100 Great Books: (Book 22: The Discovery of India)
The moral geography of India
India has been called an unnatural nation, a paradox, a puzzle and a political gamble. A statistical analysis of the relationship between democracy and development in 135 countries found that the odds against democracy in India were inordinately high.
We were predicted to be a dictatorship during the entire period of study (1950–1990). The fact that we were by and large a democracy during that period and continue to be so against all odds, is nothing short of a miracle. In fact, the historian Ram Guha goes to extent of saying that the real success story of modern India lies not in the domain of economics but in that of politics
Tomorrow is India’s Republic Day. You can read our “Understanding India” essays below.
Today, as part of our series on great books, we will cover The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru.
“India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads.”
Jawaharlal Nehru spent nearly nine years in prison between 1921 and 1945 for his leadership in India’s nationalist movement, butThe Discovery of India was written chiefly during his longest imprisonment, from 1942 to 1945, when he was detained without trial at Ahmednagar Fort following the British crackdown on the Quit India Movement. Classified as a political prisoner and held under emergency colonial laws, Nehru used the enforced isolation of jail to read widely and reflect on India’s past, turning incarceration into an intellectual project aimed at countering the colonial claim that India was merely a collection of territories rather than a continuous civilization capable of imagining itself as a nation.
