40. Harish C. Menon, ‘In the version of history found in India’s new textbooks, China lost 1962 and Gandhi wasn’t murdered’, Quartz India, 16 August 2017, https://qz.com/india/1054692/in-the-version-of-history-found-in-indias-new-textbooks-china-lost-1962-and-gandhi-wasnt-murdered/.
41. Shoeb Khan, ‘Devnani’s ‘revisionist’ ideas, NDA schemes guide NCERT books’, Times of India, 3 June 2018.
42. ‘Maharashtra Board drops Mughal, Western history from syllabi, claims it’s “irrelevant”’, Indian Express, 8 August 2017.
43. ‘Darwin’s theory wrong, nobody saw ape turning into man: Minister Satyapal Singh’, Hindustan Times, 21 January 2018.
44. Maseeh Rahman, ‘Indian prime minister claims genetic science existed in ancient times’, Guardian, 28 October 2014.
45. ‘Don’t miss: 5 howlers from the Indian Science Congress’, India Today, 5 January 2015.
46. John Elliott, ‘Modi puts Hindu myths at centre of India politics’, Newsweek, 30 October 2014.
47. Mihir Sharma, ‘Modi’s Alarming Power Grab’, Bloomberg, 27 March 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-03-27/modi-s-alarming-power-grab.
48. ‘EC against state funding of polls’, Pioneer, 22 May 2017.
49. ‘EC hopes electoral bonds are step in ‘right direction’, Hindu Business Line, 24 January 2018.
50. Ritika Chopra, ‘EC cited model code and flood relief to delay Gujarat polls—but for J&K, took another line’, Indian Express, 7 December 2017.
51. ‘EC probes complaints of poll code violation by Modi amid attack from Opposition’, Rediff News, 14 December 2017, https://www.rediff.com/news/report/ec-acting-like-bjps-puppet-congress-on-modis-roadshow-gujarat-election/20171214.htm.
52. Vijaita Singh, ‘ECI decision to not announce Gujarat poll dates surprises former CEC SY Quarishi’, Hindu, 12 October 2017.
53. ‘RSS Ideologue Govindacharya: “We Will Rewrite the Constitution to Reflect Bharatiyata”’, Wire, 20 June 2016, https://thewire.in/politics/rss-ideologue-govindacharya-we-will-rewrite-the-constitution-to-reflect-bharatiyata.
54. ‘Modi modern-day Nero: SC’, Times of India, 12 April 2004.
55. See Manoj Mitta, Modi and Godhra: The Fiction of Fact-Finding, HarperCollins, Delhi, 2014.
56. Manoj Mitta, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’, Outlook, 17 February 2014.
57. ‘The Amit Shah files’, Outlook, 16 February 2015.
58. Apoorva Mandhani, ‘Judge Loya’s Two Confidants Faced Mysterious Death: Congress Alleges and Demands Independent Probe’, Live Law, 1 February 2018, https://www.livelaw.in/judge-loyas-two-confidante-faced-mysterious-death-congress-alleges-demands-independent-probe/. Also see Caravan magazine’s sustained investigation into this matter: www.caravanmagazine.in/tag/bh-loya.
59. Michael Safi, ‘India’s top judges issue unprecedented warning over integrity of supreme court’, Guardian, 12 January 2018.
60. ‘India Supreme Court judges: Democracy is in danger’, BBC News, 12 January 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-42660391.
61. Rakesh Mohan Chaturvedi, ‘Vice President Venkaiah Naidu rejects opposition notice for CJI impeachment’, Economic Times, 24 April 2018.
62. Krishna Prasad, ‘Is the media under siege?’, Hindu, 16 June 2017.
63. Ellen Barry, ‘Raids in India Target Founders of News Outlet Critical of Government’, New York Times, 5 June 2017.
64. Aayush Soni, ‘How India’s ace journalist was punished for confronting Prime Minister Modi’, TRT World, 14 August 2018, https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-india-s-ace-journalist-was-punished-for-confronting-prime-minister-modi-19584.
65. Anuj Srinivas, ‘Hindustan Times Editor’s Exit Preceded by Meeting Between Modi, Newspaper Owner’, Wire, 25 September 2017, https://thewire.in/media/hindustan-times-bobby-ghosh-narendra-modi-shobhana-bhartia.
66. Varsha Torgalkar, ‘Nikhil Wagle Quits TV9, Says TV Show Dropped Due to ‘Political Pressure’, Wire, 21 July 2017, https://thewire.in/media/nikhil-wagle-quits-tv9-popular-tv-show-dropped-due-political-pressure.
