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Category: Excerpts

Of Marxists and Mamata – an excerpt from Ruchir Sharma’s ‘Democracy on the Road’

Posted on by Penguin India

On the eve of a landmark general election, Ruchir Sharma offers an unrivalled portrait of how India and its democracy work, drawn from his two decades on the road chasing election campaigns across every major state, travelling the equivalent of a lap around the earth.

Here is an excerpt from Ruchir Sharma’s book, Democracy on the Road that talks about the power packed campaign led by Mamata Banerjee in May 2011.

Leading the opposition charge was Mamata Banerjee, a Bengali Brahmin who split from the Congress to form her own party in 1998 and had been railing against Marxist ‘tyranny’ for years, mostly to no avail. The Tata conflict, and a second deadly government attempt to acquire agricultural land in and around Nandigram in the district of Purba Medinipur, had given Mamata’s campaign against Marxist rule new momentum and credibility.

We saw Mamata for the first time at a rally in Kolkata, where she sprang out of the helicopter and race-walked past party supporters, a big boss in a diminutive frame, dressed austerely in a white sari with a blue border. Her bearing broadcast immediately that she had no time for the usual campaign greetings; she was a one-woman dynamo running a lifelong crusade, eager to topple communism yesterday.

A poet herself, Mamata promised not only to restore English instruction but also to bring back the poetry of Bengal greats such as Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam, and the stories of Bengal heroes like ‘Binoy, Badal and Dinesh’, which the Marxists had expunged as too bourgeois, and replaced with party-approved literature. While English is an aspirational language all over India, perhaps only in Bengal could a politician campaign on promises to restore local poetry to the school curriculum.

She promised that under her All India Trinamool Congress (TMC)—the ‘party of the marginalized’—things would be different. Bengal would have modern schools, colleges and health clinics, with no proof of party loyalty required for access. Non-party members would no longer have to travel out of state for medical treatment. Her campaign slogan promised ‘poriborton’, the Bengali spin on ‘parivartan’ or change. As interesting as what Mamata said was what she didn’t say. Neither the Congress nor the BJP had cracked 7 per cent of the vote in recent Bengal elections, and they hardly bore mention in Mamata’s speech. The caste and religious undercurrents that drive much of Indian politics barely surfaced either, since Bengal was divided mainly between Marxist party members and everyone else. Tapping popular frustration with thirty-four years of Marxist rule, Mamata’s party won in resounding fashion, taking 184 of the 294 state assembly seats, and she became the new chief minister. The Marxists finished a distant second….

Economic growth had picked up at least moderately since the communists departed. Infant mortality was falling. Construction was booming all over the capital, spilling into the outskirts. Amit Mitra, state finance minister under Mamata, told us investment was flowing into cement and fertilizer plants, small- and medium-size companies were growing rapidly and that Tata had begun to expand again in the state.

When Mamata came to power in 2011, she had fired police officials who did not toe her party line, and harassed critics who posted mocking cartoons of her on social media. She was seen as erratic, volatile, an autocrat who brooked no challenge within her own party. Mamata’s writ still ran large, but she was settling down and opening up, as the Marxists fell into disarray. During the last campaign, Mamata had refused to meet us because some of our companions had ties to leading Marxists in Delhi, but this time she called them up to the stage before a Kolkata rally and greeted them warmly.

As Mamata went on the offensive there were flashes of the old paranoia, and over the course of the campaign she would attack everyone from Modi and the media to the Election Commission and the security apparatus for conspiring against her. Her crowds lapped it up. As soon as her Kolkata rally ended and Mamata made it past her security cordon, she was mobbed by supporters, young and old, who wanted to kiss her hand, touch her feet, or receive her blessings.

Over this five-week campaign, Mamata would claim to walk 1000 kilometres in the sweltering heat of April and May to address more than 160 meetings, and while the numbers were implausible, her energy and her centrality to the TMC were not in question. The joke in Kolkata was that ‘there is only one post in the TMC and Mamata holds it. Everyone else is a lamppost.’ She was running a highly centralized government in which her word was the only one that really mattered, yet she was delivering enough to ordinary people to win them over. Many said Mamata had executed on her promises to improve roads and electricity. She had offered subsidies to bring down the price of wheat, vegetables and rice, which were selling for a few rupees per kilo. She had also given free bicycles to girls as an incentive and means to get to school, and offered wedding subsidies to young women.

In the end the TMC won easily. After five straight terms under Marxist party leaders, Bengal may simply not have been ready to throw out Mamata after one. Her personal charisma prevailed over the imploding Marxists and their opportunistic alliance with the Congress. She had mellowed, growing open enough to industry to win business support, remaining generous enough with the public purse to win votes from the poor.

Mamata was also riding the growing wave of voter support for single leaders, whose unmarried status seemed to confirm their claims of all-in devotion to public service. Among India’s twenty one most populous states, there were no unmarried chief ministers in 1988, but by 2016 there were seven, including Mamata, seemingly lifted by growing voter distaste for nepotism inside political parties, and the corruption that flows naturally from running parties as a family business. Mamata had in fact remained far more ascetic in her personal tastes than many other supremos. Even as chief minister she lived in her small ancestral home in the Kolkata neighbourhood of Kalighat. Passing by the home we were stunned to see it in a state of decay with a dilapidated grey tiled roof and rotting bamboo shafts—a stark contrast to the sandstone palaces Mayawati had built for herself in UP. Mamata’s image as a single leader with no taste for diamonds had made her largely impervious to the corruption charges that so often topple Indian governments, and helped her secure this second term.

Democracy on the Road takes readers on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry band of fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf – an excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.

The child is dead. There is nothing left to know.

I hear there is a queen in the south who kills the man who brings her bad news. So when I give word of the boy’s death, do I write my own death with it? Truth eats lies just as the crocodile eats the moon, and yet my witness is the same today as it will be tomorrow. No, I did not kill him. Though I may have wanted him dead. Craved for it the way a glutton craves goat flesh. Oh, to draw a bow and fire it through his black heart and watch it explode black blood, and to watch his eyes for when they stop blinking, when they look but stop seeing, and to listen for his voice croaking and hear his chest heave in a death rattle saying, Look, my wretched spirit leaves this most wretched of bodies, and to smile at such tidings and dance at such a loss. Yes, I glut at the conceit of it. But no, I did not kill him.

