The New India is the unforgettable account of the struggle between modern forces and ancient ideas to shape the young country’s destiny. It reveals a picture of a nation on the precipice of dramatic change.
‘Remarkable… fascinating… brilliant’ Guardian
Based on six years of detailed research and on-the-ground reporting, the book builds – authoritatively, vividly, indelibly – to become the story of post-colonial India. Using hundreds of interviews, and letters, diary entries, Partition-era police reports, and an astonishing range of sources, Bhatia shows how history plays a recurring role in the present: in politics, in the minds of citizens, in notions of justice and corruption.
Bhatia examines the connections between the Delhi riots of 2020 and the emergence of nineteenth-century revolutionary secret societies, the rise of Hindu nationalism, whose early advocates drew lessons from Hitler and Mussolini, the political use of misinformation and religious targeting, and the Hindu fundamentalist ideology that sparked the creation of the world’s largest biometric project. As Bhatia shows, the evolution of this citizen database, in the hands of the BJP, now threatens to deny vast numbers of India’s 200 million Muslims their Indian citizenship. Electorates in democracies used to choose their government. Now, in India, the government is choosing its electorate.
India has rarely been seen as in The New India, a monumental work of narrative reportage that illuminates the ways in which a supremacist ideology remade the country over decades, resulting in the prodigious rise of Narendra Modi, and forcing many to ask what they truly understood about their neighbours and themselves.
‘Remarkable… fascinating… brilliant’ Guardian
Based on six years of detailed research and on-the-ground reporting, the book builds – authoritatively, vividly, indelibly – to become the story of post-colonial India. Using hundreds of interviews, and letters, diary entries, Partition-era police reports, and an astonishing range of sources, Bhatia shows how history plays a recurring role in the present: in politics, in the minds of citizens, in notions of justice and corruption.
Bhatia examines the connections between the Delhi riots of 2020 and the emergence of nineteenth-century revolutionary secret societies, the rise of Hindu nationalism, whose early advocates drew lessons from Hitler and Mussolini, the political use of misinformation and religious targeting, and the Hindu fundamentalist ideology that sparked the creation of the world’s largest biometric project. As Bhatia shows, the evolution of this citizen database, in the hands of the BJP, now threatens to deny vast numbers of India’s 200 million Muslims their Indian citizenship. Electorates in democracies used to choose their government. Now, in India, the government is choosing its electorate.
India has rarely been seen as in The New India, a monumental work of narrative reportage that illuminates the ways in which a supremacist ideology remade the country over decades, resulting in the prodigious rise of Narendra Modi, and forcing many to ask what they truly understood about their neighbours and themselves.
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Reviews
A beautiful writing style
Both a chronicle and a cautionary tale: an illustration of how easily societies can be poisoned
Bhatia's book combines reporting, history and polemic... his account of the precursors to Hindu nationalism, reaching back to a Hindu reformist movement of the 19th century, is fascinating. So is his description of an early, unsuccessful attempt to create an identity system
This meticulously researched book is an unusual account of the dismantling of democracy in the world's most populous country. It is a portrait of how medieval religious sectarianism, modern majoritarianism, deepening poverty, all lashed together by the world's most ambitious data gathering project is driving India towards an alarming, unique model of authoritarianism. A serious subject, seriously addressed
Rahul Bhatia's The New India: The Unmaking of The World's Largest Democracy is an account of Hindu fascism from the inside, one with astounding resonances across all democracies currently threatened by fascism. It is one of the essential books for anyone interested in preserving democracy today
The most important book on India for many years
An important, timely and powerful account of India now. Rahul Bhatia's book is both rigorously reported and very readable. Highly recommended
The New India is a tour de force, and it will be one of the defining books of the Modi era. Rahul Bhatia's astonishingly granular and deeply empathetic reporting reveals an India well on its way to being an authoritarian dystopia
Really important, superbly researched, very well written
A disturbing chronicle of a country where the push to modernize has been accompanied by an assault on democratic institutions, along with surging discrimination and intolerance
Bhatia's remarkable book is an absorbing account of India's transformation from the world's largest democracy to something more like the world's most populous country that regularly holds elections... Bhatia captures the whole phenomenon brilliantly, painting a gloomy picture of what India has become
Reportage is the great strength of Rahul Bhatia's book
A New India is a reminder that the country never healed from the numerous times it was invaded
This is the stuff of black comedy. Worse, it is a testament to the bigoted backwater that the new India is becoming... Bhatia gives us some brilliant on-the-ground reportage