhi. However, the ending seemed a bit open-ended and dangling. Not to be crude, but I was left with the question: "OK, so the point is..?" For all the elegance, Khilnani's sentences at times seem a tad long, with a whole bunch of qualifiers and subclauses nested within. (Is this some form of South Asian Oxbridge tradition, perhaps? Witness Amit Chaudhuri & Salman Rushdie. Comments, anyone). Maybe I'm overly critical here, weaned as I've been on Russell and The Economist leaders. But would Khilnani have sacrificed the multi-shading that he so obviously is striving for, if he'd resorted to shorter, simpler sentences? A question to be tabled and explored in a fuller review. These quibbles of mine should in no way detract from the overall merits of Khilnani's effort. If you're looking for a good book on India, you could do worse than begin with "The Idea of India". Hopefully, this book will serve as the harbinger of more such quality non-fiction within the Indo-Anglian fold. After all, one would like to think that we deserve better stuff than the mishmash of a Shashi Tharoor (India: From Midnight to the Millennium) or the grating pretentiousness of a Gita Mehta (Snakes and Ladders).

Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your take on this book. And on any other non-fiction of similar calibre.

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.

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.