Grand Tamasha is Carnegie’s weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy, co-produced with Hindustan Times, India’s leading media outlet. For five years (and many more), I’ve been interviewing writers, journalists, policymakers and practitioners working on contemporary India, giving listeners around the world a glimpse into life in the world’s most populous country. Ta.
For the past two years, in preparation for the show’s holiday break, we’ve published an annual list of our favorite books that have been featured on the podcast over the past 12 months.
In keeping with this tradition, here we present Grand Tamasha’s top books of 2024 in no particular order. For those of you who are also listeners, you can download the latest episodes of the show. There I talk in detail about my favorite books of the year. , includes a clip of a conversation with the author.
Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva
Written by Janaki Bakr. Published by Princeton University Press.
In today’s era of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dominance, there are few historical figures whose writings and ideas help illustrate the current ideological zeitgeist as much as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Savarkar was an intellectual, essayist, poet, ideologue, and anti-colonial nationalist leader whose writings helped inspire today’s Hindu nationalist movement. Biographies of Savalkar have been sparsely published in recent years, numbering a few dozen volumes, but few can match the depth and texture of Bakhle’s definitive work.
While most analysts see Savarkar as a one-sided Hindutva ideologue, Bakhle argues that Savarkar was first and foremost a major public intellectual in Maharashtra, whose foundational works It is a reminder that it was not English or Hindi, but Marathi, the official language of the region. Bakul unearths a treasure trove of Savarkar’s wide-ranging writings in Marathi, ranging from historical essays to poems and political speeches. Soon, Savarkar’s black and white depictions give way to far more nuanced portraits. Although Bakr does not shy away from Savarkar’s controversial views on Hindu supremacy, he does not shy away from his lesser-known views as an anti-caste progressive, pioneering defender of women’s rights, and patriotic poet. There is also a new interest in avatars that are not yet available.
What emerges is a complex picture of a complex man. Savarkar was an atheist who opposed Hindu conservatives and emerged as their standard-bearer. Although he was virulently anti-Muslim, he was also surprisingly progressive when it came to caste. Although he created a political movement, he was as interested in literature and aesthetics as he was in politics. Whether you love Savarkar or hate him, you cannot ignore Bakr’s book.
Accelerating India’s Development: A State-led Roadmap for Effective Governance
Written by Kartik Muralidharan. Published by Penguin Viking India.
For the past two decades, few economists have been as prolific and as deeply involved in the world of development policymaking as Muralidharan, the Tata Chancellor Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. Since his early work on absenteeism among teachers and health workers, Muralidharan has tackled some of the most important and vexing development policy issues plaguing India today. Over the years, he has evaluated the effectiveness of teacher performance pay, school vouchers, biometric smart cards, and laptops in schools. “Accelerating India’s development” means the culmination of a career’s worth of work – a fitting statement given that Muralidharan is not yet 50 years old.
With over 600 pages of text and 200 pages of notes, Muralidharan takes readers through a thorough and deep dive into India’s governance challenges, particularly in the delivery of critical public services. This book provides actionable, evidence-based reform strategies based on rich research and practical insights. Mr. Muralidharan has an encyclopedic knowledge of India’s development policy and his books are a testament to his research and his attempts to encourage the Indian state to act more efficiently and effectively. . The book not only covers the standard topics of development policy, such as health, education and social protection, but also delves into areas that are usually the domain of political scientists, such as policing and the judiciary.
This book will be a go-to reference on India and broader development policy for years to come. A book like this requires ambition and a little bit of audacity. Muralidharan has both and the research to back it up.
The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy (published in the US and UK as The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy)
Written by Rahul Bhatia. Published by Context (South Asia). Little, Brown (UK). and PublicAffairs (USA).
Readers may recognize Bhatia’s byline from venerable publications such as The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Caravan. He has written high profile profiles of TV personality Arnab Goswami, controversial cricket chief N. Srinivasan and others. And his reporting covers subjects ranging from yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s mysterious business empire to the coronavirus pandemic. His new book, featured on the New York Times’ list of 100 books to watch in 2024, is based on six years of research and reportage across India, where he writes To call it ‘New India’ embarked on a quest to understand its ideological moorings.
The title of Bhatia’s book has a double meaning. This book is about the Indian government’s efforts to provide every resident with a unique biometric identification number (known as Aadhaar), but it also addresses the challenges of globalization, domestic social mobility, and economic It is also about this country’s quest to establish its own identity in the 21st century amidst change. Liberalization. The result is a book that spans everything from the riot-torn hamlets of east Delhi to the barren government machinery of India’s top bureaucrats. While the exact link between Aadhaar and today’s thriving Hindu nationalist movement is debated, Bhatia’s book nevertheless paints a disturbing picture of majoritarian democracy on the loose.
Bhatia’s skill as a writer shines through in his portrait of Nisar, a Delhi-based Muslim seeking justice for the gruesome mass violence witnessed in 2020. Life in Shakha, the local organizational base of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Bhatia spent time there as an observer. and the machinations of LK Advani, the Bharatiya Janata Party hardliner who first envisioned an all-India identification number. The vivid reportage of Bhatia’s book highlights the ongoing underground battles that will ultimately shape the future of India’s democracy.
Check out the best Grand Tamasha books of 2022 and 2023.
