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The new India : the unmaking of the world's largest democracy  Cover Image Book Book

The new India : the unmaking of the world's largest democracy / Rahul Bhatia.

Bhatia, Rahul, (author.).

Summary:

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. 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.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9781541704008 (hardcover)
  • Physical Description: 440 pages ; 24 cm
  • Edition: First US edition.
  • Publisher: New York : PublicAffairs, 2024.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Subject: Modī, Narendra, 1950- > Influence.
Democracy > India > History > 21st century.
Hindutva > India > History > 21st century.
Ideology > India > History > 21st century.
Muslims > India > Social conditions > 21st century.
Secret societies > India > History.
India > Civilization > 21st century.
India > Politics and government > 21st century.
India > Social conditions > 21st century.

Available copies

  • 1 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Cookstown Branch 954.0533 Bha 31681010397503 NONFIC Available -

  • Baker & Taylor
    "Investigates this slow burn of democracy in India, connecting past and present to offer the first thorough account of how the country is sliding towards autocracy...describ[ing] the religious, societal, and technological changes that have brought India to a point at which a nationalist mindset that despises democracy and human rights is spreading fast, all in an effort to bind the multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural country into a single identity"--
  • Grand Central Pub

    A New York Times Notable Book of 2024
    "An absorbing account of India's transformation" (The Guardian) from democracy towards autocracy told through "brilliant on-the-ground reportage" (The Times).

    Since Narendra Modi’s election in May 2014, India has become more dysfunctional and dangerous than ever. The "world's largest democracy" has seen a cascade of events ushered in by a nationalistic and religious government that have threatened the freedoms and identities of its citizens. If you support Modi, you are a bhakt, among the devoted. If you do not, you are an urban naxal, an unpatriotic traitor, and enemy of the Hindu faith. There is, increasingly, no room in between.

    In The New India, journalist Rahul Bhatia investigates this slow burn of democracy in India, connecting past and present to offer the first thorough account of how the country is sliding towards autocracy. He describes the religious, societal, and technological changes that have brought India to a point at which a nationalist mindset that despises democracy and human rights is spreading fast, all in an effort to bind the multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural country into a single identity.

    Through a character-driven narrative informed by on the ground reporting, he investigates the disinformation machine at the heart of the Modi government, the corrupt lawmakers whose work targets religious minorities, the police force bent on raiding every public newsroom, and the CEO behind the largest data collecting agency in the world whose invention has forever altered Indian elections. At the same time, Bhatia shows us the consequences of these efforts on everyday citizens—from Muslims attempting to hold on to their property to students protesting the government's overreach of their education to journalists being threatened for uttering a single word against the BJP party. What emerges is a timely, urgent and at times shocking portrait of a country that has turned on itself. 

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