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  • The Indian Ideology

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The Indian Ideology Kindle Edition

by Perry Anderson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 out of 5 stars (48)

The historiography of modern India is largely a pageant of presumed virtues: harmonious territorial unity, religious impartiality, the miraculous survival of electoral norms in the world’s most populous democracy. Even critics of Indian society still underwrite such claims. But how well does the “Idea of India” correspond to the realities of the Union?

In an iconoclastic intervention, Marxist historian Perry Anderson provides an unforgettable reading of the Subcontinent’s passage through Independence and the catastrophe of Partition, the idiosyncratic and corrosive vanities of Gandhi and Nehru, and the close interrelationship of Indian democracy and caste inequality.

The Indian Ideology caused uproar on first publication in 2012, not least for breaking with euphemisms for Delhi’s occupation of Kashmir. This new, expanded edition includes the author’s reply to his critics, an interview with the Indian weekly Outlook, and a postscript on India under the rule of Narendra Modi.

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  1. Print length
    202 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Verso
  4. Accessibility
    Learn more
  5. Publication date
    November 5, 2013
  6. File size
    453 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Anderson is unanswerable when he points to a consistent Indian pattern of silence, evasion, and distortion about India’s military occupation of Kashmir and its attendant regime of extrajudicial execution, torture, and detention. Many readers will be struck by the evidence Anderson adduces of the insidious dominance of upper-caste Hindus in every realm of social and political life and by his portrait of the primordial politics of caste and religion, which have enshrined a patrimonial state built on nepotism and dynasty worship. Admirers of Gandhi and Nehru will encounter many awkward facts, especially regarding their roles in the partition of India, a calamity usually blamed on British colonial administrators and Indian Muslim leaders.”
—Pankaj Mishra, Foreign Affairs

“Exposes some substantial faultlines in recent Indian writing about India and with some justice question the emerging concensus around India’s democratic successes.”
—David Arnold, Times Literary Supplement

“Anderson’s essays are well sourced and artfully crafted, offering a comprehensive history of India’s ideology.”
—Yahya Chaudhry, Jacobin

“He is right to ridicule the theological casuistry of much writing on Gandhi which strives, unconvincingly, to prettify the Mahatma’s bewildering inconsistencies and ingrained conservatism. On target, too, is his censure of smug bromides about the wholly tolerant and unifying nature of Hinduism. And his scepticism towards India’s claim to be a postcolonial democracy uniquely untainted by repression, emergency powers and other dark arts of territorial “unity” is also timely.”
—Maria Misra, Prospect

“Perry Anderson’s new book, The Indian Ideology, is a magnificent achievement. It is a product of his ability, near-unique in today’s world of ideas, to distill a country’s history and politics into a few thousand words that are at once combative and informative.”
—Mihir S Sharma, Business Standard

“Anderson’s dance of destruction has also opened up new avenues of self-knowledge in the Subcontinent. We would do well to engage with it calmly and honestly.”
—Namit Arora, Himal Southasian

“For the Left, Anderson’s critique raises a number of questions that it leaves tantalizingly unanswered. If democracy, secularism, and national unity as they are enshrined in liberal nationalist thinking are values that the Left must give up, where does that leave us? What could or should replace the “Idea of India”? What are the implications of this analysis for our understanding of the subcontinental state system and for the future of struggles for national self-determination and social emancipation? The Indian Ideology offers few answers to these questions, but is an excellent conversation starter.”
—Nagesh Rao, Radical Socialist

“A clear summary of the fight for independence, partition and its consequences. For this alone, it is worth reading.”
—Rahul Patel, Socialist Review

“Once in a while in any field of study, a book appears that can be called path breaking in terms of the quality of its critical review of the existing body of knowledge in that field and setting a new research agenda. This is one of those books in the field of Indian/South Asian studies.”
—Pritam Singh, Socialist Resistance

About the Author

Perry Anderson is the author of, among other books, Spectrum, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions, The Origins of Postmodernity, and The New Old World. He teaches history at UCLA and is on the editorial board of New Left Review.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00CQZ5R96
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso
  • Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 5, 2013
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 453 KB
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 202 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1781682609
  • Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Best Sellers Rank: #1,856,526 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars (48)

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
48 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

  • Sanjay S
    5.0 out of 5 stars Will challenge everything you believe about 'Independence' movement.
    Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Anderson's writing is impressive; fluid, engaging, and garnished with funny sarcasm. I would say this book (which is a set of three long essays) challenges you to rethink the romantic notions of the allegedly multicultural and democratic struggle for India's 'independence'. To do this, the author focuses on the various decisions taken at various points by the two most visible players of the anti-colonial struggle, namely, Gandhi and Nehru. The decisions are dismantled to reveal the problematic ideology that under-girded them. The ideology that Anderson illuminates is a toxic mix of Hindu nationalism combined with pretentious caste-blindness of the Indian National Congress. The BJP that emerged in eighties is thus shown to be just a more rabid variation of the Congress party. Ambedkar emerges as the one true visionary in this book. His quote, "Turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path," kept coming back to me as I read through this fascinating polemic.