Bi oju ri enu a pamo.

Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth.

This cell is larger than the one before. I smell the dried blood of executed men; I hear their ghosts still screaming. Your bread carries weevils, and your water carries the piss of ten and two guards and the goat they fuck for sport.
Shall I give you a story?

I am just a man who some have called a wolf. The child is dead. I know the old woman brings you different news. Call him murderer, she says. Even though my only sorrow is that I did not kill her. The redheaded one said the child’s head was infested with devils. If you believe in devils. I believe in bad blood. You look like a man who has never shed blood. And yet blood sticks between your fingers. A boy you circumcised, a young girl too small for your big… Look how that thrills you. Look at you.

I will give you a story.

It begins with a Leopard.

And a witch.

Grand Inquisitor.

Fetish priest.

No, you will not call for the guards.

My mouth might say too much before they club it shut.

Regard yourself. A man with two hundred cows who delights in a patch of boy skin and the koo of a girl who should be no man’s woman. Because that is what you seek, is it not? A dark little thing that cannot be found in thirty sacks of gold or two hundred cows or two hundred wives. Something that you have lost— no, it was taken from you. That light, you see it and you want it— not light from the sun, or from the thunder god in the night sky, but light with no blemish, light in a boy who has no knowledge of women, a girl you bought for marriage, not because you need a wife, for you have two hundred cows, but a wife you can tear open, because you search for it in holes, black holes, wet holes, undergrown holes for the light that vampires look for, and you will have it, you will dress it up in ceremony, circumcision for the boy, consummation for the girl, and when they shed blood, and spit, and sperm and piss you leave it all on your skin, to go to the iroko tree and use any hole you find.

The child is dead, and so is everyone.

I walked for days, through swarms of flies in the Blood Swamp and skinslicing rocks in salt plains, through day and night. I walked as far south as Omororo and did not know or care. Men detained me as a beggar, took me for a thief, tortured me as a traitor, and when news of the dead child reached your kingdom, arrested me as a murderer. Did you know there were five men in my cell? Four nights ago. The scarf around my neck belongs to the only man who left on two feet. He might even see from his right eye again one day.

Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson – an excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

In Kate Atkinson’s new book, Big Sky, Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village in North Yorkshire, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son Nathan and ageing Labrador Dido, both at the discretion of his former partner Julia. It’s a picturesque setting, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes.

Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, seems straightforward, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network—and back into the path of someone from his past. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking new novel, both sharply funny and achingly sad, by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today.

Read on for an exclusive first chapter of the book.

The Battle of the River Plate

And there’s the Ark Royal, keeping a good distance from the enemy…There were a couple of quiet explosions – pop-pop-pop. The noise of tinny gunfire competing unsuccessfully with the gulls wheeling and screeching overhead.

Oh, and the Achilles has taken a hit, but luckily she has been able to contact the Ark Royal, who is racing to her aid . . .

‘Racing’ wasn’t quite the word that Jackson would have used for the rather laboured progress the Ark Royal was making across the boating lake in the park.

And here come the RAF bombers! Excellent shooting, boys! Let’s hear it for the RAF and the escorts. .  .

A rather weak cheer went up from the audience as two very small wooden planes jerked across the boating lake on zip wires.

‘Jesus,’ Nathan muttered. ‘This is pathetic.’

‘Don’t swear,’ Jackson said automatically. It was pathetic in some ways (the smallest manned navy in the world!), but that was the charm of it, surely? The boats were replicas, the longest twenty foot at most, the others considerably less. There were park employees concealed inside the boats, steering them. The audience was sitting on wooden benches on raked concrete steps. For an hour beforehand an old- fashioned kind of man had played old-fashioned kind of music on an organ in a bandstand and now the same old-fashioned man was commentating on the battle. In an old-fashioned kind of way. (‘Is this ever going to end?’ Nathan asked.)

quotation

‘Didn’t you hear, Jackson?’ Julia said. ‘The class war’s over. Everyone lost.’

Jackson had come here as a kid once himself, not with his own family (when he had a family) – they never did anything together, never went anywhere, not even a day-trip. That was the working class for you, too busy working to have time for pleasure, and too poor to pay for it if they managed to find the time. (‘Didn’t you hear, Jackson?’ Julia said. ‘The class war’s over. Everyone lost.’) He couldn’t remember the circumstances – perhaps he had come here on a Scouts outing, or with the Boys’ Brigade, or even the Salvation Army – the young Jackson had clung to any organization going in the hope of getting something for free. He didn’t let the fact that he was brought up as a Catholic interfere with his beliefs. He had even signed the Pledge at the age of ten, promising the local Salvation Army Temperance Society his lifelong sobriety in exchange for a lemonade and a plate of cakes. (‘And how did that work out for you?’ Julia asked.) It was a relief when he eventually discovered the real Army, where everything was free. At a price.

‘The Battle of the River Plate,’ Jackson told Nathan, ‘was the first naval battle of the Second World War.’ One of his jobs as a father was to educate, especially on his specialist subjects – cars, wars, women. (‘Jackson, you know nothing about women,’ Julia said. ‘Exactly,’ Jack- son said.) Nathan met any information conveyed to him by either rolling his eyes or appearing to be deaf. Jackson hoped that, some- how or other, his son was unconsciously absorbing the continual bombardment of advice and warnings that his behaviour necessitated – ‘Don’t walk so close to the edge of the cliff. Use your knife and fork, not your fingers. Give up your seat on the bus.’ Although when did Nathan ever go anywhere on a bus? He was ferried around like a lord. Jackson’s son was thirteen and his ego was big enough to swallow planets whole.

quotation

Looking on the bright side, Nathan was talking in more or less whole sentences this afternoon, rather than the usual simian grunts.

‘What do they mean – “manned”?’ Nathan said. ‘There are people inside the boats, steering them.’ ‘There aren’t,’ he scoffed. ‘That’s stupid.’

‘There are. You’ll see.’

Here comes Exeter as well. And the enemy submarine is in trouble now . . .

‘You wait,’ Jackson said. ‘One day you’ll have kids of your own and you’ll find that you make them do all the things that you currently despise – museums, stately homes, walks in the countryside – and they in turn will hate you for it. That, my son, is how cosmic justice works.’

‘I won’t be doing this,’ Nathan said.