67. ‘Media Owner Raghav Bahl’s Noida Home, “The Quint” Office Raided By Taxmen’, NDTV, 11 October 2018, https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/media-baron-raghav-bahls-home-in-noida-raided-over-alleged-tax-evasion-say-officials-report-1930231.
68. Nikita Saxena and Atul Dev, ‘No Land’s Man’, Caravan, 1 December 2017.
69. Punya Prasun Bajpai, ‘A 200-Member Government Team Is Watching How the Media Covers Modi, Amit Shah’, Wire, 10 August 2018, https://thewire.in/media/narendra-modi-amit-shah-media-watch-punya-prasun-bajpai.
70. https://www.cobrapost.com/blog/Operation-136:-Part-1/1009.
71. https://www.cobrapost.com/blog/Press-Release-Operation-136-Part-II/1063.
72. ‘RSF issues warning to India in first World Press Freedom Index Incident Report’, Reporters Without Borders, 4 July 2018, https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-issues-warning-india-first-world-press-freedom-index-incident-report.
10. Disunion
1. For an historical overview, see Victoria Schoefield, Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan, and the Unending War, IB Tauris, London, 2003, pp. 1–25.
2. Navnita Chadha Behera, Demystifying Kashmir, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 2006, p. 27.
3. Ibid, p. 33.
4. Margaret Bourke-White, Halfway to Freedom, Asia Publishing House, New York, 1949, p. 207.
5. Ibid, pp. 206–207.
6. Abdullah’s endorsement was instrumental in Nehru’s decision to authorise military action: M.C. Mahajan, Looking Back, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1963, p. 152.
7. Bourke-White, Halfway to Freedom, pp. 210–211.
8. Praveen Swami, India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad: The Covert War in Kashmir, 1947–2004, Routledge, London, 2007, p. 15.
9. Stanley Wolpert, Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, p. 251.
10. Full text of the UN Security Council Resolution 47: https://undocs.org/S/RES/47(1948).
11. Address to the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly, 5 November 1951: http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/documents/abdullah51.html.
12. Toru Tak, ‘The Term Kashmiriyat: Kashmiri Nationalism of the 1970s’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 48, No. 16, 20 April 2013, p. 28.
13. Piyasree Dasgupta, ‘Who Was Burhan Wani and Why Is Kashmir Mourning Him?’, HuffPost, 11 July 2016: www.huffingtonpost.in/burhan-wani/who-was-burhan-wani-and-why-is-kashmir-mourning-him_a_21429499/.
14. ‘702 votes cast in Kashmir by-election’, Statesman, 13 April 2017.
15. Rayan Naqash, ‘“I will never vote again”: Kashmiri man used as “human shield” describes his journey of humiliation’, Scroll, 15 April 2017: www.scroll.in/article/834706/i-will-never-vote-again-kashmiri-man-used-as-human-shield-describes-his-journey-of-humiliation.
16. Joanna Slater, ‘2018 is the deadliest year in a decade in Kashmir. Next year could be worse’, Washington Post, 23 December 2018.
17. ‘After Governor’s rule, President’s rule comes into force in Jammu and Kashmir’, Economic Times, 20 December 2018.
18. John P. Thorp, ‘Genocide in Bangladesh’, in Israel W. Charny (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Genocide: Volume I, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, 1999, p. 115.
19. Stanley Wolpert, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan, p. 73.
20. Mihir Sharma, ‘Modi Government’s Latest Move To Further North-South Divide’, NDTV, 22 March 2018: www.ndtv.com/opinion/the-latest-humiliation-by-bjp-of-southern-states-by-mihir-swarup-sharma-1827296.
21. ‘Bias may force South to secede from India: MP M Muralimohan’, New Indian Express, 18 February 2018.
22. Kapil Komireddi, ‘How India Mistreats Kashmir’, CNN, 15 Nov 2012: http://www.globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/15/how-india-mistreats-kashmir/.
Epilogue
1. ‘Madhya Pradesh to get 1000 cow sheds for housing 1 lakh cows’, DNA, 30 January 2019.
2. Shruti Tomar, ‘3 booked under NSA for
cow slaughter in MP, first since Congress came to power’, Hindustan Times, 6 February 2019.
3. Guha, India After Gandhi, Macmillan, London, 2007, p. 823.
4. ‘Congress never opposed Ram temple, even Muslims want it now: Raj Babbar’, Times of India, 22 November 2018.
5. ‘Ram temple will be built only when Congress comes to power: Congress leader Harish Rawat’, India Today, 18 January 2019.
Further Reading
Aguiar, Benny, Rajiv Gandhi: The Flight of the Scion, Vitasta, Delhi, 2011.
