What is Jugaad? Meaning, Examples, Frugal Innovation, and

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
BY ARUNDHATI ROY (1997)
Arundhati Roy’s debut novel had a dream run—a staggering international deal, the 1997 Booker Prize, and rave reviews worldwide. But even without these accolades, it remains one of the most original novels in English about India. Set in Ayemenem, a village in Kerala, the story moves between the 1960s and 1990s, tracing the lives of fraternal twins Rahel and Estha through multiple social and political upheavals. In her unique Indian English idiom, Roy transports the reader to the heart of a family saga, at once beautiful and terrifying, seething with dark secrets, caste violence and forbidden love.
A FINE BALANCE
BY ROHINTON MISTRY (1995)
Set in an unnamed Indian city during the Emergency imposed by prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, this is a novel of Dickensian amplitude. The lives of four characters, from different social strata, crisscross the narrative. Ishvar and Omprakash Darji, uncle and nephew, flee their village and caste violence to work as tailors in Mumbai. Employed by Dina Dalal, a widow fallen on hard times, they meet Maneck, a Kashmiri youth, boarding with her. Mistry’s sprawling plot weaves together their destinies while bringing alive, with brutal realism, the horrors of the labour camps, sterilization drive and other barbarities.
THE COUNTRY WITHOUT A POST OFFICE
BY AGHA SHAHID ALI (1997)
This iconic collection of poems by the Kashmiri-American writer has become synonymous with the rallying cry for azadi (freedom) for Kashmir. Influenced by diverse forms and styles, from European avant-garde to the ghazal, Ali’s poems mourn the loss of home, the devastations caused by decades of militancy, and the tragedy of exile. His anguish continues to resonate not only with Kashmiri Muslims but also with those living in the diaspora, across generations.
CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY
BY ANITA DESAI (1980)
One of India’s most accomplished but underrated writers, Anita Desai memorializes the legacy of Partition in this delicate portrait of a family living in Old Delhi. Through vivid flashbacks, she takes us in and out of her characters’ lives as they struggle to make reparations, come to terms with the past, and keep the fraying fabric of filial ties together. Women play a pivotal role in the plot as a traditional way of life gives way to new values inspired by a rapidly modernizing India.
THE IDEA OF INDIA
BY SUNIL KHILNANI (1997)
Published to mark the 50th anniversary of independence, this scholarly but accessible volume reminds us of the first principles on which the Indian republic was founded. Revisiting the Nehruvian ideal of a modern state, Khilnani examines how the dreams of our founding fathers have fared in the social, economic, political and intellectual spheres half a century on. His analysis remains urgent and relevant to this day, when the Indian state seems to be reneging on its values of plurality and secularism.
THE COLLECTED ESSAYS OF A.K. RAMANUJAN
EDITED BY VINAY DHARWADKER (2004)
The renowned poet, translator and scholar A.K. Ramanujan provides a vital link between our present and the past through his writings on Indian culture, history, folklore and philology. His essays, in particular, help us navigate the knottiest questions of identity and belonging. Pieces like Is There An Indian Way Of Thinking and Three Hundred Ramayanas have become classics in their own right, opening our eyes to the rich multiplicity of cultures and literatures that form the foundation of Indian civilization.
A CORNER OF A FOREIGN FIELD
BY RAMACHANDRA GUHA (2002)
Guha’s book answers the question posed in the preface: “How did this most British of games become so thoroughly domesticated in the subcontinent?" You could describe it as a social history of cricket in India, rich in anecdote and insight, making connections between the game and the wider politics of the time (Guha also wrote The States Of Indian Cricket, which focuses on the game). Its detailed portrait of Palwankar Baloo, India’s first Dalit cricketer, is especially stirring.
THE FAR FIELD
BY MADHURI VIJAY (2019)
In Madhuri Vijay’s award-winning novel, the narrator Shalini travels from Bengaluru to Kashmir in the aftermath of her mother’s death, to connect a thread that had snapped during her lifetime. But this personal journey also becomes a lens for her to reckon with the long-standing history of militancy and disaffection in the valley, brewing over the decades. The Far Field takes a fresh look at a humanitarian crisis without indulging in partisan blame games—an invaluable perspective on Kashmir for non-Kashmiri readers from a non-Kashmiri narrator and writer.
RAGA’N JOSH
BY SHEILA DHAR (2005)
Indian classical music is a thickly documented field when it comes to academic studies, but not enough exists by way of popular history. The late Sheila Dhar filled that gap with her beautiful memoir-based essays, shining with humour and her keen eye for the absurd. From the mercurial Kesarbai Kerkar to Bhimsen Joshi’s genius, she luminously profiles the greats of Indian classical music in her inimitable voice. Her personal acquaintance with these legends makes them all the more human and relatable.
ADI PARVA & SAUPTIK
BY AMRUTA PATIL (2012 & 2016)
Although existing as separate volumes, these graphic novels are meant to be read as part of a “duology". Crafted by one of India’s foremost graphic novelists, Amruta Patil, these books, with their exquisite artwork, draw inspiration from the Mahabharat. But instead of a conventional retelling of the story, Patil enters the world of the epic through the consciousness of some of its minor, or neglected, characters. This shift of narratorial perspective results in insights that are mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and absolutely eye-opening.
SAME-SEX LOVE IN INDIA
BY RUTH VANITA AND SALEEM KIDWAI (2000)
A survey of close to 2,000 years of literary history, this pioneering anthology by two acclaimed scholars seeks to debunk a long-standing false perception. It shows that LGBTQ+ desires go back centuries in the subcontinent—and contrary to the orthodox belief, these feelings are decidedly not imported from the West. Even after the 2018 Supreme Court’s reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, the book stands as a reminder of truths that still tend to get erased.
JEJURI
BY ARUN KOLATKAR (1976)
This sequence of poems by one of modern India’s greatest poets won the Commonwealth Prize in 1977. Equally adept in Marathi and English, Kolatkar wrote these 31 poems in English. Based on a day trip made by the poet to Jejuri, a temple town in Maharashtra, the poems cover vast and eclectic terrain—faith and reason, tradition and modernity, myth and memory intersect in these lines. These are themes that continue to resonate in contemporary India.
SELECTED POEMS
BY DOM MORAES (2012)
Dom Moraes was a versatile writer, as proficient in prose as in poetry, a sharp journalist, entertaining raconteur, and indisputably cosmopolitan. He shied away from labels and, tellingly, titled one of the several volumes of his autobiography, Never At Home. The rhythms of modern Indian life cannot be felt fully without a taste of his poetry. Among the finest poets of his generation, Moraes was often known as a writer of melancholic verse, but he could be just as funny and scathing when the fancy took him.
BUTTER CHICKEN IN LUDHIANA
BY PANKAJ MISHRA (1995)
Before the advent of the internet and social media, what form did the aspirations of India’s middle class take? Pankaj Mishra’s intimate and endearing travelogue through small-town India is a classic of its kind, painting unforgettable portraits of hope and resilience, soon after India’s economy was opened up. From beauty pageant aspirants to businessmen who dream of travelling abroad, the book is dotted with arresting characters. Despite the gulf of the intervening years, the book retains its freshness and sparkle.
