India (65 page)

1.
Valerian Rodrigues (ed.),
The Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar
, New Delhi, 2002, pp. 48–49. Some authorities date this piece of writing to 1935 or 1936.

2.
See Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner,
Census of India 2001
, New Delhi; World Bank Data Finder (available at
www.datafinder.worldbank.org
).

3.
Pioneer
, 16 November 1996.

4.
See Rodrigues (ed.),
Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar
, pp. 396–405.

5.
Ibid., pp. 150–71.

6.
Quoted in Kanshi Ram,
The Chamcha Age: An Era of the Stooges
, New Delhi, 1982, p. 99.

7.
Ibid., pp. 91 and 112.

8.
Omprakash Valmiki,
Joothan: A Dalit’s Life
, trans. Arun Prabha Mukherjee, Kolkata, 2007, p. 71.

9.
Ibid., p. 1.

10.
D. Ravikumar, “The Unwritten Writing: Dalits and the Media,” in Nalini Rajan (ed.),
21st Century Journalism in India
, New Delhi, 2007, p. 65. See S. Anand, “Jai Angrezi Devi Maiyya Ki,”
Open
, 8 May 2010.

11.
Jean-Luc Racine, “Caste and Beyond in Tamil Politics,” in Christophe Jaffrelot and Sanjay Kumar (eds.),
Rise of the Plebeians? The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies
, New Delhi, 2009, p. 441.

12.
Author’s interview with Anu Hasan, 25 January 2009.

13.
Har Gobind Khorana, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on molecular biology, was born in Raipur in what is now Pakistan and has spent most of his adult life away from the subcontinent. Born in 1922, he recently retired from MIT.

14.
Mail Today
, 8 October 2009;
IBNLive.com
, 13 October 2009;
Mail Today
, 6 January 2010. An assortment of people in India have claimed Venkatraman Ramakrishnan as their pupil, including one Professor Govindarajan, who said he was happy and proud to have taught this “more-than-average student” at “pre-university level” in Cuddalore. Venki Ramakrishnan thought this unlikely, since he had left Cuddalore at the age of three.

15.
Hindustan Times
, 6 April 2009.

16.
www.sanghparivar.org/blog/swastika/science-of-caste-varna-system-marriage-laws
.

17.
Author’s interview with Dr. Arijit Mukhopadhyay and Dr. Mitali Mukerji, 6 May 2009, with clarifications by email. Indian Genome Variation Consortium, “Genetic Landscape of the People of India: A Canvas for Disease Gene Exploration,”
Journal of Genetics
, Vol. 87, No. 1, April 2008, Bangalore. A good summary of this research can be found in
Frontline
(Chennai), 6 and 20 June 2008.

18.
Ajoy Bose,
Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati
, New Delhi, 2008, p. 35. Some of these anecdotes are drawn from Bose, who took them from Mayawati’s autobiography,
Mere Sangarshmai Jeevan Evam Bahujan Movement Ka Safarnama
, published in 2006 “for missionary objectives,” according to her official profile. A shorter (two-volume) English version was published in 2008:
A Travelogue of My Struggle-Ridden Life and of Bahujan Samaj
. See also Christophe Jaffrelot,
India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India
, London, 2003, pp. 387–425.

19.
Ambedkar’s sharp-tongued widow, Savita, denounced Kanshi Ram in 1997 for having “no knowledge” of her late husband’s political ideology. See Jaffrelot,
India’s Silent Revolution
, p. 423.

20.
See Anand, “Jai Angrezi Devi Maiyya Ki.”

21.
Quoted in Bose,
Behenji
, p. 68.

22.
Ram,
The Chamcha Age
, author’s note.

23.
Quoted in Bose,
Behenji
, p. 72.

24.
Bose,
Behenji
, p. 98.

25.
Aman Sethi, “Rule of the Outlaw,”
Frontline
, 17 December 2005;
IndianExpress.com
, 14 April 2009;
Mail Today
, 17 April 2010; Peter Wonacott, “Lawless Legislators Thwart Social Progress in India,”
Wall Street Journal
, 4 May 2007.

