25. Mail Today, 7 March 2010; ibid., 3 November 2009; IBNLive.com, 30 December 2009.
26. Rediff.com, 15 March 2001.
27. Aniruddha Bahal, “T’hell’ka: Sting of the Devil,” Outlook, 26 March 2001.
28. These words are all taken from the transcripts of the secretly recorded Tehelka tapes; I have elided conversations which took place at different times, in order to show the consistency of the conspirators’ approach. See www.tehelka.com/channels/investigation/investigation1.htm.
29. IBN Live, 29 December 2009.
30. See Savita Sharma, Poverty Estimates in India: Some Key Issues, Asian Development Bank, May 2004; Planning Commission, Report of the Expert Group on Estimation of Proportion and Number of Poor, New Delhi, July 1993. In 1999–2000, a different method was used to record household consumption; it suggested levels of poverty had dropped substantially, but this data is now seen as over-optimistic. See Angus Deaton and Valerie Kozel, “Data and Dogma: The Great Indian Poverty Debate,” World Bank Research Observer, 2005. A report for the government Planning Commission in 2009 by the economist Suresh D. Tendulkar proposed a new method of calculation, stating that India’s poverty lines underestimated the extent of the problem. Background research on poverty data by Aaditya Dar.
31. This data has been drawn from Government of India, Economic Survey of India 1998–1999, Table 10.6; Government of India Press Information Bureau, Poverty Estimates for 2004–05, New Delhi, 2007.
32. Government of India Press Information Bureau, Poverty Estimates for 2004–05.
33. World Bank, Global Economic Prospects, Washington DC, 2009, p. 47, Table 1.5.
34. See Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, The Developing World Is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4703, August 2008, p. 11, footnote.
35. Ibid., p. 34, Table 7.
36. Ibid.; World Bank, Global Economic Prospects, p. 47, Table 1.5. Global Economic Prospects projects that between 2005 and 2015 the percentage of Indians living below $1.25/day and $2.00/day will fall by 16.2 and 17.7 percent respectively. The data for 2025 is speculative and assumes that poverty reduction will take place at the same rate as projected here for the period 2005–15. A more pessimistic study suggests that poverty rates in India may fall more slowly: see Global Monitoring Report 2010, The MDGs after the Crisis, 2010, pp. 115–16, Tables 4A.1 and 4A.2.
37. See World Bank, PovcalNet Online Poverty Analysis Tool, www.tinyurl.com/35neduw.
38. Economist, 4 March 2010.
39. Author’s interview with Rajeev Samant, 1 February 2009.
40. Author’s interview with Dattu Mahadu Vanse, 31 January 2009.
8. A QUARRY NEAR MYSORE
1. IBN Live, 10 December 2007.
2. Mail Today, 29 May 2010.
3. USmagazine.com, 9 December 2009; Mail Today, 11 December 2009.
4. New York Post, 4 September 2009.
5. The Week, 9 July 2000.
6. Author’s interview with Venkatesh, 1 October 2008.
7. Author’s interview with Nanjunde Gowda, 1 October 2008.
8. Sugata Srinivasaraju, “Obama Comes Home,” OutlookIndia.com, 26 November 2009.
9. Author’s interview with Dhruv (pseudonym), 4 October 2008.
10. P. R. Dhar, Simplex senior management adviser, 6 February 2010.
11. Jaikishandas Sadani and Bithaldas Mundhra (eds.), Indian Culture: Encyclopaedic Survey in Eight Volumes, Bharatiya Vidya Mandir and Simplex Infrastructures Ltd., n.d.
12. Dinesh C. Sharma, The Long Revolution: The Birth and Growth of India’s IT Industry, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 6–11.
13. See Frontline, 21 April–4 May 2007; Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State, London, 1998.
14. See my article “Another Country, Another Era,” India Today, 26 December 2005.
15. Quoted in Sharma, Long Revolution, p. 107.
16. Ibid., pp. 212–16.
17. Nandan Nilekani, Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century, New Delhi, 2008, p. 106.
18. See Sugata Srinivasaraju, Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue: The Anxieties of a Local Culture, Bangalore, 2008, pp. 118–25.
19. Pulapre Balakrishnan, “Benign Neglect or Strategic Intent? Contested Lineage of Indian Software Industry,” Economic and Political Weekly, 9 September 2006, p. 3870.