THE SHADOW LINES
BY AMITAV GHOSH (1988)
The 1980s saw an explosion of generational Indian talents in the realm of the English novel, with epochal books published almost every year. The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh’s second novel, can certainly make a case to be considered among the best of the lot. A story about the intertwined lives of two families, one Indian and one British, the novel is a meditation on memory, histories, violence and desire. Through vivid storytelling and impeccable research, traits that Ghosh would go on to refine in subsequent books, The Shadow Lines comes very close to being the perfect parable about India’s confused and violent adolescence.
THE WHITE TIGER
BY ARAVIND ADIGA (2008)
Balram Halwai, a poor, uneducated driver in the employ of a landlord family in Bihar, is an underdog in every sense. But Adiga doesn’t succumb to the easy pickings of making his protagonist a sympathetic character. Balram is as enterprising as he is devious. He might not have read books but he can read people and give them what they want, or deserve. Sometimes, it’s unquestioning loyalty. Sometimes, a bottle smashed on their head. Cynical and darkly funny, The White Tiger stands out for its unforgiving indictment of the various class, caste and social inequities in contemporary India.
AN UNCERTAIN GLORY: INDIA AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS
BY JEAN DRÈZE & AMARTYA SEN (2013)
Although both economists have written excellent analytical books on India’s economy, their joint effort is, inarguably, a classic. At the time it came out, India had seen an outstandingly successful decade of development, one that had lifted millions out of poverty. As primary architects of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s inclusive economic and social policies, Drèze and Sen could have recounted just the successes. But as perceptive economists, they investigate the inequality that’s inherent in economic growth centred on private profit and crony capitalism. Their critique feels more pertinent with each passing year.
ENGLISH, AUGUST
BY UPAMANYU CHATTERJEE (1988)
If there’s one mode that Indian novelists don’t try very often, it’s comedy. But even if they did, matching the high bar set by Chatterjee’s dark satire of pre-liberalization India would be a difficult task. English, August tells the story of the listless, navel-gazing and profoundly urban Agastya Sen, an English major who joins the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) because it’s the easiest thing he can do. His life in the small town of Madna, completely unmoored in the strangeness of “real India", and his hilarious attempts to derive meaning from his vacuous existence, make for a razor-sharp study of India’s urban-rural divide, as well as a fascinating Bildungsroman.
CURFEWED NIGHT
BY BASHARAT PEER (2008)
Curfewed Night is a mix of autobiography and reportage, set in Kashmir and written by a Kashmiri. Basharat Peer, born in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district, sets his book between the 1990s and 2005, painting the portrait of a generation that saw the valley turn into a war zone, starting with himself. In deft, lyrical prose, he chronicles the toll it took on the Kashmiris—both Hindus and Muslims—caught between geopolitical crossfire. More than a decade after its publication, it makes for just as pertinent a read for anyone seeking a nuanced view of the conflict.
THE GUIDE
BY R.K. NARAYAN (1958)
To pick one novel out of so many great ones by R.K. Narayan is near-impossible but The Guide, with a little help from cinema (though the author didn’t approve of the Dev Anand-Waheeda Rahman film), is arguably his most famous work. It tells the story of Raju, a tourist guide who falls for a married woman who yearns to be a dancer. The ensuing story, which ends up with him impersonating a holy man, is bracingly modern in its treatment of adultery, gender roles and religious charlatanism—though always with that wry Narayan touch.
DREAMERS: HOW YOUNG INDIANS ARE CHANGING THEIR WORLD
BY SNIGDHA POONAM (2018)
Through seven layered, colourful profiles of six young men and one young woman realizing their ambitions in the country’s tier-2 cities, journalist Snigdha Poonam tells the story of a post-liberalization, post-internet India where, ostensibly, the old hierarchies are dying, creating a level playing field for young Indians to achieve whatever they dream of. The stories take on nuance and pathos in their telling—this is not a sentimental narrative about Indian jugaad and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Rather, it is dense reportage and storytelling that provides a rich glimpse into the constituents of a socially fractured country.
THE FLAMING FEET AND OTHER ESSAYS: THE DALIT MOVEMENT IN INDIA
BY D.R. NAGARAJ (2010)
The late D.R. Nagaraj deserves to be read extensively. Writing in English as well as his native Kannada till his untimely death in 1998, he is widely considered one of the foremost non-Brahmin intellectuals since independence—a worthy successor to B.R. Ambedkar. This collection of his essays on Dalit thought, history and culture is an invaluable primer to understanding the Dalit movement and its origins. It also throws light on his masterly and original reading of the relationship between Mohandas Gandhi and Ambedkar, especially in the context of the Hindutva movement that seeks to create a binary of antagonism between the two.
A SUITABLE BOY
BY VIKRAM SETH (1993)
Like Leo Tolstoy’s War And Peace or George Eliot’s Middlemarch, A Suitable Boy is a sprawling doorstopper of a novel. And like the other two, it brings to life a complex society at a certain point in time and in its own history. Combining politics, culture, religion, social upheavals and the conflict between tradition and modernity with spirited storytelling, the novel remains a fascinating read, not least because of the latest screen adaptation by Mira Nair. That it pivots around courtship and marriage makes A Suitable Boy as much a novel of manners as any by Jane Austen. As a chronicle of a newly independent nation, too, it is as accurate as a political documentary—all of it coming together with wit and humour.
SO MANY CINEMAS: THE MOTION PICTURE IN INDIA
BY B.D. GARGA (1996)
Garga was India’s finest film critic writing in English. In this lavishly produced book, illustrated with iconic scenes, behind-the-scenes stills and lobby cards, he tracked the evolution of cinema in the country from the days of the silents to the 1990s, fusing anecdote, criticism and close readings of the films themselves. Garga is especially strong on the early days of Indian cinema, a period neglected by most writers on popular film.
MAXIMUM CITY: BOMBAY LOST & FOUND
BY SUKETU MEHTA (2004)
Suketu Mehta’s book is not only the ultimate portrait of Mumbai, it’s created in its image: a torrent of narrative non-fiction that’s busy, loud, memorable and unrelenting. Whether he’s meeting Bollywood stars or breaking bread with underworld sharpshooters, Mehta has an eye for piquant detail. Taking in the city’s storied history and tumultuous present, it’s a work as vast, unsentimental and uncompromising as its subject.
SACRED GAMES
BY VIKRAM CHANDRA (2006)
Recently turned into a television series, Vikram Chandra’s magnum opus may look intimidating for its girth, but it moves with the nimble pace of a racy thriller. Set in the Mumbai underworld, this cat-and-mouse chase between police officer Sartaj Singh and ganglord Ganesh Gaitonde cuts through the dark and dangerous heart of the bustling metropolis. Part Bollywood drama and part gripping ethnography, the novel is essential reading for anyone wishing to scratch the surface of Incredible India.
INDIA: A MILLION MUTINIES NOW
BY V.S. NAIPAUL (1990)
A travelogue unlike any other, this book is the last in a series that Naipaul wrote about his native country. Along with An Area Of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilization, it paints a relentlessly bleak but bracingly accurate portrait of India post-independence. In Naipaul’s prose, there is no sentimental “romance of the east" or paeans to the nation’s glorious culture and heritage—only a clear-eyed view of the challenges democracy faces in India as it struggles to reconcile its diversities within one framework of governance.
