India: A Portrait [Paperback]

This is a splendid book which covers the great sweep of Indian life and culture, illuminated with numerous individual anecdotes representing people from all levels of Indian society. The anecdotes are fascinating, covering people who have found great success in the economic liberalisation of the last 15 years, as well as those who have continued to live a life of struggle and poverty.

Patrick French draws out the numerous contrasts which make such an impression on visitors to India; a meritocratic culture which is still infused with caste and status, a deliberately secular society in which religion is intertwined with daily life, a land of great wealth ( 4 of 8 richest people in the world are Indian) which has the largest population of illiterate people in the world.

Having recently visited India, I found that this book brought back memories of the colours, the smells, and the vibrancy which I had found to be almost overwhelming, and helped to explain many of the features of Indian life which I had found so fascinating and confusing.

Divided into three sections; Nation, Wealth and Society, this book is highly recommended for those who would like to know more about the country of 1.2 billion people, which has just overtaken Germany as the world's fourth largest economy. If you are going to visit do read this. If you are not yet planning to visit, this book will make you want to...

Highly recommended

Recently there has been a spate of books on the rise of China but curiously very little for the general reader on the equally remarkable rise of India. French has offered just such a book, a snapshot of an India in transition. The book is divided into three parts. The first section traces the development of India's representative parliamentary democracy, which, against the odds, works reasonably well. The second part deals with the transformation of India's economy from stagnant statism to an open, dynamic trade orientated economy and the final section covers, among other things, the persistence of ancient religion in the teeth of an emerging consumer society, the caste system and other cultural quirks of Indian life.

Patrick French is an excellent writer and his latest offering does not disappoint. He offers an account of his travels around the country, a snapshot of contemporary India, structured through a series of vignettes, interviews with Indians from all walks of life. It's easy to sneer at this approach and complain that this is not a comprehensive academic text on Indian society and economy but that is to criticise him for a book he did not set out to write. Oral testimony recorded in a book is an entirely respectable genre of writing - think of the late Studs Turkel. The merit of French's approach is allow Indians themselves to tell things as they see it, from a variety of perspectives, and not how French sees it. There are many realities experienced in India and this book captures a sample. It certainly gives the armchair traveler a flavour of a country. Through these witnesses, he succeeds in portraying a country of phenomenal potential and dynamism, coexisting alongside great squalor and injustice, a warts-and-all portrait. Difficult topics like Kashmir and the caste system are not ducked but he resists sensationalist tricks to go the opposite way and focus on nothing but cruelty and oppression. The overall result enlightens and informs without coming across as glib or trite.

In offering a book based principally on testimonies, French does not omit to provide background detail although, as mentioned earlier, this is not an academic monograph. This brings me to the only drawback I found with the book: such detail might have been easier to assimilate had there been maps or charts to summarise the themes discussed. The background detail, sometimes very dense (like the pages describing the vagaries of Indian party politics, for example), can be difficult to follow. For this reason, I have to knock a star of the rating. Otherwise the book is both enjoyable and informative and well worth reading.

Of the spate of books about India in recent years this one counts alongside Ed Luce's insightful "In Spite of the Gods" as a fine contribution to a deep understanding of this wonderful country, its tragic violent history, diverse peoples and inherent contradictions. Although some regard the book as slightly dense in places, especially without illustrations or photos, it is nonetheless an enjoyable read and helpfully structured in three distinct parts.

The first "Rashtra:Nation" relates the birth of India as a nation state under Nehru, the perils of the Gandhi family during the latter half of the 20th century, the BJP and Hindutva, India's all pervasive political culture rooted in nepotism and corruption alongside the aspiration to be an accountable Parliamentary democracy where individual rights for all Indians of whatever caste or religion should be safeguarded.

The second part "Lakshmi:Wealth" deals in some detail with the ever present dichotomy between India's economic miracle - the rise of Bollywood, steel industry and hi-tech communications - and the country's grinding poverty where millions live on their wits alone and/or under a dollar a day.

The third "Samaj:Society", and for me perhaps the most fascinating section, covers the recent rise of the Dalits (or Untouchables) as an influential political movement in Indian elections, the various tragedies associated with the enduring and ever fractious India-Pakistan relationship, Indian Islam's position in society, and how the majority Hindu faith and other religions impact on aspects of Indian social development for better or worse.

Throughout the narrative Patrick French relates personal anecdotes about his meetings with prominent Indians over the years as well as lurid tales of ordinary life he picked up along the way and that can only happen in India: the Dalit girl forced to marry a frog, the quarry worker in Mysore fettered in irons for years because of a local debt dispute, the horrendous tale of an innocent dentist framed by the local police for his daughter's brutal murder after they failed to follow basic forensic procedure.

I was also rather taken with French's observations about the nature of Hinduism itself, perhaps a clue to what makes much of India unique in terms of tolerance and diversity - "in Hinduism there is no clear right and wrong. Christians, Muslims and Jews are brought up on the idea of pairs of opposites, the idea you are either for us or against us....Hinduism has no set book, the religion is only practice, only what it is, and can be understood only by seeing how it is lived".