‘And that sound you can hear will be me laughing.’ ‘No, it won’t. You’ll be dead by then.’

‘Thanks. Thanks, Nathan.’ Jackson sighed. Had he been so callous at his son’s age? And he hardly needed reminding of his mortality, he saw it in his own boy growing older every day.

Looking on the bright side, Nathan was talking in more or less whole sentences this afternoon, rather than the usual simian grunts. He was slumped on the bench, his long legs sprawled out, his arms folded in what could only be described as a sarcastic manner. His feet (designer trainers, of course) were enormous – it wouldn’t be long before he was taller than Jackson. When Jackson was his son’s age he had two sets of clothes and one of those was his school uniform. Apart from his gym plimsolls (‘Your what?’ Nathan puzzled), he had possessed just the one pair of shoes and would have been baffled by the concepts ‘designer’ or ‘logo’.

By the time Jackson was thirteen his mother was already dead of cancer, his sister had been murdered and his brother had killed him- self, helpfully leaving his body – hanging from the light fitting – for Jackson to find when he came home from school. Jackson never got the chance to be selfish, to sprawl and make demands and fold his arms sarcastically. And anyway, if he had, his father would have given him a good skelping. Not that Jackson wished suffering on his son – God forbid – but a little less narcissism wouldn’t go amiss.

Julia, Nathan’s mother, could go toe to toe with Jackson in the grief stakes – one sister murdered, one sister who killed herself, one who died of cancer. (‘Oh, and don’t forget Daddy’s sexual abuse,’ she reminded him. ‘Trumps to me, I think.’) And now all the wretched- ness of their shared pasts had been distilled into this one child. What if somehow, despite his untroubled appearance, it had lodged in Nathan’s DNA and infected his blood, and even now tragedy and grief were growing and multiplying in his bones like a cancer. (‘Have you even tried being an optimist?’ Julia said. ‘Once,’ Jackson said. ‘It didn’t suit me.’)

‘I thought you said you were going to get me an ice-cream.’

‘I think what you meant to say was, “Dad, can I have that ice- cream you promised and seem to have temporarily forgotten about? Please?’’ ’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ After an impressively long pause he added, reluctantly, ‘Please.’ (‘I serve at the pleasure of the President,’ an unruffled Julia said when their offspring demanded something.)

quote

She had a lovely throaty laugh, especially when being self-deprecating. Or pretending to be. It had a certain charm.

‘What do they mean – “manned”?’ Nathan said. ‘There are people inside the boats, steering them.’ ‘There aren’t,’ he scoffed. ‘That’s stupid.’

‘There are. You’ll see.’

Here comes Exeter as well. And the enemy submarine is in trouble now . . .

‘You wait,’ Jackson said. ‘One day you’ll have kids of your own and you’ll find that you make them do all the things that you currently despise – museums, stately homes, walks in the countryside – and they in turn will hate you for it. That, my son, is how cosmic justice works.’

‘I won’t be doing this,’ Nathan said.

‘And that sound you can hear will be me laughing.’ ‘No, it won’t. You’ll be dead by then.’

‘Thanks. Thanks, Nathan.’ Jackson sighed. Had he been so callous at his son’s age? And he hardly needed reminding of his mortality, he saw it in his own boy growing older every day.

Looking on the bright side, Nathan was talking in more or less whole sentences this afternoon, rather than the usual simian grunts. He was slumped on the bench, his long legs sprawled out, his arms folded in what could only be described as a sarcastic manner. His feet (designer trainers, of course) were enormous – it wouldn’t be long before he was taller than Jackson. When Jackson was his son’s age he had two sets of clothes and one of those was his school uniform. Apart from his gym plimsolls (‘Your what?’ Nathan puzzled), he had possessed just the one pair of shoes and would have been baffled by the concepts ‘designer’ or ‘logo’.

By the time Jackson was thirteen his mother was already dead of cancer, his sister had been murdered and his brother had killed him- self, helpfully leaving his body – hanging from the light fitting – for Jackson to find when he came home from school. Jackson never got the chance to be selfish, to sprawl and make demands and fold his arms sarcastically. And anyway, if he had, his father would have given him a good skelping. Not that Jackson wished suffering on his son – God forbid – but a little less narcissism wouldn’t go amiss.

Julia, Nathan’s mother, could go toe to toe with Jackson in the grief stakes – one sister murdered, one sister who killed herself, one who died of cancer. (‘Oh, and don’t forget Daddy’s sexual abuse,’ she reminded him. ‘Trumps to me, I think.’) And now all the wretched- ness of their shared pasts had been distilled into this one child. What if somehow, despite his untroubled appearance, it had lodged in Nathan’s DNA and infected his blood, and even now tragedy and grief were growing and multiplying in his bones like a cancer. (‘Have you even tried being an optimist?’ Julia said. ‘Once,’ Jackson said. ‘It didn’t suit me.’)

‘I thought you said you were going to get me an ice-cream.’

‘I think what you meant to say was, “Dad, can I have that ice- cream you promised and seem to have temporarily forgotten about? Please?’’ ’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ After an impressively long pause he added, reluctantly, ‘Please.’ (‘I serve at the pleasure of the President,’ an unruffled Julia said when their offspring demanded something.)

‘What do you want?’

‘Magnum. Double peanut butter.’

‘I think you might be setting your sights quite high there.’ ‘Whatever. A Cornetto.’

‘Still high.’

Nathan came trailing clouds of instructions where food was concerned. Julia was surprisingly neurotic about snacks. ‘Try and control what he eats,’ she said. ‘He can have a small chocolate bar but no sweets, definitely no Haribo. He’s like a Gremlin after midnight if he gets too much sugar. And if you can get a piece of fruit into him then you’re a better woman than me.’ Another year or two and Julia would be worrying about cigarettes and alcohol and drugs. She should enjoy the sugar years, Jackson thought.

‘While I’m getting your ice-cream,’ Jackson said to Nathan, ‘make sure you keep an eye on our friend Gary there in the front row, will you?’ Nathan showed no sign of having heard him so Jackson waited a beat and then said, ‘What did I just say?’

‘You said, “While I’m gone make sure you keep an eye on our friend Gary there in the front row, will you?”’