MY STORY
BY KAMALA DAS (1976)
First serialized in Malayalam as Ente Katha in the journal Malayalanadu and published in book form in 1973, My Story was rewritten in English by Das a few years later. It wouldn’t be accurate to say she translated it because she made changes along the way. Part autobiography and part fiction, this controversial book remains an enduring feminist classic for its examination of a patriarchal Kerala society through the life of one woman (who may or may not be wholly Kamala Das). It created a sensation when it was published, and deserves to be widely read even today.
AMBIGUITY MACHINES AND OTHER STORIES
BY VANDANA SINGH (2018)
Indian science fiction might still be in its infancy but Vandana Singh’s writing carries with it all the weight and maturity of the science fiction legacy of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Margaret Atwood, while seeing the genre through a feminist, post-colonial lens. In this collection of sharp, sublime short stories, nominated for the Philip K Dick Award in 2019, Singh subverts standard tropes of sci-fi—the space opera, the dystopia, climate fiction—to create original stories that talk of an India that might be, one that we are perhaps inexorably moving towards.
OUR TREES STILL GROW IN DEHRA
BY RUSKIN BOND (1991)
Nobody can make the mountains sing like Ruskin Bond. And he does so beautifully in Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra—a timeless classic which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992. Fourteen stories, part autobiographical, take the reader back to a simpler time when the mountains had not degraded drastically. Bond introduces us to vibrant and lively characters from the Himalayan towns and villages that have inhabited his universe over the years—Bippin the ghost, Toto the mischievous monkey who nearly cooked himself alive, Bansi the tongawallah, and Ganpat the bent-double beggar.
INDIAN FOOD: A HISTORICAL COMPANION
BY K.T. ACHAYA (1994)
No other book describes the vast landscape of food in the subcontinent as effectively as this acclaimed classic. Achaya, an oil chemist, food scientist and historian, has looked at the diverse food practices in the country through every possible lens, be it anthropological, literary, botanical or archaeological. The book starts with the food legacies of the early man, accompanied by illustrations of the tools and microliths developed at the time. The chapter on the Harappan spread is a must-read, complete with archaeological evidence and reconstructions of warehouses and storage areas. It is also delightful to come across references to food in literature, be it in the Vedas, Tamil classical poetry or royal chronicles. With chapters on regional cuisine, food in medicine and religion, and the influence of the Europeans on our diet, the book successfully creates a trajectory of Indian food through the centuries.
MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN
BY SALMAN RUSHDIE (1981)
It’s hard to forget the breathless feeling on finishing this masterly novel the first time around. The Booker and Booker of Bookers winning book covers a vast expanse of modern Indian history, from events leading up to the country’s independence and Partition to the Emergency. Midnight’s Children is a stark example of magic realism in contemporary literature—stretching from Kashmir and Lahore to Dhaka, it presents the story of Saleem Sinai, one with a dripping and sensitive nose, who shares telepathic powers with several other children born between 12am and 1am on 15 August 1947. Rushdie’s style is influenced by India’s varied oral traditions, and the often dark and gloomy events in the book are peppered with delightful puns and humour.
THE PREGNANT KING
BY DEVDUTT PATTANAIK (2008)
“What sounds sweetest, being called Mother or being called Father?" asks king Yuvanashva in this intriguing book. The ruler of a small kingdom, Vallabhi, located between Panchala and Hastinapuri, is a childless king who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his three queens pregnant. After he gives birth to a son, Yuvanashva is wracked by a dilemma—is he a man or a woman? Pattanaik’s first work of fiction, The Pregnant King draws on an ancient tale, which he places within the Mahabharat to look at ideas of gender fluidity in the epic. Stories of the half-man, half-woman Shikhandi, Arjun, who has to masquerade as a woman during exile, and Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on full-moon nights, weave in and out of Yuvanashva’s tale. Pattanaik also questions the gender roles assigned to individuals by society through Shilavati, the king’s mother, who has been the regent of Vallabhi for 30 years but can never be the ruler. This is a magnificent novel of ideas we are still grappling with.
THE GREAT INDIAN NOVEL
BY SHASHI THAROOR (1989)
Clever, witty and satirical, The Great Indian Novel is a feat of historical transposition, nearly as ambitious as the epic Mahabharat it is inspired by. The ancient characters take on the colour and form of their modern counterparts, along with their frailties and foibles. If some of the resemblances are obvious, Tharoor is adept at leaving the reader guessing, often by using a single character as a stand-in for multiple personalities. Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jayaprakash Narayan—no one is spared barbs.
CULTURAL PASTS: ESSAYS IN EARLY INDIAN HISTORY
BY ROMILA THAPAR (2000)
While historian Romila Thapar’s The Penguin History Of Early India is an acknowledged classic, the full majesty of her scholarship and the multilayered richness of South Asian history come alive in Cultural Pasts. The book is a collection of essays published across Thapar’s career, and grouped under nine themes, such as “Historiography", “Archaeology and History" and “The Present in the Past". The range of Thapar’s interests is vast, taking in Mauryan India, the Aryan Theory, the rise of Hindutva, heroic epics, the tradition of renouncing society, and much more. A must-read for all times.
INDICA: A DEEP NATURAL HISTORY OF THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
BY PRANAY LAL (2016)
Reading Pranay Lal’s fascinating study of South Asia’s natural history is akin to entering a portal into deep time. The earth we stand on is profoundly old and mysterious but it’s littered with signs that tell its story, if one has the eyes to see them. Lal does the looking and tells an entertaining tale, ranging from the beginning of the world to the creation of humans, and how the subcontinent figures in all this. Indica is simply unputdownable.
INDIA AFTER GANDHI: THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST DEMOCRACY
BY RAMACHANDRA GUHA (2007)
India After Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha’s doorstopper of a book, is, quite simply, the best general history of India since independence. Published on the 60th anniversary of 1947, Guha’s account begins at the moment of India’s freedom from British rule. Essentially a study of modern Indian politics, the book takes us through the main points of reference, such as Nehruvian socialism, the Emergency, the Mandir and Mandal churn. But he also looks at other, equally important developments, like environmentalism, south Indian politics, Kashmir, riots and much else in granular detail. It’s a magisterial attempt to understand India.
SERIOUS MEN
BY MANU JOSEPH (2010)
Manu Joseph is a literary rabble-rouser, best known for his astute, often provocative deconstruction of all things Indian that seem to provoke ideologues of all stripes. In Serious Men, he turns his satirical gaze on two protagonists: a Brahmin astronomer looking for extra-terrestrial life and his Dalit assistant, who seeks social and professional validation and spins an outrageous lie to get there. Indian writers, Joseph said once, often take an overtly compassionate view of the poor that he finds “condescending". This one is an irreverent takedown of such proprieties, and of the insidious caste system that lurks behind closed doors.
