KS Komireddi’s book on brief history of India raises important questions even if it doesn’t address them | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

KS Komireddi’s book on brief history of India raises important questions even if it doesn’t address them | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Kaushik Das Gupta |Updated: June 23, 2019 8:32:16 am

KS Komireddi’s book on brief history of India raises important questions even if it doesn’t address them

In its first part, Malevolent Republic asks a difficult question? Can dynastism and authoritarianism be traced to the times when the country was at its democratic best? Komireddi does not absolve India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru in this respect.

Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India

Any work that starts with the aim of providing “a short history of New India” has a tricky task. It’s difficult to accommodate more than 70 years of a country’s history in about 200 pages. The challenge is even more difficult when the work in question attempts to create of genealogy of how India turned into a “malevolent republic”. The transformation of a country that prided itself as “sare jahaan se achha, Hindustan hamara” to a nation that is rife with the promises and possibilities of “good days” — and, yet, teems with prejudices — isn’t easy to contain in a “short history”. But for anyone trying to understand this momentous transformation, KS Komireddi’s Malevolent Republic: A Short History of New India should be a must read.