What Naipaul Got Right, and Wrong, About India
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April 1 (Bloomberg) -- While reading a shocking reportabout extrajudicial killings and torture by Indian securityforces in Kashmir, I was reminded of V.S. Naipaul’s “India: AMillion Mutinies Now,” arguably the most influential book aboutmodern India.
More than two decades after the book was published, Indiais full of ominous signs of the breakdown of governance and theincreasing recourse to violence by the Indian state as well asextremist groups. And so it was strange to read Naipaul’soptimistic take on an earlier phase of this turmoil: “Many ofthese movements of excess strengthened the Indian state,defining it as a source of law and civility and reasonableness.”