THE NANDA DEVI AFFAIR
BY BILL AITKEN ( 1994)
That a dreamy young Scot would hitchhike to India in 1959 and fall in love with the Himalaya and become a naturalized Indian isn’t very surprising. What’s outstanding is the heartfelt and sparkling story he tells about this love, one that resonates with everyone who loves the mountains. The Nanda Devi Affair chronicles Aitken’s intrepid journeys through the Uttarakhand Himalaya over decades, following thesiren song of Nanda Devi, a mountain that is also a goddess. Aitken collects folklore about the mountain, travels to the perilous spots of its pilgrimage and serves up a paean to the Himalaya that steers clear of any “exotic India" tropes.
EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD DROUGHT: STORIES FROM INDIA’S POOREST DISTRICTS
BY P. SAINATH (2000)
Journalist P. Sainath’s seminal classic of reportage came as a slap in the face of “India Shining" narratives when it was published in 2000. Twenty years later, it remains a pointed rebuke to any triumphalist notions of “New India". The book tells the poignant story of the institutional exploitation of rural India, a phenomenon that changed only cosmetically once India became a free, democratic country. Through a series of case studies, Sainath looks at the lengths people in rural India go to just to make ends meet, and how a deeply unfeeling state apparatus conspires to keep generations mired in poverty and indignity.
THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS
BY CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI (2008)
Retellings of mythology are in vogue but Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s book never feels like a retelling—it is so compelling and layered that it makes the original feel like a retelling. The Palace Of Illusions is Draupadi’s version of the Mahabharat: from her birth from fire to a lonely childhood and complicated friendship with Krishna, to her marriage with five brothers and her secret attraction to her husbands’ most dangerous enemy. This is a novel about a woman in a man’s world, and her deeply sensual and philosophical journey through it.
ANTS AMONG ELEPHANTS
BY SUJATHA GIDLA (2017)
K.G. Satyamurthy, or Satyam, and Manjula are the central characters of Sujatha Gidla’s book—her uncle and mother, respectively. Born into the Mala caste, she traces the different ways in which her family’s identity was subsumed by it—education, romantic equations, politics and employment. The book also exposes the fault lines within left politics as conflict gripped Andhra Pradesh between the 1970s-1980s. Inspired by the Naxalbari movement to join the Communist Party, Satyam eventually broke away from it, disillusioned by caste discrimination, and helped form the CPI(ML) People’s War group in the late 1960s. Narrated in Gidla’s detached yet deeply personal tone, Ants Among Elephants is an engaging and important read.
RAVAN & EDDIE
BY KIRAN NAGARKAR (1995)
The legacy of Nagarkar, a powerhouse in Indian literature, is tainted by the sexual misconduct allegations that emerged against him during the #MeToo movement in 2018. But Ravan & Eddie, the first in a trilogy, remains one of his most memorable works. Its protagonists are neighbours in a Mumbai chawl, forever linked by a freak accident that resulted in the death of Eddie’s father. Funny and fast-paced, it shows the life and politics of the working classes, and the love and ambitions that bloom within and go beyond confined spaces.
THE SPIRIT OF INDIAN PAINTING
BY B.N. GOSWAMY (2014)
The Padma Bhushan-winning art historian has authored over 20 books on Pahari and Indian miniature paintings. His book, The Spirit Of Indian Painting: Close Encounters With 101 Great Works, 1100-1900, is a lavishly illustrated treatise on artworks spanning a thousand years, ranging from Jain manuscripts and Rajasthani, Mughal, Pahari and Deccani miniatures to Company School paintings. Goswamy leavens his scholarship with storytelling to write in an accessible style that shows us how to “read" each painting. Art historians such as Naman Ahuja agree that while Goswamy’s monograph on the 18th century Indian painter Nainsukh is exemplary, this book is the best choice for this list because it covers the whole history of Indian painting.
INTIMATE RELATIONS
BY SUDHIR KAKAR (1990)
A psychoanalyst as well as a leading figure in the fields of cultural psychology and the psychology of religion, Sudhir Kakar gives us the first full-length study of Indian sexuality in this volume, exploring India’s sexual fantasies and ideals. His sources are textual—from pulp fiction to folktales and movies and proverbs to Mohandas Gandhi’s autobiography. There are interviews with women from the slums of Delhi and case studies from his own practice, all building up to paint a vivid portrait of the many sexual desires and realities in India.
INTERPRETER OF MALADIES
BY JHUMPA LAHIRI (1999)
This collection of nine short stories about Indian Americans caught between tradition and the New World marked the arrival of a literary phenomenon. It won Lahiri the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The hard-to-please book critic Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times praised Lahiri for her writing style, citing her “uncommon elegance and poise". In 2015, Lahiri declared that she would write only in Italian, which potentially limits her English writing career to only four books, and makes her debut even more precious.
EM AND THE BIG HOOM
BY JERRY PINTO (2012)
Part autobiography, part fiction, Jerry Pinto’s novel about growing up in a Goan Catholic family living in a one-bedroom Mumbai apartment while dealing with a mother’s mental illness is the untold story of many Indian families, where mental health is hushed up and never spoken about. Based on his own life, Pinto’s deft representation of his community and its members, who speak Portuguese formally but break into Konkani in moments of stress, is another high point of this novel, one of the most engaging works of Indian English fiction in recent years.
WHEN CRIME PAYS: MONEY AND MUSCLE IN INDIAN POLITICS
BY MILAN VAISHNAV (2017)
What makes a citizen vote for someone with criminal antecedents in every Indian election? To answer this question, political analyst Milan Vaishnav marries ground reportage with data journalism, crunching public disclosures of 60,000 political candidates spread across 35 state elections and two national elections (2009 and 2014). The result: a seminal work in Indian political science; an academic study that is also accessible to a lay reader. A sample: “The problem with Indian state isn’t that it is too big," he writes, “it is that it is big in all the wrong places."
TRAIN TO PAKISTAN
BY KHUSHWANT SINGH (1956)
If there were ever a contest to identify the definitive Partition novel, this 1956 work would be, without doubt, one of the contenders. Through the microcosmic world of one village on the border between a newly independent India and a newly created Pakistan, Singh illustrates all the tensions and conflicts of that turbulent time—the forces that made neighbours turn on each other after having lived peacefully in the same quiet village for years. Imbued with a deep humanity, this novel is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the physical and emotional upheaval of the partition of India.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN INDIAN
BY NIRAD C. CHAUDHURI (1951)
An unabashed Anglophile, Chaudhuri’s politics, especially his denial of the evils of British colonialism in India, are immensely problematic but that doesn’t make his prose any less readable. For a first book, written at the age of 51 while Chaudhuri was working as a news writer for All India Radio, Autobiography is exceedingly well-written and lucid—even poetic when the author dwells on his childhood in a village in East Bengal. But ultimately, this complex and often bitter work distils all the angst of a frustrated Bengali intellectual who feels cheated by life and nationalist politics. You can hate him or deride him, but you can’t ignore the Babu.
(via the Mint Lounge)

At the outset, I would like to state that this is not an essay that is critical of India or its people in any way. I am merely stating what I have observed and what I have concluded based on these observations. For this is the unvarnished truth. And India cannot palate the truth.