‘Right. Good,’ Jackson said, slightly chastened, not that he was going to show it. ‘Here,’ he said, handing over his iPhone, ‘take a photograph if he does anything interesting.’

When Jackson got up, the dog followed him, labouring up the steps behind him to the café. Julia’s dog, Dido, a yellow Labrador, overweight and ageing. Years ago, when Jackson was first introduced to Dido by Julia (‘Jackson, this is Dido – Dido, this is Jackson’), he thought the dog must have been called after the singer, but it turned out she was the namesake of the Queen of Carthage. That was Julia in a nutshell.

quote

‘Nat Brodie’, on the other hand, sounded like a robust adventurer, someone striking west, following the frontier in search of gold or cattle, loose-moraled women following in his wake.

Dido – the dog, not the Queen of Carthage – also came with a long list of instructions. You would think Jackson had never looked after a child or a dog before. (‘But it wasn’t my child or my dog,’ Julia pointed out. ‘I believe that should be our child,’ Jackson said.)

Nathan had been three years old before Jackson was able to claim any ownership of him. Julia, for reasons best known to herself, had denied that Jackson was Nathan’s father, so he had already missed the best years before she admitted to his paternity. (‘I wanted him to myself,’ she said.) Now that the worst years had arrived, however, it seemed that she was more than keen to share him.

Julia was going to be ‘ferociously’ busy for nearly the entire school holiday, so Jackson had brought Nathan to stay with him in the cottage he was currently renting, on the east coast of Yorkshire, a couple of miles north of Whitby. With good wi-fi Jackson could run his business – Brodie Investigations – from just about anywhere. The internet was evil but you had to love it.

Julia played a pathologist (‘the pathologist,’ she corrected) in the long-running police procedural Collier. Collier was described as ‘gritty northern drama’, although these days it was tired hokum thought up by cynical metropolitan types off their heads on coke, or worse, most of the time.

Julia had been given her own storyline for once. ‘It’s a big arc,’ she told Jackson. He thought she said ‘ark’ and it took him a while to sort this mystery out in his head. Now, still, whenever she talked about ‘my arc’ he had a vision of her leading an increasingly bizarre parade of puzzled animals, two by two, up a gangplank. She wouldn’t be the worst person to be with during the Flood. Beneath her scatty, actressy demeanour she was resilient and resourceful, not to mention good with animals.

Her contract was up for renewal and they were drip-feeding the script to her, so, she said, she was pretty certain that she was heading for a grisly exit at the end of her ‘arc’. (‘Aren’t we all?’ Jackson said.) Julia was sanguine, it had been a good run, she said. Her agent was keeping an eye on a Restoration Comedy that was coming up at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. (‘Proper acting,’ Julia said. ‘And if that fails there’s always Strictly. I’ve been offered it twice already. They’re obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel.’) She had a lovely throaty laugh, especially when being self-deprecating. Or pretending to be. It had a certain charm.

‘As suspected, no Magnums, no Cornettos, they only had Bassani’s,’ Jackson said, returning with two cones held aloft like flambeaux. You might have thought that people would want their kids to stop eating Bassani’s ice-cream after what had happened. Carmody’s amusements were still there as well, a rowdy, popular presence on the front. Ice-cream and arcades – the perfect lures for kids. It must be getting on for a decade since the case was in the papers? (The older Jackson grew, the more slippery time became.) Antonio Bassani and Michael Carmody, local ‘worthies’ – one of them was in jail and the other one had topped himself, but Jackson could never remember which was which. He wouldn’t be surprised if the one in jail wasn’t due to get out soon, if he hadn’t already. Bassani and Carmody liked kids. They liked kids too much. They liked handing kids around to other men who liked kids too much. Like gifts, like forfeits.

An eternally hungry Dido had waddled back hopefully on his heels and in lieu of ice-cream Jackson gave her a bone-shaped dog treat. He supposed it didn’t make much difference to her what shape      it was.

‘I got a vanilla and a chocolate,’ he said to Nathan. ‘Which do you want?’ A rhetorical question. Who under voting age ever chose vanilla?

‘Chocolate. Thanks.’

Thanks – a small triumph for good manners, Jackson thought. (‘He’ll come good in the end,’ Julia told him. ‘Being a teenager is so difficult, their hormones are in chaos, they’re exhausted a lot of the time. All that growing uses up a lot of energy.’) But what about all those teenagers in the past who had left school at fourteen (nearly the same age as Nathan!) and gone into factories and steelworks and down coal mines? (Jackson’s own father and his father before him, for example.) Or Jackson himself, in the Army at sixteen, a youth broken into pieces by authority and put back together again by it as a man. Were those teenagers, himself included, allowed the indulgence of chaotic hormones? No, they were not. They went to work alongside men and behaved themselves, they brought their pay packets home to their mothers (or fathers) at the end of the week and— (‘Oh, do shut up, will you?’ Julia said wearily. ‘That life’s gone and it isn’t coming back.’)

‘Where’s Gary?’ Jackson asked, scanning the banks of seats. ‘Gary?’

‘The Gary you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on.’

Without looking up from his phone, Nathan nodded in the direction of the dragon boats where Gary and Kirsty were queuing for tickets.

And the battle is over and the Union Jack is being hoisted. Let’s have a cheer for the good old Union flag!

Jackson cheered along with the rest of the audience. He gave Nathan a friendly nudge and said, ‘Come on, cheer the good old Union flag.’

‘Hurrah,’ Nathan said laconically. Oh, irony, thy name is Nathan Land, Jackson thought. His son had his mother’s surname, it was  a source of some contention between Julia and Jackson. To put it mildly. ‘Nathan Land’ to Jackson’s ears sounded like the name of an eighteenth-century Jewish financier, the progenitor of a European banking dynasty. ‘Nat Brodie’, on the other hand, sounded like a robust adventurer, someone striking west, following the frontier in search of gold or cattle, loose-moraled women following in his wake. (‘When did you get so fanciful?’ Julia asked. Probably when I met you, Jackson thought.)

‘Can we go now?’ Nathan said, yawning excessively and unselfconsciously.

‘In a minute, when I’ve finished this,’ Jackson said, indicating his ice-cream. Nothing, in Jackson’s opinion, made a grown man look more of a twit than walking around licking an ice-cream cone.

The combatants of the Battle of the River Plate began their lap of honour. The men inside had removed the top part of the boats – like conning towers – and were waving at the crowd.

