A book on India

Book Review :India:A Portrait (An intimate biography of 1.2 bilion people)

by Patrick French

India , as everybody would agree remains an enigma by very nature of its diversity, and dichotomy between an emerging India and a traditional one. It’s difficult to define our nation and any attempts at simplifying, classifying or taxonomizing her is a futile exercise.This book recounts India’s journey since its independence and takes a good view at it. I must say a very sympathetic one at that. Narrative is taken along with anecdotes but they overpower the narration. We are left with a string of anecdotes showing a glimpse of India and that’s it.

The author has taken an unbiased and optimistic view of India. But he barely skims the surface of the Indian Society, Polity and its Riches. His anecdotes seem to have been picked for convenience and no contentious topic has been taken up. There seems to be hardly any new idea. The more sensationalized story in Indian media, the greater is the coverage provided to that incident. He is supposed to be writing for 1.2 Bn people and seems to have written for not even a fraction of them. By no stretch of imagination is this book an intimate biography of 1.2 billion people. It’s a biography of a nation seen through some of its people, and in the process doing justice neither to the nation nor to its people.

It’s a readable book and lot has been said and written about it. I would like to say that I had picked up this book with lots of expectations that finally we might have some one who could have gone beyond the clichés of new India (of economic development) and those of old India (of casteism etc.), but was disappointed. Please do read this book only if you would like to celebrate India as a growing economy completely lying far away from Bharata.