20. Quoted in Sharma, Long Revolution, p. 398.
21. Private information.
22. Author’s interview with Mack (pseudonym), 25 October 2009.
23. Author’s interview with Ramappa (pseudonym), 2 and 3 October 2008.
PART III SAMAJ • SOCIETY
9. THE OUTCASTES’ REVENGE
1. Valerian Rodrigues (ed.), The Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar, New Delhi, 2002, pp. 48–49. Some authorities date this piece of writing to 1935 or 1936.
2. See Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, Census of India 2001, New Delhi; World Bank Data Finder (available at www.datafinder.worldbank.org).
3. Pioneer, 16 November 1996.
4. See Rodrigues (ed.), Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar, pp. 396–405.
5. Ibid., pp. 150–71.
6. Quoted in Kanshi Ram, The Chamcha Age: An Era of the Stooges, New Delhi, 1982, p. 99.
7. Ibid., pp. 91 and 112.
8. Omprakash Valmiki, Joothan: A Dalit’s Life, trans. Arun Prabha Mukherjee, Kolkata, 2007, p. 71.
9. Ibid., p. 1.
10. D. Ravikumar, “The Unwritten Writing: Dalits and the Media,” in Nalini Rajan (ed.), 21st Century Journalism in India, New Delhi, 2007, p. 65. See S. Anand, “Jai Angrezi Devi Maiyya Ki,” Open, 8 May 2010.
11. Jean-Luc Racine, “Caste and Beyond in Tamil Politics,” in Christophe Jaffrelot and Sanjay Kumar (eds.), Rise of the Plebeians? The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies, New Delhi, 2009, p. 441.
12. Author’s interview with Anu Hasan, 25 January 2009.
13. Har Gobind Khorana, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on molecular biology, was born in Raipur in what is now Pakistan and has spent most of his adult life away from the subcontinent. Born in 1922, he recently retired from MIT.
14. Mail Today, 8 October 2009; IBNLive.com, 13 October 2009; Mail Today, 6 January 2010. An assortment of people in India have claimed Venkatraman Ramakrishnan as their pupil, including one Professor Govindarajan, who said he was happy and proud to have taught this “more-than-average student” at “pre-university level” in Cuddalore. Venki Ramakrishnan thought this unlikely, since he had left Cuddalore at the age of three.
15. Hindustan Times, 6 April 2009.
16. www.sanghparivar.org/blog/swastika/science-of-caste-varna-system-marriage-laws.
17. Author’s interview with Dr. Arijit Mukhopadhyay and Dr. Mitali Mukerji, 6 May 2009, with clarifications by email. Indian Genome Variation Consortium, “Genetic Landscape of the People of India: A Canvas for Disease Gene Exploration,” Journal of Genetics, Vol. 87, No. 1, April 2008, Bangalore. A good summary of this research can be found in Frontline (Chennai), 6 and 20 June 2008.
18. Ajoy Bose, Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati, New Delhi, 2008, p. 35. Some of these anecdotes are drawn from Bose, who took them from Mayawati’s autobiography, Mere Sangarshmai Jeevan Evam Bahujan Movement Ka Safarnama, published in 2006 “for missionary objectives,” according to her official profile. A shorter (two-volume) English version was published in 2008: A Travelogue of My Struggle-Ridden Life and of Bahujan Samaj. See also Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India, London, 2003, pp. 387–425.
19. Ambedkar’s sharp-tongued widow, Savita, denounced Kanshi Ram in 1997 for having “no knowledge” of her late husband’s political ideology. See Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution, p. 423.
20. See Anand, “Jai Angrezi Devi Maiyya Ki.”
21. Quoted in Bose, Behenji, p. 68.
22. Ram, The Chamcha Age, author’s note.
23. Quoted in Bose, Behenji, p. 72.
24. Bose, Behenji, p. 98.
25. Aman Sethi, “Rule of the Outlaw,” Frontline, 17 December 2005; IndianExpress.com, 14 April 2009; Mail Today, 17 April 2010; Peter Wonacott, “Lawless Legislators Thwart Social Progress in India,” Wall Street Journal, 4 May 2007.