‘See?’ Jackson said to Nathan. ‘Told you so.’

Nathan rolled his eyes. ‘So you did. Now can we go?’ ‘Yeah, well, let’s just check on our Gary.’

Nathan moaned as if he was about to be waterboarded. ‘Suck it up,’ Jackson said cheerfully.

Now that the smallest manned navy in the world was sailing off to its moorings, the park’s dragon boats were coming back out – pedalos in bright primary colours with long necks and big dragon heads, like cartoon versions of Viking longboats. Gary and Kirsty had already mounted their own fiery steed, Gary pedalling heroically out into the middle of the boating lake. Jackson took a couple of photos. When he checked his phone he was pleasantly surprised to find that Nathan had taken a burst – the modern equivalent of the flicker-books of his own childhood – while Jackson was off buying the ice-creams. Gary and Kirsty kissing, puckered up like a pair of puffer fish. ‘Good lad,’ Jackson said to Nathan.

‘Now can we go?’ ‘Yes, we can.’

 To know what happens next, get a copy of the book, here!

The Pathan Threat – an excerpt from ‘Dawood’s Mentor’

Posted on by Penguin India

Tired of being bullied, a scrawny, impoverished Dawood Ibrahim is looking for a saviour, Khalid Khan Bachcha, who would teach him the ropes of handling a bunch of hooligans. Instead, what he gets is a mentor who eventually transforms him into a cunning mafia boss.

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of Hussain Zaidi’s new book, Dawood’s Mentor

The barrel of the gun was pointed at Dawood Ibrahim’s heart. The gunman had been training his focus for a long time. He was waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger. The gunman had only one chance. If the bullet missed the target, the man at the other end would certainly gift him a not-so-exquisite death.

The man pointing the muzzle at Dawood had been sent by his arch-rivals from the underworld. The gunman was accompanied by his cronies, who were huge, hefty men called the Pathans, with Peshawari and Afghan ancestry. Since the 1950s, the Pathans, known for their moneylending habits, had taken to crime. Cousins Amirzada and Alamzeb wanted Dawood dead. The man was a menace. An audacious chit of a boy, he challenged the Pathan hegemony, and since the time he had emerged in the area as a small-time criminal, was proving to be a headache for the Pathans.

In the 1970s, the turf war among the mob generally ended with some serious skirmishes. But the Pathans were so furious with the tenacious Dawood Ibrahim that they decided to investigate his sources of power. They found a nexus between local newspaper-owner and crime reporter Iqbal Natiq and Dawood. The two shared an amazing rapport, with Dawood invariably spending a couple of hours every day at Natiq’s office in BIT Blocks in Dongri. And Natiq’s newspaper—Raazdaar (The Confidante)—exposed the Pathans often, which brought the police to their doorstep.

As retribution, the Pathans killed Natiq brutally. Dawood and his brother Sabir Kaskar swore revenge. Their first target was Saeed Batla. They did not kill Batla, preferring, instead, to maim him and amputate his fingers, something unheard of in the Indian underworld in those times. Before they could proceed with such ‘special treatment’ for the other Pathans, the police picked them up. However, the Kaskar brothers managed to secure bail on attempt-to-murder charges.

Upon receiving bail, as is routine in any police prosecution case, Sabir and Dawood were supposed to intermittently present themselves at the Nagpada police station in central Bombay (now Mumbai). They had to assure the cops that they were not up to any mischief and that they were miles away from any criminal activities. The slang for these routine police-station visits is haazari lagana (marking one’s attendance), where the accused meet the police inspector, answer a few questions and leave within a few minutes.

Dawood preferred the formality of the official haazari to the cold walls of the prison and, of course, it helped that these visits ensured that the police did not land up at their house and complain to their father, Ibrahim Kaskar, who was also a cop. Kaskar senior was an absolute disciplinarian who was known to reserve his leather-belt treatment for the unbridled Dawood, his third child.

On that cool afternoon in October 1980, a defenceless Dawood, along with Sabir, was the target. The Pathans—Amirzada and Alamzeb—knew that Dawood would not be carrying any weapons to the police station. They decided to take advantage of this particular visit to finish off Dawood, because under no other circumstances would they find him unarmed.

But what they did not see coming was another Pathan, Khalid Khan, who shepherded Dawood to the police station that day. Built like a mountain, with a towering height of 6 feet 2 inches and a brawny physique, Khalid was very attached to the promising young Dawood.

Earlier, Khalid had cut his teeth in crime with another don, a local strongman by the name of Bashu Dada. But that was long before Dawood endeared himself to him. Khalid was very protective of Dawood, and that particular day his instincts told him that Dawood would be vulnerable and in a tight spot around the police station. He rationalized that since Nagpada was closer to Kamathipura and Tardeo, the stronghold of the Pathans, they might make a play for Dawood.

Khalid cancelled all his engagements scheduled for that day and decided to follow Dawood to the police station. He also decided to escort him back to his headquarters at Musafir Khana, safe and unharmed. Since Khalid’s name was not in the First Information Report (FIR), he could safely accompany Dawood and also carry a weapon on the sly. The cops would not frisk him for weapons, he surmised.

After Dawood and Sabir signed their attendance and completed other formalities, they saluted the cops—there was a lot of respect for the uniform; it came from their father—and were on their way towards the exit.

They were oblivious to the face of death staring at them from the opposite building and were nonchalantly walking out unaware that their lives would irrevocably change after a few minutes. What transpired in the next few minutes, however, changed Dawood forever, making him invincible.

Khalid, who was extremely alert and looking around, scanning the perimeter, eyes darting like a panther after its prey, suddenly sensed the movement even before he saw the gun. He spotted the barrel of the gun, held by a man at the ground-floor window of Memnani Mansion next door. Khalid knew the man wanted Dawood first, not Khalid or Sabir. In that split second, both the gunman and Khalid acted swiftly.

The gunman pulled the trigger and a bullet flew out, whizzing towards Dawood.

‘Dawood, hato!’ Khalid screamed.

