Reviews

• Very good overview of modern India

  The country of India is of sufficient importance to all of us today that there is a real need for resources to help us develop a greater understanding, whether we are a traveler, business person working with India, or simply one interested in becoming more informed, such as myself. I don't expect that to be accomplished by only one book, so the challenge is to select a couple of volumes which together can do the job. For myself, this book is one that I have selected to help my own understanding of India. India: A Million Mutinies Now was originally published in 1990, and this edition brings it back into availability, with a new preface by the author. It is the third volume of a trilogy written by Naipaul on India, the first two being An Area of Darkness , and India: A Wounded Civilization . It does date back 20 years, and for that reason does not take into account the many developments and changes in India since that time, so if you must have something that reflects today's India in all respects, this may fall short in some ways. Author V. S. Naipaul (2001 Nobel Prize in Literature) is acclaimed both for his fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago, to parents of Indian descent. In this book, he describes India through a series of stories covering people from many castes and different backgrounds. As these various individuals stories are told, and as you begin to grasp how they deal with the day-to-day problems of living in an overcrouded country, and surviving within the caste system still in place, you find that your understanding of India is beginning to come together. It is a long book (500+ pages), full of interesting vignettes and covering a very wide variety of individuals from all walks of Indian life. If you are considering purchase of this book, then I would also refer you to the Amazon comments to the earlier 1990 edition ( India: A Million Mutinies Now ), which remain valid for this new printing. As alternates or supplements to this book, I would also suggest India: A Portrait , recently issued, and I am sure that there are many others. I will continue to add to this review if I do come across other books that I feel should also be mentioned.

• Word of mouth

  "India" describes Naipaul's anti-clockwise journey around the metropoles of India in 1988, from Bombay to Srinagar via Bangalore, Madras, Calcutta, Delhi and Amritsar. His theme is that India, seen from the distance of his Trinadadian childhood, appeared as a single, unified entity. Close-up in 1988, however, he saw how it decomposes into a collage of religions, castes and classes. That diversity, for Naipaul, is India's strength. He sees each social group's struggle for security as the motor of India economic, political and social advances since the 1960s. Reading between the lines, however, you can tell that Naipaul has mixed feelings about India. Apart from the revulsion at the filth and decay, he can not hide his despair of the Indian character. He sees Indians as self-destructive, always letting unnecessary foibles and squabbles obstruct progress. For Naipaul the class-warriors of the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu have replaced a wise culture with a wasteland, the self-regarding idleness of Bengalis has turned Calcutta into a sewer and the Sikhs of Northwest India are persecuted because, deep down, that is their raison d'être. It's a point of view. The format of "India" is almost oral history or anthropology. He lets Indians, mostly middle- and upper-class, tell the stories of their lives. Gradually these tales coalesce in the reader's mind and Naipaul's collage of caste, class and ethnicity emerges. The language is clear and engaging; it is hard to imagine a more entertaining introduction to the social processes at work in modern India. Naipaul's own viewpoint emerges gradually between the lines. And he is honest about his own place in the book, not glamorising his trip with chichi exoticism like your average poncey travel-writer, but just making himself a man who travels from hotel to hotel and talks to Indians.

• Wonderful Book by a Wonderful Author!

  I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Not even for a single instance I found it boring. Right from the beginning it catches your attention and keeps it till the end. The India which I never knew I came to know about through this book. A must read for all serious Indian thinkers.

• Makes you think

  India, A Million Mutinies Now was lent to me by a non-native English speaker who had found the book "heavy going" and could not get on with it. The start was also difficult for me but once I got going, it was fascinating. Although I have been to India on a couple of business trips and have worked several years with many Indian people, I had no well founded idea about the country and its people. Mr Naipaul, born in Trinidad of Indian origins, retails in this book, his experiences, and those of the people with whom he meets, in a detailed and enthralling way. His style is easy to read and transmitted to me the feeling that I was sometimes present at his "interviews". The enormous success that V.S. Naipaul has deservedly enjoyed over the years, enables him, during this India visit, to meet and speak with people whom the average visitor would not meet and to cover subjects which the average visitor would not consider. Mr Naipaul realises that and takes the time to give his reader the necessary insight. This book can be strongly recommended as just a very good read but the information about India is an extra bonus.

• Tremendous introduction to India

  This is an excellent and thoughtful introduction to what India means to its population of Jains, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and others: the book comprises extended conversations with people the author met in his travels round India and his largely generous and non-judgemental reflections upon them, as he make senses of what he hears and sees and learns. The only pieces I felt slightly unsure about were those (admittedly fascinating but somewhat negative) chapters about Sikhs: perhaps these reflect the time at which the book was written (it was published first in 1988). I'ld recommend this unreservedly to anyone interested in the sub-Continent.

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