Socrates, the father of Western thought, often spoke of a concept called Thumos. Thumos was very much a Greek concept. An abstract concept that held many meanings and translations. However, this concept has been lost to humanity and no literal translation exists in English. The essence of ‘Thumos’ can probably be summed up by the saying – “When making a decision, a man is faced with two choices. An easy path and a tough path. The easy path leads to barbarism. The tough to civilization". And it is this tough road that every society must traverse to reach a peak. Taking the tougher road is an informed decision, for the natural impulse of every man is to take the easy path. He has to consciously take the tougher path, and avoid the easy. However, a man might unknowingly go down the easy path and end up where he did not want to be. Retracing your steps back to the tougher path is often a thankless and sometimes nigh on impossible task. Most men do not make it. India too, is at this cross roads today. And we might not make it.
It is indeed, ironic then, that I started this essay about the decline of ‘Indian civilization’ with a concept borrowed from the West. This is not to show that Indian philosophy has not reached the high levels of thought to have such a concept, but to merely show how far we have strayed from it. Make no such mistake. For the Vedas, the ultimate repository of Indian philosophy, were written long, long before Socrates’ ancestors even took up the plough and decided to grow the weeds they had observed in the wild and gave them nourishment. We had reached unimaginable highs and fallen from those highs, long before Socrates even had his first coherent thought. All Socrates did then, was re-discover what we had already known. We were superior in all respects. And it is in this very attitude, that lies the seed of our destruction. How many times have you heard your elders say – “Indian culture is the best. Anything associated with the West is bad!”. I hear it all the time. It is a constant din in our ears. Anything associated with the West is decadent and immoral and inferior. And Indian culture is superior to every other culture, past, present and future. Well then, superior in exactly what manner?? Few, if any, gave a concrete answer to this question. If they gave an answer at all.
The most common response to my question was anger and a rebuke for asking too many questions. How then are we superior? IF we are superior at all? Let us look around the world today and ask ourselves, “How many of the concepts, ideas, and objects that I use in my daily life on a day-to-day basis emerged from purely indigenous sources?” I asked myself this question many times, over and over again. The conclusion was the same everytime. None. To further clarify this point, let us look at the last invention of consequence which had a purely Oriental origin. Gunpowder. And this too was taken up and advanced by the West. If the Chinese invented Gunpowder, it was the West that developed the cannons that used them. Indeed, there is nothing that we can call truly our own except the past. And as all of us have seen, we revere the past. It is drummed into us in our schools, in our universities, in our families and at the dinner table. Indian culture always was and is, miles ahead of the decadent and corrupt influences of the West. It is not. This assertion is nothing but an inferiority complex. And an aversion to the truth.
It is important to realize that I am not saying that India or Indian culture is inferior or all that we developed as a civilization is a fabrication. It is not a fabrication. We were indeed a highly advanced civilization, and a highly cultured one at that. But we were, and not are. What we are now is a mish mash of cultures that does not know where it is headed.
How did we then fall so low? How did we, we who had reached highs that even now are only dreamt of, fall to the very depths from where these highs are unimaginable? It is tempting to blame the West, colonialism, British rule and all that. But the problem lies much deeper than that.
Every empire is built on one strength. One strength that sets it apart from the neighbours and allows it to grow while others around it stagnate. The Roman empire was built on the discipline of its Legions. Most armies of that time were little more than unruly mobs and this proverbial discipline of the Roman Legion made it a formidable attacking force. The British Empire was built on the strength of the trade links between Britain, a small insignificant island, and its vast territorial holdings in every corner of this planet. The dominant empire today is the USA. This empire is a little different. For its strength stems from its culture. Right from Hollywood, to sitcoms, our thought processes and ideas, to even what we eat and wear, it is the cultural power of the USA in full show. Every empire in history has had its one strength. And India too had a cultural empire similar to what the USA has today. A thousand years ago, students flocked from all over the world to study at Nalanda and Taxila. Just as they flock to the USA today. Great ideas were born in this crucible of free thought. Religions, philosophies and sciences were established by enlightened souls. Just as they are being established in the USA today. However, all empires must fall. The Roman empire fell when the discipline of its legions eroded. The British empire fell when its trade links could no longer be kept captive to serve them alone. The cultural empire of the USA is ripe to fall even as I write this. And the Indian empire has already fallen. A thousand years ago India was the USA of the age. Not any more. Today this cultural empire has eroded until all we have left is a kind of cultural hubris. And hubris, as we all know, is a fine quality. Often found in those who perish from it.
The strength of Indian civilization was always in its openness to new ideas. And a willingness to put in the hard work to further those ideas. Today however, we have neither the openness to new ideas, nor the will to work hard. Take for example the resistance to ‘Westernization’. Does it not speak of a reluctance to embrace new ideas and concepts? This hardening of opinions and closing of minds is prevalent not only in resisting outside influences and ‘preserving Indian culture’, but also in every detail of our lives. A teacher in India does not like it if his student questions him. For in that question, lies the seed of a new idea. And in that seed, lies the implication that the teacher may be wrong. And that is why we Indians do not like someone who asks too many questions, as I found out to my cost when I questioned India’s supposed cultural superiority.
A far more dangerous symptom however, is our instinctive reluctance to work hard for what we want. Our instinctive impulse to take a shortcut. Our instinctive reflex to take the easy road. Here I come back to the opening statement of this essay. “The easy path leads to barbarism. The tough to civilization”. The tough road is often a tedious path. And in India, this road is often avoided in favour of the easy. Jugaad. It is nothing but a shortcut. And we as a nation, nay, as a civilization have become addicted to shortcuts. And hence we have fallen. Everything in India can be resolved by a shortcut. If you stand in a queue, there is always a tout who will be happy to help you jump the line for a fee. Instead of paying your taxes, it is far easier to just hide your income under your bed. Why wait for the light to change from red to green when there is no one crossing your path? Why be orderly when you can be disorderly and get away with it? Why work hard when you can steal from someone? Why be polite when you do not have to be? Why throw the garbage into the dustbin when someone is there to collect it from any spot in the city? I could go on and on. Everything in India has a shortcut. And this culture of taking shortcuts has struck root in the very mindset of our society. Every single thing is now a shortcut. Jugaad. Why take the tougher road to civilization? Why apply our minds when someone else can do it? It is easier to run away to the West than stay back and make this country worth living in. Why perform original research in India where you have to build your own apparatus, when you can just hop across the pond and perform that same research in the West, where that same apparatus can be bought off the shelf? Why? Why indeed? Because, it is the short cut. It is the easy path. And it shall lead us to barbarism. It is not an individual failing on the part of Indians. I will not blame any one person for this. It is a failing of our society. Indeed, it is a historical inevitability.
Historical inevitability? Yes, our decline was inevitable. Every great civilization has declined when its culture of openness is replaced by closed minds and an aversion to questions. Look at Islam a thousand year ago and today. If at all anyone dares to interpret the quoran any way other than the accepted dogma, he is immediately met with a fatwa calling for his beheading. Western civilization has flourished and prospered precisely because it has cast off the yoke that is the Catholic church and allowed free thought. This freedom of thought does remain in India, but only in vestiges. And as we have already seen, it is being gradually eroded. It is historical inevitability. The point is further clarified by a study of entropy. Entropy, in layman’s terms, is a measure of the disorderliness in a system. In any spontaneous process, Entropy always increases. So if we consider human history to be a spontaneous process, interspersed by periods where Man has consciously tried to improve himself, it is not difficult to see how every rise is followed by a fall. As I have already stated, taking the tougher road is an informed decision, while the easy path comes spontaneously. Every civilization at some point, will abandon the long tough road, to take the short cut. And when a society starts taking shortcuts, it begins to decline. Every civilization has declined and so shall we.