Khalid moved with amazing speed and, before the bullet could complete its trajectory, he managed to push Dawood aside and, in the same moment, whipped out his revolver hidden in the small of his back. Amirzada’s bullet, which was meant for Dawood’s heart, grazed Khalid’s left arm. Khalid began firing at the gunman. Amirzada, who was firing at Dawood, was oblivious to Khalid and Sabir. He had to kill Dawood and kept firing at him. By the time he realized that Khalid had retaliated, he had already been hit below the hip and the bullet got lodged in the flesh. His crony, Alamzeb, saw the blood gushing out and realized that their game was up.

What happens next? Read Dawood’s Mentor to find out!

Beast – an excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

When Assistant Commissioner of Police Aditi Kashyap is called upon to solve a gruesome triple homicide in a Mumbai suburb, she is dragged into the terrifying world of the Saimhas — werelions — who have lived alongside humans, hiding amongst them, since ancient times.

Faced with the unbelievable, Aditi has no choice but to join hands with Prithvi, an Enforcer called in to hunt down this seemingly otherworldly murderer.

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of Krishna Udayasankar’s book, Beast.

The man knew these were his last moments, but his adrenaline fuelled feet kept moving through the rubble and brush. For the first—and only—time ever, he regretted his life of crime as he looked with longing at the warm light spilling out from a cluster of apartments at the far end of the field. But they were too far away to offer hope of help or safety. He had made sure of that. He had chosen this spot because it was perfect for murder.

The irony made Rajan pause, and as he did, his eyes fell on a rusted frame, the partial skeleton of a long-abandoned, industrialsized garbage bin. The smell of fear in his nostrils overpowered the rotten stench that came from it. He clambered inside and crouched down in a corner, his hands clapped over his mouth to silence his own gasps.

The others were dead. Daniel had been the first to fall, before any of them could even understand what had transpired. For his part, Rajan still did not understand.

Kailash had opened the bag to check the money when, out of nowhere, something warm had splashed across his face. A shape had gone flying through the air and landed at his feet, wriggling and squirming: Daniel’s arm, ripped off at the shoulder, the nerve endings at the tips of the fingers still unaware that the body they belonged to was no longer alive. Kailash had secured the bag with one arm while pulling out his gun with the other. He had let loose a few aimless shots in the manner of one who believed that a gun was the solution to all of life’s problems. As soon as the gunfire abated, the screaming had begun.

Rajan had not waited to see what became of Kailash, or to identify the nature of their enemy—the mangled limb at his feet had made it clear that their attacker, whoever it was, ought not to be messed with.

His breath now under control, Rajan set himself to listen for signs of pursuit. Silence sharpened his fear, turning it into a stabbing cramp in the pit of his stomach, as though some force were sucking him dry from within his body.

A rustle, and he started whimpering. Then a loud crash as the wall of the metal bin crumpled inwards, struck from the outside by a powerful force. Another strike and the bin toppled over, ejecting its contents onto the ground. A new stink rose as Rajan soiled himself. All restraint gone, he began wailing loudly, his despair so terrible that it drove all words—even memories of mother and god—out of his mind. He turned to hide his face against the ground as a lithe form stalked out from behind the bin. His hand fell on the bag he was carrying.

A faint hope fluttered through the thug. He staggered to his feet, holding out the bag. ‘Take it. Take it all. Take it, but leave me alive, please, take it, take it, leave me!’

Then, he saw his hunter. Panic turned into a calm madness that made him fall silent and stand still. He was dreaming. He was not dreaming. This could not be happening. It was. Nothing made sense any more. Not even death. This was worse.

Words, he realized, meant nothing to the hunter. Nor did the money. But was there something in his tone, his entreating, that made sense to the monster? It tilted its head to one side, evaluating him, his whimpers.

‘Please . . .?’ Rajan pleaded, one last time.

Its breath was hot. He felt it against his face as the thing sunk its teeth, its long, ivory-white teeth, into his neck. Its thick tongue smacked against his face as it sucked up the blood that began to flow. His blood. He began screaming, but no sound came from his mouth. His vocal cords were already severed. How was it that he was alive?

Even as the thought occurred to him, the creature rectified its apparent omission, biting off his skull like a petulant child pulling off a doll’s head.

Bone crunched against tooth as the creature rolled its toy around in its mouth. With a dissatisfied rumble, it spit the morsel out. The beast clawed once at the headless corpse, like a kitten asking to play, before giving up on the lifeless form. Then, licking its blood-soaked muzzle, it stalked away into the night.

To know how the story unfolds, grab your copy of Beast by Krishna Udayasankar!

Why Taxes? Understanding the Role of Government in an Economy – an excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

On 1 July 2017, Goods and Services Tax (GST) became a reality. The government hailed it as the biggest tax reform of independent India which would herald a new freedom for the nation and unify it with ‘One Nation One Tax’.

But why taxes? Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of Arun Kumar’s new book, Ground Scorching Tax to help understand the role of the Government in an economy and elaborates on the kinds of taxes.

GST is an indirect tax that is levied on goods and services. It is supposed to cover the entire chain of supply from raw material to the final stage of sale. By themselves, indirect taxes result in an increase in the prices of the goods and services on which they are imposed. So, why levy such a tax? And, what is the importance of putting a tax on goods and services?

In modern day economies, governments have to perform a variety of tasks which the markets are unable to perform efficiently. As societies have become more complex, the markets have not been able to perform many of the essential tasks and the public sector has been given a larger and larger role in the economy in most
countries. A key task in a poor country like India has been promoting development to overcome poverty and deprivation.

For a majority of the poor, the market does not provide a solution in crucial areas like education, health, drinking water, food, sewage and energy. So, the government has to provide these services in addition to what the individual cannot provide like defence, foreign policy, security and functioning of money. All these activities need to be financed and taxes are a source of revenue. So, people pay for the services that the government provides. In effect, services become available collectively rather than each one creating services on their own.

Kinds of Taxes: Direct and Indirect

GST has run into a plethora of problems from day one. But, there were difficulties with the earlier forms of taxes which were replaced by GST and that is why the need was felt for introducing the new tax. So, one could ask, why not do away with indirect taxes altogether. But then resources for running the government would be short. Are there other taxes that could substitute for indirect taxes? To understand whether one should replace one kind of taxes by another or not, it is necessary to understand the nature of the different kinds of taxes.

Broadly speaking there are two kinds of taxes—direct and indirect. Both fall on the income of the citizens but there is a difference as to how they work. As the name suggests, direct taxes fall on the income, the moment an income is earned. That is why they are called direct taxes. The indirect taxes fall on incomes when the goods and services are purchased/used.

