The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy ★★★★☆

Read in 2025: The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy by Rahul Bhatia 📚

A sobering and horrifying look at the changes in Indian politics and its secular past. There were always some communally bigoted people, but now, they are in power, emboldening many more, and giving cover to the casual bigots.

Imagine if instead of 55% of white people being GOP/conservative, it were 85-90%, and if whites still were 80% of the population instead of now-63%, well, that’s India for you. Replace whites with Hindus, and you get a sense of how bad it can get.

Notable Highlights

The government’s own surveys showed that even the most oppressed class of Hindus was more prosperous than Muslims. [loc. 375]

They opposed it out of some fealty to high-minded ideals; he opposed it for survival. This distinction angered him. [loc. 615]

‘I feel safe when I’m in the ghetto. Here I can say anything. Here nobody cares when you talk about the government. They know it’s true. Anywhere else I would have to make sure someone isn’t listening.’ The ghetto protected him from the hate outside. It was home. [loc. 1572]

He wondered what it was like to be afforded the privilege of stupidity. The foolishness he had in mind was a freedom that Hindus took for granted – the freedom to say dumb things. [loc. 1613]

The city was already well acquainted with secret societies; they littered the landscape like boyish enthusiasms, present everywhere, but ultimately pointless. [loc. 2084]

Partha did not blame the RSS’s members, but he did not spare them either. He saw the RSS’s foot soldiers as limited by their intellectual experiences, ‘like, really sub-par intelligence. Ninety to 95 per cent of its members are practically brainless idiots,’ he said to me. [loc. 2846]

He believed that the arrangement worked well for the organisation. It needed followers to carry out commands across its vast network, it needed the execution of its instructions without interruption. ‘They dumb you down so that you are not allowed to think, question, or challenge. You just blindly follow directives from leaders. [loc. 2849]

Because at the end of the day, a thousand dumb people indoctrinated by someone smarter with certain talking points will always overwhelm a hundred smart people.’ [loc. 3692]

The crime was all over him, speaking plainly. The crime was in the absence of responsibility. It was in the promise of a spectacle, the tingling sensation of certain victory in a fight. He promised them the spectacle of a temple, but the path to it lay through hatred. [loc. 4000]

His questions did not take into account the main worry: that the number and everything connected to it put citizens at the mercy of the government. It would make the processes of governance more efficient, but what if the processes themselves were oppressive? Would a tool meant for efficiency then deliver oppression more efficiently? [loc. 4556]