And so we have declined. Our fall has only begun. And we shall keep falling, for a long, long time. Is there nothing that can be done? I do not know. The only thing that can be done is the administration of a shock treatment. A shock treatment that so drastically affects us that we will be forced to change for the better. The Black Death in the 14th century jolted Europe and gave rise to the Renaissance, which laid the foundation for the current dominance of Western civilization. Kemal Mustafa Ataturk’s radical measures of Westernization and his suppression of anything connected with the decadence of the Ottoman empire, gave rise to Modern Turkey. A nation that is a beacon of hope for the Muslim world. What kind of shock treatment can reverse the tide of India’s decline? I do not know. But the least we can do, is acknowledge that we have a problem. And when you see the problem and the scale of it, it will give you the shock treatment.
TL;DR - We are in decline because our culture has lost its ability to question and innovate. We also prefer shortcuts. It is a historical inevitability and there is nothing we can do about it.

At the outset, I would like to state that this is not an essay that is critical of India or its people in any way. I am merely stating what I have observed and what I have concluded based on these observations. For this is the unvarnished truth. And India cannot palate the truth.
My personal example on the reluctance to work hard: it is not just that, we lack ethics and morals too.
I know I am going to ruffle a few feathers as there are a lot of people from the US here. I am a grad student in the US(working towards my Ph.D), and most of friends here in the US are working in IT related jobs. What is worrying is that most of he these people got the jobs through consultants, who fake everything thing - from fake resumes to even fake phone interviews. I mean these are 22-23 YO with an experience of 8 years. I agree that the companies don't care much about contracts jobs, but the people who work should have a sense of responsibility. 80% of my undergrad friends are working in this manner. Their defence is that 'we spend so much money on education, it is only fair to earn and this is the easiest way we can earn good money."
I never intrude into others' personal decisions, but this is really bothering me. We buy the newest Japanese and Germany cars in a flash, yet pirate songs and movies. We bitch about the state of politics, yet we behave the same way.. even worse in some cases that public servants.
We lack even the basic of ethics, we litter everywhere, drive like lunatics(we can't even give way to ambulances) and are pretty inconsiderate of others overall. More than my disdain for politics, I am pretty annoyed by the behavior normal people.
I am not saying that I am a perfect person, at least I am being honest to myself and even though I am being paid peanuts and under a lot of pressure from my parents, I am enjoying my student life. I am just sad that many people don't have and share good values.
The Indian brain, is a phrase I have been hearing since I was a kid. Having been a PhD candidate, and seeing how India's best and brightest compared to the world's was an eye-opener for me. Sure my fellow Indians too won best paper awards and fellowships, but the average of originality & creativity was far higher in some of our Western counterparts.
The difference becomes even more stark, when one compares the contributions and achievements of Ashkenazi Jews (American or Israeli) to those of Indians. A persecuted minority of a few millions have contributed many orders more when compared to India's privileged academic contributors- say Tamil Brahmins. Of course it is worse when compared to Indians as a whole. What is striking is that the difference holds true even when comparing in a different field like business/ finance and contrasting with Gujrati/ Marwaris.
I am not exactly a self-hating Indian, and am moderately proud of Indian achievement when compared to some of our neighbors. But that is where it unfortunately ends.
I recently moved southwards in the Bay Area- from Palo Alto/ Mountain View to Santa Clara/ San Jose. I dropped out of my PhD and now run a moderately successful startup with some burn rate, and wanted to save some dough as we are in the process of raising money. And my new residence[1] almost wants me to start hating Indians. The Indian food is far better here, but most Indians seem to be of the variety you describe- consultancy or menial tech jobs. They are clannish, semi-dumb and almost seem to be proud of their mediocrity. FML & I can't wait to move to SF.
[1] for those who are not aware, these areas are far more Indian populated. Though I have seen seen something similar when I visited a friend in New Jersey.
Socrates, the father of Western thought, often spoke of a concept called Thumos. Thumos was very much a Greek concept. An abstract concept that held many meanings and translations. However, this concept has been lost to humanity and no literal translation exists in English. The essence of ‘Thumos’ can probably be summed up by the saying – “When making a decision, a man is faced with two choices. An easy path and a tough path. The easy path leads to barbarism. The tough to civilization". And it is this tough road that every society must traverse to reach a peak. Taking the tougher road is an informed decision, for the natural impulse of every man is to take the easy path. He has to consciously take the tougher path, and avoid the easy. However, a man might unknowingly go down the easy path and end up where he did not want to be. Retracing your steps back to the tougher path is often a thankless and sometimes nigh on impossible task. Most men do not make it. India too, is at this cross roads today. And we might not make it.
It is indeed, ironic then, that I started this essay about the decline of ‘Indian civilization’ with a concept borrowed from the West. This is not to show that Indian philosophy has not reached the high levels of thought to have such a concept, but to merely show how far we have strayed from it. Make no such mistake. For the Vedas, the ultimate repository of Indian philosophy, were written long, long before Socrates’ ancestors even took up the plough and decided to grow the weeds they had observed in the wild and gave them nourishment. We had reached unimaginable highs and fallen from those highs, long before Socrates even had his first coherent thought. All Socrates did then, was re-discover what we had already known. We were superior in all respects. And it is in this very attitude, that lies the seed of our destruction. How many times have you heard your elders say – “Indian culture is the best. Anything associated with the West is bad!”. I hear it all the time. It is a constant din in our ears. Anything associated with the West is decadent and immoral and inferior. And Indian culture is superior to every other culture, past, present and future. Well then, superior in exactly what manner?? Few, if any, gave a concrete answer to this question. If they gave an answer at all.
The most common response to my question was anger and a rebuke for asking too many questions. How then are we superior? IF we are superior at all? Let us look around the world today and ask ourselves, “How many of the concepts, ideas, and objects that I use in my daily life on a day-to-day basis emerged from purely indigenous sources?” I asked myself this question many times, over and over again. The conclusion was the same everytime. None. To further clarify this point, let us look at the last invention of consequence which had a purely Oriental origin. Gunpowder. And this too was taken up and advanced by the West. If the Chinese invented Gunpowder, it was the West that developed the cannons that used them. Indeed, there is nothing that we can call truly our own except the past. And as all of us have seen, we revere the past. It is drummed into us in our schools, in our universities, in our families and at the dinner table. Indian culture always was and is, miles ahead of the decadent and corrupt influences of the West. It is not. This assertion is nothing but an inferiority complex. And an aversion to the truth.
It is important to realize that I am not saying that India or Indian culture is inferior or all that we developed as a civilization is a fabrication. It is not a fabrication. We were indeed a highly advanced civilization, and a highly cultured one at that. But we were, and not are. What we are now is a mish mash of cultures that does not know where it is headed.
How did we then fall so low? How did we, we who had reached highs that even now are only dreamt of, fall to the very depths from where these highs are unimaginable? It is tempting to blame the West, colonialism, British rule and all that. But the problem lies much deeper than that.