26.
Newsweek
, 27 April 2009.

27.
G. Anderson and M. Subedar,
The Expansion of British India (1818–1858
), London, 1918, pp. 189–93.

28.
Times of India
, 28 April 2009.

29.
Author’s interview with Akbar Ahmad, 27 April 2009.

30.
Author’s interview with Mukhtar Ansari, 28 April 2009.

31.
Independent
, 17 July 2009.

32.
Rodrigues (ed.),
Essential Writings of B. R. Ambedkar
, p. 283.

33.
Sir William Jones,
Institutes of Hindu Law: or, The Ordinances of Menu
, London, 1796, pp. iii–iv.

34.
Fali S. Nariman,
India’s Legal System: Can It Be Saved?
, New Delhi, 2006, p. 4.

35.
Jones,
Institutes of Hindu Law
, p. 124.

36.
The Laws of Manu
, trans. Wendy Doniger with Brian K. Smith, London, 1991, pp. 59, 91, 228 and 240.

37.
Mail Today
, 15 March 2010.

38.
Bose,
Behenji
, p. 177.

1.
Author’s interview with Satish (pseudonym), 11 November 2009.

2.
GQ
, October 2008.

3.
Hello!
, January 2009.

4.
Hello!
, December 2009.

5.
Amy Turner, “They Know the Way to the Top,”
Sunday Times
, 14 March 2010.

6.
Anjali Puri, “Bangkok Meri Jeb Mein,”
Outlook
, 28 July 2008.

7.
Housing Finance Mechanisms in India
, UN-HABITAT, Nairobi, 2008, p. 16; see also Arindam Bandyopadhyay et al.,
A Study of Residential Housing Demand in India
, MPRA Paper No. 9339, Munich, 2008.

8.
Hindu
, 17 May 2008;
Merinews
, 17 May 2008.

9.
Author’s interview with Nupur Talwar, 23 May 2010.

10.
Calcutta Telegraph
, 18 May 2008.

11.
DNAIndia.com
, 18 May 2008.

12.
PTI
, 21 May 2008.

13.
Author’s interview with Nupur Talwar, 23 May 2010.

14.
IBNLive.com
, 12 July 2008; TV footage.

15.
DNAIndia.com
, 30 May 2008.

16.
Mid-Day
, 26 June 2008.

17.
Full disclosure: Pinaki Misra is my wife’s uncle.

18.
Author’s interview with Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, 23 May 2010.

1.
Colonel Rafi-ud-Din,
Bhutto Ke Akhri 323 Din
[
Bhutto’s Last 323 Days
], Pakistan, 2005, as translated on
www.chowk.com/articles/9370
.

2.
William L. Richter, “The Political Dynamics of Islamic Resurgence in Pakistan,”
Asian Survey
, Vol. 19, No. 6, June 1979, pp. 555–56.

3.
See ibid., pp. 547–57.

4.
Author’s interview with Hashim Raza, 26 March 1996.

5.
William Logan,
Malabar
, Madras, 1887, p. 198.

6.
Ian Talbot,
Pakistan: A Modern History
, New York, 1998, p. 225.

7.
See Hassan Abbas,
Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror
, New York, 2005, pp. 109–15.

8.
Interview with
Le Nouvel Observateur
, 15 January 1998 (my translation).

9.
Associated Press
, 4 November 1999.

10.
See Ahmed Rashid,
Descent into Chaos: How the War against Islamic Extremism Is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia
, London, 2008.

11.
This line can be sourced to Stephen Philip Cohen,
The Idea of Pakistan
, Washington DC, 2004, p. 270, but I have heard it from a variety of other people.

12.
Author’s interview with Nawaz Sharif, 6 September 2007.

13.
See
www.pewglobal.org/database
.

14.
The table on p. 328 is based on
U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants, Obligations and Loan Authorizations
(the
Greenbook
); Katie Paul, “About Those Billions,”
Newsweek.com
, 21 October 2009. All data is in historical dollars. U.S. aid to Pakistan in 2001–9 included Coalition Support Fund assistance to fight the “war on terror.” U.S. aid received by India in 2001–09 does not include data for 2009, which was unavailable.