Aiyar, Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar, Oxford University Press, London, 1966.
Andersen, Walter K., and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, Sage, Delhi, 1999.
Baru, Sanjaya, 1991: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Made History, Aleph, Delhi, 2016.
Basu, Tapan, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right, Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 1993.
Behera, Navnita Chadha, Demystifying Kashmir, Brookings, Washington DC, 2006.
Bhaduri, Amit, and Deepak Nayyar, The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Liberalisation, Penguin, Delhi, 1996.
Bhaduri, Amit, The Face You Were Afraid to See: Essays on the Indian Economy, Penguin, Delhi, 2009.
Bhushan, Prashant, The Case That Shook India: The Verdict That Led to the Emergency, Penguin Random House, Gurgaon, 2018.
Bourke-White, Margaret, Halfway to Freedom, Asia Publishing House, New York, 1949.
Brar, K.S. Operation Blue Star: The True Story, UBS Publishers, Delhi, 2006.
Chacko, Priya, Indian Foreign Policy: The Politics of Postcolonial Identity, Routledge, London, 2011.
Chandrasekhar, C.P., and Jayati Ghosh, The Market That Failed: Neoliberal Economic Reforms in India, LeftWord, Delhi, 2009.
Chaudhuri, Rudra, Forged in Crisis: India and the United States since 1947, Hurst, London, 2013.
Datta-Ray, Sunanda K., Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew’s Mission to India, ISEAS Publishing, Singapore, 2010.
Dhulipala, Venkat, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016.
Dua, B.D., and James Manor, eds., Nehru to the Nineties: The Changbing Office of Prime Minister in India, Viking, Delhi, 1994.
Elliot, Henry Miers, and John Dowson, The History of India: As Told by Its Own Historians, Vol. 3, Trübner, London, 1871.
Frank, Katherine, Indira: The Life of Indira-Nehru Gandhi, HarperCollins, Delhi, 2005.
Gandhi, Arun, Morarji Papers: Fall of the Janata Government, Vision Books, Delhi, 1983.
Gidla, Sujatha, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2017.
Gopal, Sarvepalli, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Cape, London, 1984.
Guha, Ramachandra, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, Pan Macmillan, London, 2007.
Hall, Ian, The Engagement of India: Strategies and Responses, Georgetown University, Washington DC, 2014.
Harrison, Selig, India: The Most Dangerous Decades, Oxford University Press, Madras, 1968.
Henderson, Michael, Experiment with Untruth: India Under Emergency, Macmillan, London, 1977.
Jaffrelot, Christophe, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998.
Kohli, Atul, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.
Kohli, Atul, Poverty Amid Plenty in the New India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013.
Liu, Xinru, Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchangbes AD 1-600, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1991.
Mankekar, D.R., and Kamla Mankekar, Decline and Fall of Indira Gandhi, Vision Books, Delhi, 1977.
Marino, Andy, Narendra Modi: A Political Biography, HarperCollins, Delhi, 2015.
Mehta, Ved, The New India, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1978.
Mehta, Ved, Rajiv Gandhi and Rama’s Kingdom, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1994.
Mehta, Vinod, The Sanjay Story: From Anand Bhavan to Amethi, Jaico, Bombay, 1978.
Mitta, Manoj, and H.S. Phoolka, When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and Its Aftermath, Lotus, Delhi, 2007.
Mitta, Manoj, Modi and Godhra: The Fiction of Fact-Finding, HarperCollins, Delhi, 2014.
Mohan, C. Raja, Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy, Penguin, Delhi, 2005.
Moraes, Dom, Indira Gandhi, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1980.
Moraes, Dom, and Sarayu Srivastava, Out of God’s Oven: Travels in a Fractured Land, Penguin, Delhi, 2007.
Mukherji, Nirmalangshu, The Maoists in India: Tribals Under Siege, Pluto, London, 2012.
Mukhopadhyay, Nilanjan, Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times, Westland, Delhi, 2014.
Nayak, Pradeep, The Politics of the Ayodhya Dispute: Rise of Communalism and Future Voting Behaviour, Commonwealth Publishers, Delhi, 1993.
Nayar, Kuldip, India: The Critical Years, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1971.
Nayar, Kuldip, The Judgement: Inside Story of the Emergency in India, Vikas, Delhi, 1977.
Nehru, Jawaharlal, The Discovery of India, John Day, New York, 1946.
Omvedt, Gail, Understanding Caste: From Buddha to Ambedkar and Beyond, Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad, 2016.
Panagariya, Arvind, India: The Emerging Giant, Oxford University Press, New York, 2008.