Differences between Direct and Indirect Taxes

The implication is that direct taxes cannot be postponed while the indirect taxes can be postponed by not purchasing goods and services. As soon as an income is earned a direct tax becomes due. Due to this difference which at first glance appears to be small or inconsequential, the macroeconomic impact of these two kinds of
taxes on the economy is different.1 So, one is not equivalent to the other. Thus, one cannot replace direct taxes by indirect taxes without some (adverse) macroeconomic consequences.

Why do these differences arise when the tax is paid either way by the citizen? In the case of direct taxes, cost of production is not directly affected. It is paid on the income after costs are subtracted from the revenue earned. To explain better, let us consider this in greater detail. In the process of production, economic entities (individual and firms) earn an income—it can be profit or wage and salary. Out of profit, interest, rent and dividend are paid.

Profits are calculated as revenue minus costs, that is, revenue of the firm from the sales less the cost of production. When a tax (corporation tax) is levied on this business income, it does not change the cost of production. It only affects the firm’s income in hand (called disposable income). Similarly, when a worker gets a wage or a manager the salary, an income tax on this income does not impact the production cost. The employer does not adjust the wage or salary when the income tax changes (except in rare cases).

An indirect tax like excise duty or sales tax is levied on the value of the good or the service being sold and that raises the price of the good or the service. No wonder each time an excise duty is raised, the price of the good on which it is levied, rises. This leads to inflation and a fall in demand. All else remaining the same, indirect taxes are ‘stagflationary’, that is output stagnates while prices rise. No wonder, when the government wishes to stimulate the demand for a good, it cuts excise duty or sales tax on that item. During the global financial crisis starting in 2007, the Government of India cut excise duties.

In brief, indirect taxes add to the cost of a good or a service while direct taxes do not do so. Thus the former impacts production while the latter does not do so.

In this book, well-known economist Arun Kumar explains the reality behind GST. Known for not pulling any punches, the author explains why GST is a double-edged sword for the common man, why it will increase inequality across sectors and regions, why it will hurt small businesses-everything the government does not want you to know.

She Walks She Leads: Meet the Women Who Inspire India

Posted on by Penguin India

She Walks, She Leads by Gunjan Jain profiles twenty-four iconic women in modern India. These leaders tell their stories, up-close and personal. Their relentless ambition to shatter the glass ceiling, their pursuit for excellence and the challenges that came their way – all of this is captured vividly in this exclusive anthology.

Here are some quotes about some of the women from this book. Each chapter is available as an eShort on Penguin Petit!

Read about each woman on Penguin Petit, available on Amazon for as less as INR 15!

The Reluctant Family Man – an excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

He’s the destroyer of evil, the pervasive one in whom all things lie. He is brilliant, terrifying, wild and beneficent. He is both an ascetic and a householder, both a yogi and a guru. He encompasses the masculine and the feminine, the powerful and the graceful, the Tandava and the Laasya, the darkness and the light, the divine and the human.

In her book, The Reluctant Family Man, Nilima Chitgopekar uses the life and personality of Shiva-his self-awareness, his marriage, his balance, his detachment, his contentment-to derive lessons that readers can practically apply to their own lives.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction of the book!

Many a tumultuous event in the life of Shiva is recounted in the various Puranas. Shiva led a life of contradictions, unmitigated wonder and beauty. When faced with difficulties, he had to tread gently, take a deep look into himself, sometimes go against his inherent nature, and change, when need be. In the earliest and rather scant appearances, Shiva seems to have been a marginalized deity among the pantheon of gods, and yet he has become one of the most ubiquitous. Shiva, as Rudra, started off as being a silent, brooding sort of deity, but over the centuries, a spouse and two children were grafted on to his personality. The mythographers realized that they had to retain some of Shiva’s earliest features, for the sake of authenticity, but there was also a need to expand his range. New myths were added, providing Shiva with additional traits, enhancing his repertoire and ensuring his survival in an ever-expanding celestial world. Sometimes, these traits clashed with his older image and gave rise to interesting scuffles, tussles and uneasy truces, that may or may not flare up, to provide new teachings as the millennia roll by. I have endeavoured to distil from the whole mass of Shaiva mythology a fine essence. In spite of this individual effort, as so many before, I am often stumped, for Shiva has the aura of an enigma, constantly baffling, constantly satisfying and constantly fulfilling the needs of followers through the centuries.

A group—to the uninitiated, a bizarre group—is depicted in artistic renderings, under trees amid rolling hills, with partly snow-capped mountains in the background against a golden evening sky. The scene is one of calm comfort and general contentment. Shiva and Parvati are seated on leopard skin, absorbed, preparing an intoxicating drink. Parvati is richly dressed while Shiva is resplendent in all the accoutrements of an ascetic. He has a detached yet comely look on his face, covered head to toe in white ash as snakes slither around his neck. A smaller figure on the side is that of Skanda with six heads, and yet another is of Ganesha, who has an elephant’s head and the torso of a prepubescent boy. This is the most well-known celestial family, referred to as Shivaparivara—Shiva with his wife and two sons. The moment you think of a god with a family, you think of Shiva, with each eminent member of his family, holding a place in the hearts of devotees in and around the subcontinent and beyond. Shiva, the father of Ganesha and Skanda. Shiva, the husband of Parvati. Shiva, the son-in-law of Daksha. He truly has an actual family. Then there are the hordes of ganas who are inseparable from him, a family of followers whom he adores, and whose misshapen physical bodies are simultaneously a cause for mirth and deep philosophical understanding.

However, when we look at Shiva, in a clear visual sense, he seems to be verily clothed in the traits of an ascetic. Not just any old ascetic but a pronouncedly antinomian ascetic. He is a renouncer who is not supposed to have any interest in the family hearth and in everything that ties down a male member of Hindu society. His attributes of asceticism are unique and outlandish, to say the least, denoting a disregard for personal physical appearance, and a defiance and rejection of all socially sanctioned, literally man-made conventions and rules of conformity. It also represents a forsaking of all worldly activities and social participation while functioning as a dramatic marker of ‘outsiderhood’. So, Shiva is the only major god known to be an ascetic. Therefore, he is not just a yogi but a Mahayogi. He has opted out; no mores apply to him as he leads the solitary and contemplative life.