15.
See Abbas,
Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism
, p. 114.

16.
Speech to the International Writers’ Conference in Islamabad, 30 November 1995.

17.
Author’s interview with Ejaz Azim, 23 March 1996. More than a decade later, an increasing
number of young Pakistanis disbelieved their government’s propaganda on Kashmir and were more concerned with finding an enduring settlement to the dispute.

18.
See Katherine Frank,
Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi
, London, 2001, p. 486.

19.
Slate.com
, 25 June 2007.

20.
Author’s interview with Shakeel Ahmad Bhat, 6–7 November 2007. A version of this story appeared in the
Mail on Sunday
, 11 November 2007.

21.
Author’s interview with Hemant (pseudonym), 30 November 2009.

22.
Illustrated London News
, 1 January 1859.

23.
Quoted in John Keay,
India: A History
, London, 2000, p. 429.

24.
His Majesty’s Stationery Office,
East India (Proclamations
), London, 1908.

25.
See Nayantara Sahgal (ed.),
Before Freedom: Nehru’s Letters to His Sister
, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 373–74.

26.
Quoted in Jawaharlal Nehru,
The Discovery of India
, New Delhi, 2004 (first publ. 1946), p. 261.

27.
Quoted in Ramachandra Guha,
India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy
, London, 2007, p. 231. See pp. 226–41 for an account of this debate.

28.
Quoted in Judith M. Brown,
Nehru: A Political Life
, New Haven, 2003, p. 231.

29.
Author’s interview with Tazeen Faridi, 27 March 1996.

30.
India Today
conclave, TV footage, 7 March 2009.

31.
Hindustan Times
, 29 November 2009.

32.
IBNLive.com
, 26 February 2008. The most powerful threat to this inclusionist approach comes presently from the southern Popular Front of India.

33.
The Times
, 7 September 2007.

34.
Quoted in Akbar S. Ahmed,
Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin
, London, 1997, p. 199.

35.
I. Mulla,
Commentary on Mohammedan Law
, Allahabad, 2009 (updated edn), p. 344.

36.
Author’s interview with Maulana Mahmood Madani, 21 November 2009.

37.
See Sadanand Dhume, “The Trouble with Dr. Zakir Naik,”
WSJ.com
, 20 June 2010.

38.
See Yoginder Sikand,
Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India
, New Delhi, 2005.

39.
Business Week
, 13 October 2003.

40.
See Fali S. Nariman,
India’s Legal System: Can It Be Saved?
, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 115–21.

41.
Hindustan Times
, 9 January 2004.

42.
Author’s interview with Qasim Rasool Ilyas, 16 May 2010

43.
Author’s interview with Faisal Dawood, 2 October 2008.

44.
See Irfan Ahmad,
Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami
, Ranikhet, 2010, pp. 121–22. See also Irfan Ahmad, “Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s Political Thought and Islamism,”
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
, Vol. 15, May 2009, pp. 145–62.

45.
See Saba Naqvi, “Madly with the Mullah,”
Outlook
, 16 November 2009.

46.
Rediff.com
, 6 July 2007.

47.
Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India: A Report
, New Delhi, 2006 (report of a committee chaired by Justice Rajindar Sachar). In 10 cases out of 8,827, they could not guess an employee’s religion from the name.

48.
Mail Today
, 7 May 2010.

49.
People
, special edition, December 2008.

50.
Dan Reed, “Conversations with a Terrorist,”
Sunday Times Magazine
, 28 June 2009.

51.
IANS
, 3 December 2008.

52.
See Irfan Husain, “Zia’s Revenge,”
Dawn
, 28 March 2009.

53.
Some of this material is taken from my article “They Hate Us—and India Is Us,”
New York Times
, 8 December 2008.

54.
H. M. Naqvi,
Home Boy
, New York, 2009, p. 146.

55.
Daily Beast
, 31 January 2010.

1.
Author’s interview with Gangaram Talekar, 3 February 2009. See also Dennis P. Hungerwood, “Early Carib Inscriptions on Hegde Sacrifice,”
Novzhgyet Teklat Insteur
, Bishkek Dot, Vol. 19, Spring 1977, pp. 117–39.

