India in 50 Lives

I heard Sunil Khilnani reading this (his latest) book on Radio 4 and was instantly enthralled. The book is not less entrancing, informative, insightful, and delightful.

The book seemed like a good opportunity to begin to understand India, to unravel its rich contradictions, to peep under the canvas to see the puppeteers at work.

Anyone with any sense would have realised that this was too ambitious a goal, as I did half way through. It is not the book's fault that India is so complex, so confusing, and often so inexplicable. Indeed, even Sunil Khilnani seems occasionally baffled: for example, India's millennia-long obsession with caste, and its continuing acceptance of inequality (particularly of women) are simply impenetrable.

The choice of lives is interesting. There are some names here that are instantly recognised, but largely Sunil Khilnani has chosen unexpected subjects for his exquisite Stracheyesque pen-portraits. Smaller, but significant characters whose lives contributed to change, and characters who were briefly famous, but whose achievements quietly outlasted their names.

Sunil Khilnani writes elegant, clear prose, and achieves unity across 50 disparate lives by cross-referencing them frequently. Themes emerge, as caste does, and run through the lives like the lettering in seaside rock. The extraordinary Bhimrao Ambavadekar, aka Ambedkar, was born an untouchable, educated by the Raj, gained doctorates from Columbia and the LSE, was elected to Congress and was a pre-eminent intellectual and activist. He was an opponent of Gandhi, and worked with passion against the caste system. Laden down with degrees and mental agility, he had to leave a senior position simply because no landlord would rent him - once an untouchanle, always an untouchable - somewhere to live.

There are stunning insights, and powerful images. Khilnani imagines the women of India as a separate nation numbering 600 million. It would be the the world's third largest nation. Its population would have an average of a mere 3.2 years of schooling, 'neck and neck with Mozambique', and its per capita income would be comparable with Ivory Coast and Papua New Guinea. "It's sobering'" he concludes,"to see what a tripling of India's GDP since 200 has not done for its women".

If it's a desperate misfortune to be born untouchable, Khilnani leaves you in no doubt that being born a woman in India is worse: women buy into the very traditions (guess who established them) that continue to subjugate women in the home, at work, in society. 

He has a chilling image of a widow, aflame and in agony, attempting to leave her husband's funeral pyre where she is burning alive. As she struggles out of the flames, her way is blocked by a Hindu with a sword, and she obediently retreats to her death. She does not have many choices: none of them are good, and all of them are in the interests of men. It leaps out of the pages that living under your oppressor's rules is never going to bring about change. The puzzle is why India's women did not throw the men out of the balloon millennia ago.

This is a wonderful book: enlightening, humane, and quietly passionate. It is slightly earnest, and perhaps lacks a deft touch of humour. The brevity of each life is deceptive. Sharply focused mini-biographies are a difficult art form: Lytton Strachey made them possible with his beautiful experiments in biography, not only in Eminent Victorians but also in Portraits in Miniature and many of his tiny exquisite historical sketches. Over a period of 100 years he has had many imitators and few rivals. Sunil Khilnani pulls off the task with apparent ease.