In Spite of the Gods...

Interesting book. The author, Edward Luce,looks at flipside of India as much in detail as he focuses on the modern economic power house that India has become particularly in the past two decades.  So for a reader interested in the Indian social ethos and its social evils and for a reader who wants to know how India manages to survive and become a modern nation state, Edward Luce offers an engrossing fare over 360 plus pages. Though not intentional, the message that the book gives is that India is at home in materialism and in spiritualism with both goals often overlapping and running almost concurrently.

For the western reader Edward Luce tries to demystify India. This must interest India’s neighbours on its east and west alike because they all share same roots and same ethos in a way historically and socially. For Pakistan in particular, which is fast slipping into the failed state category, and is becoming increasingly a victim of its own terror inventions, ‘In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India’ will be an absorbing case study.

Because, India has all the problems that a developing country of its size and population can have. It is divided along caste lines, still feudal at the core despite years of tryst with socialism, suffers from left extremism and Hindu adventurism. Literacy levels continue to be low and there are islands of economic abundance amidst seas of poverty. Yet the growth rate it has managed to achieve and the way it has been able to withstand the meltdown effects are neighbour’s envy and owner’s pride, as a jingle to advertise a TV brand says.

Edward Luce looks at all these phenomenon and much more like a truly bemused westerner. He doesn’t resist the temptation typical of a western scholar to visit partition and Kashmir issue and the result is a chapter titled, ‘Many crescents — South Asian Muslims’.