    To conclude, this book will challenge everything savarna Indians have been brought up to believe about Gandhism, Independence, Partition, and post-colonial India. It provides a radical new framework for interpreting the current big issues of India, such as occupation in Kashmir and Northeast, and the evolution (not in a good way) of contemporary Indian political scenario.
    17 people found this helpful
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  • Ttm
    5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant. A major tour de force!
    Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    I think this book deserves to be on every bookshelf given the importance of a the second most populated country (and perhaps the most complicated country) in the world.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Sceptique500
    5.0 out of 5 stars The degenration of a democracy - a cautionary tale
    Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2014
    Two years after publication, only two reviews of this book have been posted on Amazon.com. Both seem to be from people with a background in India. This is regrettable. Not only is this book lucid, incisive, and well written - a pleasure to read. It resonates with lessons for the world beyond Indian borders: it highlights adjacent possible developments in many modern countries.

    Religion (the increasing role of religious sentiment), regionalism (the fracture of the national states in a mosaic of locally based factionalism vying for spoils form the center), and hidden repression (the increasing of state surveillance to quench opposition) are forces shaping India, but also countries where the political discourse of economic and social development as well as income distribution have been effectively silenced. India may be, in some ways, post-modernism in the making.

    Democracy, secularity, and unity are the three pillars of the "Indian ideology." The book traces its intellectual origins, its establishment in the new Republic, and its evolution, or its transmogrification until today. The fresco is not flattering and the outcome, so far, less than heartening - if hidden in plain view of the international community. About one third of the country life under martial law, the basic parameters of economic and social development (education, health, women's status) are dismal, and the political system has not only become criminal and corrupt, but also semi-feudal, with dynasties taking up a good part of the political space and cooperating on the basis of collective egoism (pg. 168). All the while, it has failed to shake off the explicit dirigisme of the Raj (doubled as socialism), reinforced by the pervasive role of caste.

    There have been highlights: the country has held together despite its infinite diversities. India is slowly breaking away from the rigid caste system, and it is beginning to address the issue of rural poverty (NREGA). The Supreme Court has taken on a novel role of pro-active conscience of the Constitution, and not just its interpreter (it has done so in a rather haphazard and frantic way).

    Foreign relations do not figure prominently in the analysis. Understandably so. Having established itself as one of the leaders of the Non-Alignment movement, India has practiced equidistance between the blocks of the Cold War as a way to concentrate politicians' minds on solipsism (except for managing its position in respect of Pakistan). Its foreign policies were little more than vague nods to the prevailing winds of change.

    The world is now at India's doors. On the one side it will no longer be able to avoid comparisons with countries like China (Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India), Mexico, or Brazil. It will faced international competition from them as its comparative advantage of speaking the English language fades (e.g. IT, and engineering). Whether India will want to be a "first tier" country in a multi-polar world, or whether it will content itself in the role of a swing-vote country (as today) is anyone's guess. Many of the hidden forces that will drive the country are exposed in this excellent book - a reason more to read it carefully.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • History Buff
    1.0 out of 5 stars Communist Double Talk
    Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2022
    Format: Paperback
    These Marxist Historian make make money capitalist way but spout nothing but distain for the capitalist society.
    Bottom line and gist of the Book is Indians are no European.(I mean English.) Pick and choose, double talk. I would recommend Rajmohan Gandhi " understanding Founding Fathers" to see the all wise professor
    fraud and racism.
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  • Reader
    2.0 out of 5 stars I think Professor Anderson missed quite a few points. ...
    Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    I think Professor Anderson missed quite a few points. Upon his recommendation I read Kathryn Tidrick's Gandhi. Wish Dr. Tidrick read more of Indian philosophy and the 19th century Indian thinkers before she wrote this book.
    2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very Substantive Historical Comment by Perry Anderson
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    This publication by Perry Anderson goes a long way in making sense of the deep historical fault lines that existed in the pre-partition British India and how these lead to partition. Anderson makes you understand how British created, for the first time, a United India, which had never existed before. And how this one entity of "United India" controlled from Delhi in a unitary structure, a tightly run federation could not have survived without the British power. With British withdrawal this continent needed a new constitutional arrangement, a framework like European Union, a confederal formula to extend that unity into future but the warring interests represented in Congress and Muslim League could not develop a consensus on power sharing leading to partition. A brilliant step by step analysis coupled with personality analysis of the main characters like Gandhi.
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  • Mr Brown
    5.0 out of 5 stars Imbecile indian
    Reviewed in India on March 18, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    I remain a water buffalo in this part of the world, which venerates the less yielding cow; eat, mulch and ignore everything without any recourse leaving it to the gods created by the magians.
    Flow of words and the hard facts by Perry Anderson is marvellous
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  • sadaf
    5.0 out of 5 stars excellent aftersale service by the seller.
    Reviewed in India on March 30, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Interesting book with deep insight and excellent aftersale service by the seller. They were very cooperative
    Report
  • al-Farabi
    5.0 out of 5 stars Perry Anderson has the unique gift of using over-rated Gandhi's ...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 17, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Perry Anderson has the unique gift of using over-rated Gandhi's own works to prove that all that was spun around this "saintly figure" was a myth. A well argued thesis which many would find hard to dispute. His analysis of majority of the Indian historians is vary accurate; they have colluded with the Indian Establishment to promote subterfuge in Indian politics.
    Report
  • Dr Selim Yusuf Gool
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 19, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    later ....
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