Every empire is built on one strength. One strength that sets it apart from the neighbours and allows it to grow while others around it stagnate. The Roman empire was built on the discipline of its Legions. Most armies of that time were little more than unruly mobs and this proverbial discipline of the Roman Legion made it a formidable attacking force. The British Empire was built on the strength of the trade links between Britain, a small insignificant island, and its vast territorial holdings in every corner of this planet. The dominant empire today is the USA. This empire is a little different. For its strength stems from its culture. Right from Hollywood, to sitcoms, our thought processes and ideas, to even what we eat and wear, it is the cultural power of the USA in full show. Every empire in history has had its one strength. And India too had a cultural empire similar to what the USA has today. A thousand years ago, students flocked from all over the world to study at Nalanda and Taxila. Just as they flock to the USA today. Great ideas were born in this crucible of free thought. Religions, philosophies and sciences were established by enlightened souls. Just as they are being established in the USA today. However, all empires must fall. The Roman empire fell when the discipline of its legions eroded. The British empire fell when its trade links could no longer be kept captive to serve them alone. The cultural empire of the USA is ripe to fall even as I write this. And the Indian empire has already fallen. A thousand years ago India was the USA of the age. Not any more. Today this cultural empire has eroded until all we have left is a kind of cultural hubris. And hubris, as we all know, is a fine quality. Often found in those who perish from it.
The strength of Indian civilization was always in its openness to new ideas. And a willingness to put in the hard work to further those ideas. Today however, we have neither the openness to new ideas, nor the will to work hard. Take for example the resistance to ‘Westernization’. Does it not speak of a reluctance to embrace new ideas and concepts? This hardening of opinions and closing of minds is prevalent not only in resisting outside influences and ‘preserving Indian culture’, but also in every detail of our lives. A teacher in India does not like it if his student questions him. For in that question, lies the seed of a new idea. And in that seed, lies the implication that the teacher may be wrong. And that is why we Indians do not like someone who asks too many questions, as I found out to my cost when I questioned India’s supposed cultural superiority.
A far more dangerous symptom however, is our instinctive reluctance to work hard for what we want. Our instinctive impulse to take a shortcut. Our instinctive reflex to take the easy road. Here I come back to the opening statement of this essay. “The easy path leads to barbarism. The tough to civilization”. The tough road is often a tedious path. And in India, this road is often avoided in favour of the easy. Jugaad. It is nothing but a shortcut. And we as a nation, nay, as a civilization have become addicted to shortcuts. And hence we have fallen. Everything in India can be resolved by a shortcut. If you stand in a queue, there is always a tout who will be happy to help you jump the line for a fee. Instead of paying your taxes, it is far easier to just hide your income under your bed. Why wait for the light to change from red to green when there is no one crossing your path? Why be orderly when you can be disorderly and get away with it? Why work hard when you can steal from someone? Why be polite when you do not have to be? Why throw the garbage into the dustbin when someone is there to collect it from any spot in the city? I could go on and on. Everything in India has a shortcut. And this culture of taking shortcuts has struck root in the very mindset of our society. Every single thing is now a shortcut. Jugaad. Why take the tougher road to civilization? Why apply our minds when someone else can do it? It is easier to run away to the West than stay back and make this country worth living in. Why perform original research in India where you have to build your own apparatus, when you can just hop across the pond and perform that same research in the West, where that same apparatus can be bought off the shelf? Why? Why indeed? Because, it is the short cut. It is the easy path. And it shall lead us to barbarism. It is not an individual failing on the part of Indians. I will not blame any one person for this. It is a failing of our society. Indeed, it is a historical inevitability.
Historical inevitability? Yes, our decline was inevitable. Every great civilization has declined when its culture of openness is replaced by closed minds and an aversion to questions. Look at Islam a thousand year ago and today. If at all anyone dares to interpret the quoran any way other than the accepted dogma, he is immediately met with a fatwa calling for his beheading. Western civilization has flourished and prospered precisely because it has cast off the yoke that is the Catholic church and allowed free thought. This freedom of thought does remain in India, but only in vestiges. And as we have already seen, it is being gradually eroded. It is historical inevitability. The point is further clarified by a study of entropy. Entropy, in layman’s terms, is a measure of the disorderliness in a system. In any spontaneous process, Entropy always increases. So if we consider human history to be a spontaneous process, interspersed by periods where Man has consciously tried to improve himself, it is not difficult to see how every rise is followed by a fall. As I have already stated, taking the tougher road is an informed decision, while the easy path comes spontaneously. Every civilization at some point, will abandon the long tough road, to take the short cut. And when a society starts taking shortcuts, it begins to decline. Every civilization has declined and so shall we.
And so we have declined. Our fall has only begun. And we shall keep falling, for a long, long time. Is there nothing that can be done? I do not know. The only thing that can be done is the administration of a shock treatment. A shock treatment that so drastically affects us that we will be forced to change for the better. The Black Death in the 14th century jolted Europe and gave rise to the Renaissance, which laid the foundation for the current dominance of Western civilization. Kemal Mustafa Ataturk’s radical measures of Westernization and his suppression of anything connected with the decadence of the Ottoman empire, gave rise to Modern Turkey. A nation that is a beacon of hope for the Muslim world. What kind of shock treatment can reverse the tide of India’s decline? I do not know. But the least we can do, is acknowledge that we have a problem. And when you see the problem and the scale of it, it will give you the shock treatment.
TL;DR - We are in decline because our culture has lost its ability to question and innovate. We also prefer shortcuts. It is a historical inevitability and there is nothing we can do about it.

This is a pretty long essay but it’s worth it

At the outset, I would like to state that this is not an essay that is critical of India or its people in any way. I am merely stating what I have observed and what I have concluded based on these observations. For this is the unvarnished truth. And India cannot palate the truth.
Socrates, the father of Western thought, often spoke of a concept called Thumos. Thumos was very much a Greek concept. An abstract concept that held many meanings and translations. However, this concept has been lost to humanity and no literal translation exists in English. The essence of ‘Thumos’ can probably be summed up by the saying – “When making a decision, a man is faced with two choices. An easy path and a tough path. The easy path leads to barbarism. The tough to civilization". And it is this tough road that every society must traverse to reach a peak. Taking the tougher road is an informed decision, for the natural impulse of every man is to take the easy path. He has to consciously take the tougher path, and avoid the easy. However, a man might unknowingly go down the easy path and end up where he did not want to be. Retracing your steps back to the tougher path is often a thankless and sometimes nigh on impossible task. Most men do not make it. India too, is at this cross roads today. And we might not make it.
It is indeed, ironic then, that I started this essay about the decline of ‘Indian civilization’ with a concept borrowed from the West. This is not to show that Indian philosophy has not reached the high levels of thought to have such a concept, but to merely show how far we have strayed from it. Make no such mistake. For the Vedas, the ultimate repository of Indian philosophy, were written long, long before Socrates’ ancestors even took up the plough and decided to grow the weeds they had observed in the wild and gave them nourishment. We had reached unimaginable highs and fallen from those highs, long before Socrates even had his first coherent thought. All Socrates did then, was re-discover what we had already known. We were superior in all respects. And it is in this very attitude, that lies the seed of our destruction. How many times have you heard your elders say – “Indian culture is the best. Anything associated with the West is bad!”. I hear it all the time. It is a constant din in our ears. Anything associated with the West is decadent and immoral and inferior. And Indian culture is superior to every other culture, past, present and future. Well then, superior in exactly what manner?? Few, if any, gave a concrete answer to this question. If they gave an answer at all.
