India Through Anecdotes

Allen Lane

Pages: 448

Rs 695

Patrick French is a biographer. He has told the stories of V.S. Naipaul and Francis Younghusband,the Briton who led the invasion of Tibet. He has chosen,now,to enlarge his canvas just a mite. His new book,India,has twin subtitles: A Portrait and An Intimate Biography Of 1.2 Billion People. Both are considerably more informative than such subtitles generally tend to be.

For India is not,as it happens,a history or a polemic. Instead,French has wandered this country looking for people who will tell him stories about their lives,whether sparkling with hope or ground down by the oppressive weight of tradition,and laid them out for us,cemented in place by essay-like passages that in some cases,both briefly and brilliantly address such things as IITs,the Manusmriti,the historicity of Hindi films and the iconography built up around Indira and Sonia Gandhi.

The mosaic he lays out,however,isnt as clear a picture as some narrative-hungry readers might want. Squint at it sideways,and it tells a story,of course,of slow empowerment,the comforting liberal story of reform,aspiration,the gradual growth of opportunity. Yet a portrait,not a caricature: theres enough to lead you to very different conclusions from the authors.

But it is the stories that will stick in your head. Some are dramatic: like when French visits Tihar with S.A.R. Geelani,who,although acquitted by the Supreme Court in the Parliament attack case,nevertheless treks across town to his old jail from Delhi University every week with hot food for high-security prisoners. Elements of the farcical,of course,turn up when our beloved bureaucracy does: Frenchs entry into Tihar is delayed while the awe-inspiring apparatus of the Indian state debates whether mushrooms are allowed in the inmates gravy or not. Once inside,French meets Kobad Ghandy,and listens fascinated as the Maoist ideologue describes his old schoolmate Sanjay Gandhi with disdainful disapproval as a lumpen element. Shunted aside for a moment,French finds himself next to Afzal Guru,who asks with a big smile if the writer knows who he is. They discuss European novels,and whether that Huntington fellow is on to something with his Clash of Civilisations thing.

It is,in fact,when French wants to make a point,rather than tell us stories and let us think about them,that this book is at its weakest. The first section of the book,Rashtra,tells of the development of the Constitution,of Indian secularism and its challenges,of Maoism. But it concludes with an attack on hereditary politicians,which,while well-meaning and well-researched a lot of effort appears to have gone into creating an excellent database of family relationships between current politicians would not stand up to Statistics 101. To take just one egregious example,French looks at the age distribution of politicians,notes that younger ones are more likely to be from a political family,and determines that the problem is getting worse. Except that,of course,if it takes someone with a political background less time to break into politics,then youd see an identical distribution even if the problem was getting better,not worse. Note from a discouraged economist to a biographer: statistics may have greater validity than anecdotes,but are far dicier to interpret.

But,fortunately,such moments are few. This is a book thats well worth reading,and defeats prejudices. Ive said it isnt a history,which is what many were expecting. There are many other things that one could lazily assume it is,but it turns out not to be. It does not,for example,read like a foreigners take on an exotic country. This is the product of someone who has been immersed in this countrys politics and its problems for a long time,who identifies with it,its history of dissent,and the projects of its founders as much as most of us do.

Nor is it a quick-and-dirty guide for foreigners,containing little of interest to a moderately well-read Indian. Some of the larger sections provide one with flashes of insight,aided by lucid,evocative writing such as on Rajiv Gandhis failures: He responded to the setbacks and complications by relying on his popularity and dreaming up amorphous new initiatives,working ever harder,eighteen or nineteen hours a day,tapping information into his treasured Toshiba T5200 laptop in the hope it might spit out some answers. Many of his initiatives were constructive,but they were never part of an overarching strategy. And his smaller nuggets are always revelatory. One hears about Mahalanobiss youth as a Bengali-supremacist eugenicist; of how,when L.K. Advani,A.B. Vajpayee and others were locked up during the Emergency,the future prime minister did all the cooking. Such throwaway references,even some that arent precisely informative half the worlds voters live in India! The Constituent Assembly met for the first time on the day that,half a world away,Sonia Maino was busy being born! make this book a delight to read.

And it is informed throughout with a deep humanity. In one haunting section,French sets out to find Shakeel Bhat,a bearded Kashmiri who,because of a tendency for his eyes to bulge while shouting in demonstrations,was pilloried in the filthy byways of the Internet as Islamic Rage Boy. Christopher Hitchens,at his most contemptibly petty,even devoted a column to mocking his fundoo yells and gibbering. Bhat,it turns out,is shy. His Islam is not Wahhabi,but Sufi. In the 1990s,the police threw his sister out of an upstairs window and broke her spine. Bhat then became a militant briefly,surrendered without doing much,was electrocuted,had a nail hammered through his jaw,and was raped with a lathi. He knows his Photoshopped picture is all over the Internet,and it hurts him. But he likes demonstrating. This,French points out,is classically Indian,his continuing belief that the state had an obligation to listen to his concerns. Had he lived 2,000 miles to the north,east,or west,in Russia,China or Saudi Arabia,he might well have stayed at home.

India is worth reading,and worth recommending. Often asked for the one book on India,I plump for Sunil Khilnanis The Idea of India,or,so desperate is our non-fiction,for A Suitable Boy. French has made me reconsider. Its immediacy gives it much of its power,less a portrait and more an enormous photograph. It might not age well,as India changes furiously,but for now,it is more than enough.