To know more about The Reluctant Family Man, click here!

Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

A mysterious lab. A sinister scientist. A secret history. If you think you know the truth behind Eleven’s mother, prepare to have your mind turned Upside Down in this thrilling prequel to the hit show Stranger Things.

It’s the summer of 1969, and the shock of conflict reverberates through the youth of America, both at home and abroad. As a student at a quiet college campus in the heartland of Indiana, Terry Ives couldn’t be farther from the front lines of Vietnam or the incendiary protests in Washington.

But the world is changing, and Terry isn’t content to watch from the sidelines.

Here is an exclusive excerpt from the book:

Dr. Martin Brenner wished he could see inside the minds of the subjects. No messy conversation to extract what they might or might not have seen, how effective the hypnotic tech­niques had been. No unreliable witnesses of their own experi­ence.

No lies unless he told them.

The young woman in front of him, Theresa Ives, had piqued his curiosity. Rare enough these days, especially in adult sub­jects. The way she’d sensed an opportunity and shown up sug­gested potential – hers would not be an easy mind to crack. The challenge would make their findings more meaningful. She didn’t seem afraid of him. He approved of that quality… at least when it wasn’t in a young charge who didn’t know how to take no for an answer.

“Better?” he asked as she sipped the water his aide had pro­vided.

She nodded and handed the glass back, smoothing soaked hair away from a cheek shiny with moisture. Tears and sweat both. Extremely susceptible to the drug cocktail, by all appearances.

“On a scale of one to ten, how strongly do you feel you’re still experiencing the effects of the medicine?”

Her eyes were clear for the answer she gave. “Eight.”

“Can you tell me what you saw?” he asked, keeping his voice kind.

A hesitation. But a brief one. “My parents’ funeral. In the church before it.”

“Yes, good. Do you remember anything else significant? How do you feel emotionally?”

She adjusted the hospital gown to more fully cover her legs. “I feel…” she hesitated. “Lighter somehow. Does that make sense?”

Brenner nodded. He’d taken a great pain from her, locked it away. She’d feel much lighter. The first stage to creating a mind susceptible to greater manipulations. And he’d have a tool to use for leverage in the future if he needed it. The key was to make sure she wasn’t aware of the change until then.

“And you don’t know why?”

“No.” She eyed him nervously. “Can I ask you something?”

He nodded again. “Of course.”

“What’s the purpose of this? Is it as important as I think? What do you want me to say?”

Before he could formulate a response to her three questions, she surprised him by shaking her head and giving a dry husk of a laugh. “Never mind, I’m sure that would violate the experiment rules. Like us talking on the way over here.”

“What do you mean?”

“He told us not to talk about the experiment.”

He looked at his aide, who studied the floor. That hadn’t been any direction of his. As long as the man took careful note of what was said, the participants could say anything and everything that popped into their minds.

“You should talk about whatever you want on the drive,” he said.

The aide nodded acknowledgment but didn’t look at him.

“Did you experience anything else of note in your trance state?” Dr. Brenner asked.

Terry heaved a breath. “All kinds of crazy shit. I’m so tired. I’ve never done that before.”

Ah, that explains some of the strong response.

“But when you answered your questionnaire…?” He waited.

This time, she had the grace to look guilty. “I said I had dropped acid several times. I thought you might want that.”

Potential. She was bursting with it.

Get your copy of Strangers Things: Suspicious Minds today!

 

A People’s Constitution – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways.

Rohit De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution

Here is an exclusive excerpt from the introduction of the book!

In December 1950 Mohammed Yasin, a young Muslim vegetable vendor in the small town of Jalalabad in north India, was in distress. He had received notification that the town government was implementing a new set of bylaws licensing the sale of various commodities and was providing only one license for the sale of vegetables in the town area. This license had been issued to a Hindu merchant, granting him a virtual monopoly over the vegetable trade in Jalalabad, which forced Yasin and other vegetable vendors to sell their goods after paying the license holder a certain fee. Yasin petitioned the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus directing the town committee not to prohibit the petitioner from carrying on his trade.

A writ of mandamus is an order issued by a superior court to compel a lower authority or government officer to perform mandatory or administrative duties correctly. Yasin’s lawyer argued that not only was the new regulation ultra vires (i.e., beyond the powers of the municipality), it also violated Yasin’s rights to a trade and an occupation, conferred by the Constitution of India.

As a vegetable vendor from a minor town, Yasin appears to be a nondescript bystander as the grand narratives of Indian history—independence, partition, elections, the integration of princely states—play out around him. Why should he be interesting to us today? Yasin is one of the first Indians to present himself before the new Indian Supreme Court as a rights-bearing citizen.

His problem and its solution both emerge from India’s new constitutional republican order and represent a phenomenon that is the subject of this book. Yasin’s constitutional adventure highlights three features, this book argues, that form the basis for Indian constitutionalism. First, the Constitution mattered as a limit to or a structure for daily living. Second, this constitutional engagement included large numbers of ordinary Indians, often from minorities or subaltern groups. Third, a significant number of these constitutional encounters were produced through the new Indian state’s attempt to regulate market relations.

India became independent at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. Three years later the Constituent Assembly, whose members were nominated by elected provincial legislatures, promulgated a new constitution declaring the state to be a “sovereign democratic republic. ” This was a remarkable achievement for that time. The Indian Constitution was written over a period of four years by the Constituent Assembly. Dominated by the Congress Party, India’s leading nationalist political organization, the assembly sought to include a wide range of political opinions and represented diversity by sex, religion, caste, and tribe. This achievement is striking compared to other states that were decolonized. Indians wrote the Indian Constitution, unlike the people of most former British colonies, like Kenya, Malaysia, Ghana, and Sri Lanka, whose constitutions were written by British officials at Whitehall. Indian leaders were also able
to agree upon a constitution, unlike Israeli and Pakistani leaders, both of whom elected constituent assemblies at a similar time but were unable to reach agreement on a document.

The Indian Constitution is the longest surviving constitution in the postcolonial world, and it continues to dominate public life in India. Despite this, its endurance has received little attention from scholars. Although there are a handful of accounts of constitution-making and constitutional design, the processes through which a society comes to adopt a constitution still remain underexplored.

Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.

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