The most common response to my question was anger and a rebuke for asking too many questions. How then are we superior? IF we are superior at all? Let us look around the world today and ask ourselves, “How many of the concepts, ideas, and objects that I use in my daily life on a day-to-day basis emerged from purely indigenous sources?” I asked myself this question many times, over and over again. The conclusion was the same everytime. None. To further clarify this point, let us look at the last invention of consequence which had a purely Oriental origin. Gunpowder. And this too was taken up and advanced by the West. If the Chinese invented Gunpowder, it was the West that developed the cannons that used them. Indeed, there is nothing that we can call truly our own except the past. And as all of us have seen, we revere the past. It is drummed into us in our schools, in our universities, in our families and at the dinner table. Indian culture always was and is, miles ahead of the decadent and corrupt influences of the West. It is not. This assertion is nothing but an inferiority complex. And an aversion to the truth.
It is important to realize that I am not saying that India or Indian culture is inferior or all that we developed as a civilization is a fabrication. It is not a fabrication. We were indeed a highly advanced civilization, and a highly cultured one at that. But we were, and not are. What we are now is a mish mash of cultures that does not know where it is headed.
How did we then fall so low? How did we, we who had reached highs that even now are only dreamt of, fall to the very depths from where these highs are unimaginable? It is tempting to blame the West, colonialism, British rule and all that. But the problem lies much deeper than that.
Every empire is built on one strength. One strength that sets it apart from the neighbours and allows it to grow while others around it stagnate. The Roman empire was built on the discipline of its Legions. Most armies of that time were little more than unruly mobs and this proverbial discipline of the Roman Legion made it a formidable attacking force. The British Empire was built on the strength of the trade links between Britain, a small insignificant island, and its vast territorial holdings in every corner of this planet. The dominant empire today is the USA. This empire is a little different. For its strength stems from its culture. Right from Hollywood, to sitcoms, our thought processes and ideas, to even what we eat and wear, it is the cultural power of the USA in full show. Every empire in history has had its one strength. And India too had a cultural empire similar to what the USA has today. A thousand years ago, students flocked from all over the world to study at Nalanda and Taxila. Just as they flock to the USA today. Great ideas were born in this crucible of free thought. Religions, philosophies and sciences were established by enlightened souls. Just as they are being established in the USA today. However, all empires must fall. The Roman empire fell when the discipline of its legions eroded. The British empire fell when its trade links could no longer be kept captive to serve them alone. The cultural empire of the USA is ripe to fall even as I write this. And the Indian empire has already fallen. A thousand years ago India was the USA of the age. Not any more. Today this cultural empire has eroded until all we have left is a kind of cultural hubris. And hubris, as we all know, is a fine quality. Often found in those who perish from it.
The strength of Indian civilization was always in its openness to new ideas. And a willingness to put in the hard work to further those ideas. Today however, we have neither the openness to new ideas, nor the will to work hard. Take for example the resistance to ‘Westernization’. Does it not speak of a reluctance to embrace new ideas and concepts? This hardening of opinions and closing of minds is prevalent not only in resisting outside influences and ‘preserving Indian culture’, but also in every detail of our lives. A teacher in India does not like it if his student questions him. For in that question, lies the seed of a new idea. And in that seed, lies the implication that the teacher may be wrong. And that is why we Indians do not like someone who asks too many questions, as I found out to my cost when I questioned India’s supposed cultural superiority.
A far more dangerous symptom however, is our instinctive reluctance to work hard for what we want. Our instinctive impulse to take a shortcut. Our instinctive reflex to take the easy road. Here I come back to the opening statement of this essay. “The easy path leads to barbarism. The tough to civilization”. The tough road is often a tedious path. And in India, this road is often avoided in favour of the easy. Jugaad. It is nothing but a shortcut. And we as a nation, nay, as a civilization have become addicted to shortcuts. And hence we have fallen. Everything in India can be resolved by a shortcut. If you stand in a queue, there is always a tout who will be happy to help you jump the line for a fee. Instead of paying your taxes, it is far easier to just hide your income under your bed. Why wait for the light to change from red to green when there is no one crossing your path? Why be orderly when you can be disorderly and get away with it? Why work hard when you can steal from someone? Why be polite when you do not have to be? Why throw the garbage into the dustbin when someone is there to collect it from any spot in the city? I could go on and on. Everything in India has a shortcut. And this culture of taking shortcuts has struck root in the very mindset of our society. Every single thing is now a shortcut. Jugaad. Why take the tougher road to civilization? Why apply our minds when someone else can do it? It is easier to run away to the West than stay back and make this country worth living in. Why perform original research in India where you have to build your own apparatus, when you can just hop across the pond and perform that same research in the West, where that same apparatus can be bought off the shelf? Why? Why indeed? Because, it is the short cut. It is the easy path. And it shall lead us to barbarism. It is not an individual failing on the part of Indians. I will not blame any one person for this. It is a failing of our society. Indeed, it is a historical inevitability.
Historical inevitability? Yes, our decline was inevitable. Every great civilization has declined when its culture of openness is replaced by closed minds and an aversion to questions. Look at Islam a thousand year ago and today. If at all anyone dares to interpret the quoran any way other than the accepted dogma, he is immediately met with a fatwa calling for his beheading. Western civilization has flourished and prospered precisely because it has cast off the yoke that is the Catholic church and allowed free thought. This freedom of thought does remain in India, but only in vestiges. And as we have already seen, it is being gradually eroded. It is historical inevitability. The point is further clarified by a study of entropy. Entropy, in layman’s terms, is a measure of the disorderliness in a system. In any spontaneous process, Entropy always increases. So if we consider human history to be a spontaneous process, interspersed by periods where Man has consciously tried to improve himself, it is not difficult to see how every rise is followed by a fall. As I have already stated, taking the tougher road is an informed decision, while the easy path comes spontaneously. Every civilization at some point, will abandon the long tough road, to take the short cut. And when a society starts taking shortcuts, it begins to decline. Every civilization has declined and so shall we.
And so we have declined. Our fall has only begun. And we shall keep falling, for a long, long time. Is there nothing that can be done? I do not know. The only thing that can be done is the administration of a shock treatment. A shock treatment that so drastically affects us that we will be forced to change for the better. The Black Death in the 14th century jolted Europe and gave rise to the Renaissance, which laid the foundation for the current dominance of Western civilization. Kemal Mustafa Ataturk’s radical measures of Westernization and his suppression of anything connected with the decadence of the Ottoman empire, gave rise to Modern Turkey. A nation that is a beacon of hope for the Muslim world. What kind of shock treatment can reverse the tide of India’s decline? I do not know. But the least we can do, is acknowledge that we have a problem. And when you see the problem and the scale of it, it will give you the shock treatment.