Description
| Product ID: | 9781787380059 |
| Product Form: | Hardback |
| Country of Manufacture: | GB |
| Title: | Malevolent Republic |
| Subtitle: | A Short History of the New India |
| Authors: | Author: K. S. Komireddi |
| Page Count: | 224 |
| Subjects: | Comparative politics, Comparative politics |
| Description: | Select Guide Rating After decades of imperfect secularism, presided over by an often corrupt Congress establishment, Nehru’s diverse republic has yielded to Hindu nationalism. India is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Since 2014, the ruling BJP has unleashed forces that are irreversibly transforming the country. Indian democracy, honed over decades, is now the chief enabler of Hindu extremism. Bigotry has been ennobled as a healthy form of self-assertion, and anti-Muslim vitriol has deluged the mainstream, with religious minorities living in terror of a vengeful majority. Congress now mimics Modi; other parties pray for a miracle. In this blistering critique of India from Indira Gandhi to the present, Komireddi lays bare the cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India’s past and demeaning bribes to minorities that led to Modi’s decisive electoral victory. If secularists fail to reclaim the republic from Hindu nationalists, Komireddi argues, India will become Pakistan by another name. After decades of imperfect secularism, New Delhi radiates the ideological convictions of its new master, Narendra Modi, as he seeks irreversibly to transform India. The ''invisible threads'' holding together Nehru''s diverse country have snapped under the weight of Hindu-supremacist rule. Resistance is feeble, with an opposition bleached of conviction. Some parties have taken to mimicking Modi; others pray for a miracle. Modi, meanwhile, has become an unstoppable force. Democratic institutions, honed over decades, are being repurposed by his project. Hindu bigotry has been ennobled as a healthy form of self-assertion; anti- Muslim rhetoric has permeated the mainstream. India is in a vicious mood, and religious minorities live in terror of a vengeful majority. Komireddi argues that secular Indian nationalism never had the courage of its convictions--and that its cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India''s past, and demeaning bribes to India''s minorities account for its failure to suppress the temptations of Hindu nationalism. Modi decisively won a free election, yet those complicit in his ascent may have squandered the republic. Indian democracy, for decades paraded as the antidote to chauvinism, is now the chief enabler of Hindu extremism. |
| Imprint Name: | C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd |
| Publisher Name: | C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2019-05-23 |
