Malevolent Republic

After decades of imperfect secularism, presided over by an often corrupt Congress establishment, Nehru’s diverse republic has yielded to Hindu nationalism. India, the first major democracy to fall to demagogic populism in the twenty-first century, is racing to a point of no return. 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. Anti Muslim vitriol has deluged the mainstream. Religious minorities live in terror of a vengeful majority. Congress now mimics Modi; other parties pray for a miracle. In this highly acclaimed critique of post-Independence India from Nehru to Narendra Modi, revised and expanded with a new chapter, K.S. Komireddi charts the dismaying course of the world’s largest democracy. He argues that the missteps of the nation’s founders, the mistakes of Nehru, the betrayals of his daughter and her sons, the anti-democratic fetish for technocracy carried to extremes by Manmohan Singh—all of them prepared the way for Modi’s march to absolute power. If secularists fail to wrest the republic from Hindu supremacists, Komireddi argues, India may go the way of Yugoslavia and collapse under the burden of sinister ethno-religious nationalism. A gripping short history of modern India, Malevolent Republic is also a passionate plea for India’s reclamation.

A nation of 1.25 billion people composed of numerous ethnic, linguistic, religious, and caste communities, India is the world’s most diverse democracy. Drawing on his extensive fieldwork and experience of Indian politics, Sumantra Bose tells the story of democracy’s evolution in India since the 1950s—and describes the many challenges it faces in the early twenty-first century. Over the past two decades, India has changed from a country dominated by a single nationwide party into a robust multiparty and federal union, as regional parties and leaders have risen and flourished in many of India’s twenty-eight states. The regionalization of the nation’s political landscape has decentralized power, given communities a distinct voice, and deepened India’s democracy, Bose finds, but the new era has also brought fresh dilemmas. The dynamism of India’s democracy derives from the active participation of the people—the demos. But as Bose makes clear, its transformation into a polity of, by, and for the people depends on tackling great problems of poverty, inequality, and oppression. This tension helps explain why Maoist revolutionaries wage war on the republic, and why people in the Kashmir Valley feel they are not full citizens. As India dramatically emerges on the global stage, Transforming India: Challenges to the World’s Largest Democracy provides invaluable analysis of its complexity and distinctiveness.

Subverting celebrated classics of poetry and mythology and examining horrors from contemporary film and cultural fact, National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed engages darkness as an aesthetic to conjure the revenant animus that lurks beneath the exploited civilities of marginalized people. In these poems, Reed finds agency in the other-than-human identities assigned to those assaulted by savageries of the state. In doing so, he summons a retaliatory, counterviolent Black spirit to revolt and to inhabit the revolting.

Hailed as the world's largest democracy and feted by the Trump administration in events like "Howdy Modi" in Houston, India is fast slipping into autocracy under the bigoted rule of Prime Minister Modi and this blistering critique shows how.

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.

This book chronicles the political and ideological evolution of the colonies and United States, from 1643 to 1790. The author mainly focuses on the various events and dedications to self government, liberty, and other virtues of republicanism that influenced the American Revolution and Constitution.