26. Newsweek, 27 April 2009.
27. G. Anderson and M. Subedar, The Expansion of British India (1818–1858), London, 1918, pp. 189–93.
28. Times of India, 28 April 2009.
29. Author’s interview with Akbar Ahmad, 27 April 2009.
30. Author’s interview with Mukhtar Ansari, 28 April 2009.
31. Independent, 17 July 2009.
32. Rodrigues (ed.), Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar, p. 283.
33. Sir William Jones, Institutes of Hindu Law: or, The Ordinances of Menu, London, 1796, pp. iii–iv.
34. Fali S. Nariman, India’s Legal System: Can It Be Saved?, New Delhi, 2006, p. 4.
35. Jones, Institutes of Hindu Law, p. 124.
36. The Laws of Manu, trans. Wendy Doniger with Brian K. Smith, London, 1991, pp. 59, 91, 228 and 240.
37. Mail Today, 15 March 2010.
38. Bose, Behenji, p. 177.
10. 4EVER
1. Author’s interview with Satish (pseudonym), 11 November 2009.
2. GQ, October 2008.
3. Hello!, January 2009.
4. Hello!, December 2009.
5. Amy Turner, “They Know the Way to the Top,” Sunday Times, 14 March 2010.
6. Anjali Puri, “Bangkok Meri Jeb Mein,” Outlook, 28 July 2008.
7. Housing Finance Mechanisms in India, UN-HABITAT, Nairobi, 2008, p. 16; see also Arindam Bandyopadhyay et al., A Study of Residential Housing Demand in India, MPRA Paper No. 9339, Munich, 2008.
8. Hindu, 17 May 2008; Merinews, 17 May 2008.
9. Author’s interview with Nupur Talwar, 23 May 2010.
10. Calcutta Telegraph, 18 May 2008.
11. DNAIndia.com, 18 May 2008.
12. PTI, 21 May 2008.
13. Author’s interview with Nupur Talwar, 23 May 2010.
14. IBNLive.com, 12 July 2008; TV footage.
15. DNAIndia.com, 30 May 2008.
16. Mid-Day, 26 June 2008.
17. Full disclosure: Pinaki Misra is my wife’s uncle.
18. Author’s interview with Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, 23 May 2010.
11. SOLACE OF RELIGION
1. Colonel Rafi-ud-Din, Bhutto Ke Akhri 323 Din [Bhutto’s Last 323 Days], Pakistan, 2005, as translated on www.chowk.com/articles/9370.
2. William L. Richter, “The Political Dynamics of Islamic Resurgence in Pakistan,” Asian Survey, Vol. 19, No. 6, June 1979, pp. 555–56.
3. See ibid., pp. 547–57.
4. Author’s interview with Hashim Raza, 26 March 1996.
5. William Logan, Malabar, Madras, 1887, p. 198.
6. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, New York, 1998, p. 225.
7. See Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror, New York, 2005, pp. 109–15.
8. Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, 15 January 1998 (my translation).
9. Associated Press, 4 November 1999.
10. See Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, London, 2008.
11. This line can be sourced to Stephen Philip Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, Washington DC, 2004, p. 270, but I have heard it from a variety of other people.
12. Author’s interview with Nawaz Sharif, 6 September 2007.
13. See www.pewglobal.org/database.
14. The table on p. 328 is based on U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants, Obligations and Loan Authorizations (the Greenbook); Katie Paul, “About Those Billions,” Newsweek.com, 21 October 2009. All data is in historical dollars. U.S. aid to Pakistan in 2001–9 included Coalition Support Fund assistance to fight the “war on terror.” U.S. aid received by India in 2001–09 does not include data for 2009, which was unavailable.
15. See Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, p. 114.
16. Speech to the International Writers’ Conference in Islamabad, 30 November 1995.
17. Author’s interview with Ejaz Azim, 23 March 1996. More than a decade later, an increasing number of young Pakistanis disbelieved their government’s propaganda on Kashmir and were more concerned with finding an enduring settlement to the dispute.
18. See Katherine Frank, Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, London, 2001, p. 486.
19. Slate.com, 25 June 2007.
20. Author’s interview with Shakeel Ahmad Bhat, 6–7 November 2007. A version of this story appeared in the Mail on Sunday, 11 November 2007.
21. Author’s interview with Hemant (pseudonym), 30 November 2009.
22. Illustrated London News, 1 January 1859.
23. Quoted in John Keay, India: A History, London, 2000, p. 429.
24. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, East India (Proclamations), London, 1908.
25. See Nayantara Sahgal (ed.), Before Freedom: Nehru’s Letters to His Sister, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 373–74.
26. Quoted in Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, New Delhi, 2004 (first publ. 1946), p. 261.
27. Quoted in Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, London, 2007, p. 231. See pp. 226–41 for an account of this debate.