Paz, Octavio, In Light of India: Essays, Translated by Eliot Weinberger, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1997.
Price, Lance, Modi Effect: Inside Narendra Modi’s Campaign to Transform India, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2015.
Rao, K.N., Chandra Shekhar: The Survivor, Manak Publications, Delhi, 1991.
Sanyal, Meera H., The Big Reverse: How Demonetisation Knocked India Out, Harper Business, Delhi, 2018.
Selbourne, David, Through the Indian Looking-Glass: Selected Articles on India, 1976-1980, Zed, London, 1982.
Shah, M.C., Consensus and Conciliation: PV Narasimha Rao, Shipra, Delhi, 1992.
Sherwani, Harun, History of Medieval Deccan (1295–1724), Print and Publications Bureau, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, 1973.
Singh, K. Natwar, One Life Is Not Enough: An Autobiography, Rupa, Delhi, 2014.
Sitapati, Vinay, The Man Who Remade India: A Biography of P.V. Narasimha Rao, Oxford University Press, New York, 2018.
Srivastava, C.P., Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Life of Truth in Politics, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2007.
Subramanian, Arvind, Of Counsel: The Challenges of the Modi-Jaitley Economy, Penguin Random House, Gurgaon, 2018.
Talbot, Cynthia, Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001.
Thapar, Romila, Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities Through History, Aleph, Delhi, 2014.
Titus, Murray, Indian Islam: A Religious History of Islam in India, Oxford University Press, London, 1930.
Tully, Mark, and Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi’s Last Battle, Rupa, Calcutta, 1994.
Narasimha Rao, P.V., The Insider, Penguin, Delhi, 2000.
Varma, Pavan, The Great Indian Middle Class, Penguin, Delhi, 1999.
Wolpert, Stanley, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993.
Acknowledgements
Michael Dwyer of Hurst invited me to lunch one afternoon and asked if I might consider writing an overview of India under Narendra Modi. The presence of Modi, the worst human being ever elected prime minister, in the office hallowed by Nehru and Shastri was a source of debilitating distress for me. But as I began writing I realised that to quarantine Modi from the reasons for his rise was to reinforce the self-comforting lie that he was an aberration. So I decided to begin before Modi. As the book evolved, I received only encouragement from my publishers. At Hur
st, Michael has done more than identify and champion exceptional writing. He has created a repository of knowledge that is indispensable to arriving at a deeper understanding of the world. His service to India will someday receive the wide recognition it merits. For now, I record my gratitude to him for his years of friendship, counsel and faith. If it is a special privilege to publish with Hurst in the fiftieth year of its journey, it truly is an honour to publish, in India, with Westland’s Kathika V.K., the doyenne of South Asian publishers. I am tremendously grateful for her resolute support. Working with Ajitha G.S.—keen-eyed, cool-headed, superlative and subtlest of editors—has been a thoroughly edifying experience. I cannot adequately thank her for her labour.
Nick March of the National gave me generous space to prospect some of the ideas that I have plumbed in the preceding pages. I acknowledge my debt to him for his many years of friendship and encouragement. Sections of the Prologue, which I have slightly fictionalised to conceal identities, first appeared in the Daily Beast under a pseudonym. I thank Constantin Roman for allowing me to use his lively translation of Paunescu’s puckish tribute to the cult of Ceausescu—and Andrew Anthony, Ramachandra Guha, and Amitav Ghosh for their early encouragement.
The writing of this book was punctuated by too many departures. In early 2019, my beloved grandmother exited the scene. The distance between the world of antique horrors she once inhabited and the world she willed into existence for me is beyond my ability to measure. Widowed in extreme youth in the hell that was Hyderabad before the Indian republic—before rights—existed, she managed and expanded her late husband’s estate, raised a family, survived the ravages of Partition and never brooked bigotry. She took me on Sufi pilgrimages as a boy and spent a severe English winter easing me and my brothers into London. She was the most outstanding person I knew. I thank my dad and brothers—from Hyderabad to California—for their affection and support over the years. To my mother, from whom I’ve been away since I was a child, this book is dedicated.
One of the great boons of my life has been the mentorship of David Frum. He was one of the first people to pay me to write after I left law school without a clear idea of what I wanted to do. In a world swarming with sciolists, David is that rarest of creatures: an authentically erudite man. He has read everything. And his generosity as a mentor, loyalty as a friend, and unabashed uxoriousness as husband to his wonderful wife, Danielle, have always struck me as touchstones every man must strive to emulate. Our politics are different; but this book, in some ways a culmination of the many conversations I have had with him over the years, is also a tribute to him.
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