28. Quoted in Judith M. Brown, Nehru: A Political Life, New Haven, 2003, p. 231.
29. Author’s interview with Tazeen Faridi, 27 March 1996.
30. India Today conclave, TV footage, 7 March 2009.
31. Hindustan Times, 29 November 2009.
32. IBNLive.com, 26 February 2008. The most powerful threat to this inclusionist approach comes presently from the southern Popular Front of India.
33. The Times, 7 September 2007.
34. Quoted in Akbar S. Ahmed, Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin, London, 1997, p. 199.
35. I. Mulla, Commentary on Mohammedan Law, Allahabad, 2009 (updated edn), p. 344.
36. Author’s interview with Maulana Mahmood Madani, 21 November 2009.
37. See Sadanand Dhume, “The Trouble with Dr. Zakir Naik,” WSJ.com, 20 June 2010.
38. See Yoginder Sikand, Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India, New Delhi, 2005.
39. Business Week, 13 October 2003.
40. See Fali S. Nariman, India’s Legal System: Can It Be Saved?, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 115–21.
41. Hindustan Times, 9 January 2004.
42. Author’s interview with Qasim Rasool Ilyas, 16 May 2010
43. Author’s interview with Faisal Dawood, 2 October 2008.
44. See Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami, Ranikhet, 2010, pp. 121–22. See also Irfan Ahmad, “Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s Political Thought and Islamism,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 15, May 2009, pp. 145–62.
45. See Saba Naqvi, “Madly with the Mullah,” Outlook, 16 November 2009.
46. Rediff.com, 6 July 2007.
47. Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India: A Report, New Delhi, 2006 (report of a committee chaired by Justice Rajindar Sachar). In 10 cases out of 8,827, they could not guess an employee’s religion from the name.
48. Mail Today, 7 May 2010.
49. People, special edition, December 2008.
50. Dan Reed, “Conversations with a Terrorist,” Sunday Times Magazine, 28 June 2009.
51. IANS, 3 December 2008.
52. See Irfan Husain, “Zia’s Revenge,” Dawn, 28 March 2009.
53. Some of this material is taken from my article “They Hate Us—and India Is Us,” New York Times, 8 December 2008.
54. H. M. Naqvi, Home Boy, New York, 2009, p. 146.
55. Dail
y Beast, 31 January 2010.
12. ONLY IN INDIA
1. Author’s interview with Gangaram Talekar, 3 February 2009. See also Dennis P. Hungerwood, “Early Carib Inscriptions on Hegde Sacrifice,” Novzhgyet Teklat Insteur, Bishkek Dot, Vol. 19, Spring 1977, pp. 117–39.
2. Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, London, 2005, pp. 326 and 55.
3. Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History, London, 2009, pp. 79–80.
4. Mail Today, 12 October 2008.
5. Bipan Chandra, Modern India, New Delhi, 1971, preface.
6. Satish Chandra Mittal, Modern India: A Textbook for Class XII, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 123, 131 and 248.
7. André Wink, Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World (3 vols.), Leiden, 2004, Vol. 3, p. 163.
8. Ibid., p. 211.
9. Romila Thapar, Medieval India: History Textbook for Class VII, New Delhi, 1988, p. 26.
10. Romila Thapar, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, London, 2005 (first publ. 2004), p. 208.
11. NCERT, India and the Contemporary World—I: Textbook in History for Class IX, New Delhi, 2006, p. 105.
12. M. C. Chagla, Roses in December: An Autobiography, Bombay, 1974.
13. Author’s interview with Prof. Krishna Kumar, 4 September 2008.
14. Times of India, 1 May 2009.
15. IBNLive.com, 12 June 2009; Times of India, 12 June 2009; Outlook, 10 August 2009.
16. India Today, 25 October 2009.
17. IBNLive.com, 23 April 2010.
18. Mail Today, 17 November 2009.
19. Pushpa Iyengar, “The Dog Matrix,” Outlook, 3 May 2010.
20. See Janaki Nair, The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 155–57.
21. Author’s interview with T. S. Saravankumar (pseudonym), 26 January 2009.
22. Private information. See Steven Martindale, By Hook or by Crook, London, 1989; Larry J. Kolb, Overworld: Confessions of a Reluctant Spy, London, 2004.
23. Author’s interview with Chandraswami, 25 May 2010.
24. Author’s interview with Shankar (pseudonym), 19 November 2009.
25. Rakka was a deliberate misspelling of Rakha. (Ironically one of twentieth-century Bollywood’s best known stars was a Muslim, Yusuf Khan, who changed his name to Dilip Kumar.)
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