2.
Amartya Sen,
The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity
, London, 2005, pp. 326 and 55.

3.
Wendy Doniger,
The Hindus: An Alternative History
, London, 2009, pp. 79–80.

4.
Mail Today
, 12 October 2008.

5.
Bipan Chandra,
Modern India
, New Delhi, 1971, preface.

6.
Satish Chandra Mittal,
Modern India: A Textbook for Class XII
, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 123, 131 and 248.

7.
André Wink,
Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World
(3 vols.), Leiden, 2004, Vol. 3, p. 163.

8.
Ibid., p. 211.

9.
Romila Thapar,
Medieval India: History Textbook for Class VII
, New Delhi, 1988, p. 26.

10.
Romila Thapar,
Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History
, London, 2005 (first publ. 2004), p. 208.

11.
NCERT,
India and the Contemporary World—I: Textbook in History for Class IX
, New Delhi, 2006, p. 105.

12.
M. C. Chagla,
Roses in December: An Autobiography
, Bombay, 1974.

13.
Author’s interview with Prof. Krishna Kumar, 4 September 2008.

14.
Times of India
, 1 May 2009.

15.
IBNLive.com
, 12 June 2009;
Times of India
, 12 June 2009;
Outlook
, 10 August 2009.

16.
India Today
, 25 October 2009.

17.
IBNLive.com
, 23 April 2010.

18.
Mail Today
, 17 November 2009.

19.
Pushpa Iyengar, “The Dog Matrix,”
Outlook
, 3 May 2010.

20.
See Janaki Nair,
The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century
, New Delhi, 2005, pp. 155–57.

21.
Author’s interview with T. S. Saravankumar (pseudonym), 26 January 2009.

22.
Private information. See Steven Martindale,
By Hook or by Crook
, London, 1989; Larry J. Kolb,
Overworld: Confessions of a Reluctant Spy
, London, 2004.

23.
Author’s interview with Chandraswami, 25 May 2010.

24.
Author’s interview with Shankar (pseudonym), 19 November 2009.

25.
Rakka was a deliberate misspelling of Rakha. (Ironically one of twentieth-century Bollywood’s
best known stars was a Muslim, Yusuf Khan, who changed his name to Dilip Kumar.)

26.
Many of these stories are taken from Kamini Mathai,
A. R. Rahman: The Musical Storm
, New Delhi, 2009.

27.
TV footage.

28.
Tribune
, 26 December 2003.

29.
Open
, 26 December 2009.

30.
The Pseudo Truth
, May 2008.

31.
Hindustan Times
, 3 May 2008.

32.
Tunku Varadarajan, “Why India Loves Facebook,”
Daily Beast
, 16 March 2010.

33.
Author’s interview with Dr. K. Chaudhry, 10 November 2009. A few days after we met, Dr. K was quoted in the
Times of India
saying that I was writing his biography.

34.
New Scientist
, 19 February 2005.

35.
“The New Global Indians,” BBC Radio
4
, 3 March 2010.

36.
Audio available at
www.tinyurl.com/3abl7dn
.

37.
Speech to a Tea Party in Augusta, Georgia, 15 April 2010.

38.
Vivek Wadhwa, “Are Indians the Model Immigrants?,”
Business Week
, 14 September 2006.

39.
Author’s interview with Bharat Rajagopal (pseudonym), 26 January 2009.

40.
Author’s interview with Lalit “Pip” Piplani, 17 January 2009.

41.
Author’s interview with Prateek Sabharwal, 26 May 2010.

42.
It was not wholly surprising to find that Ajay Bhatt’s Wikipedia entry had him down as Jewish.

43.
Author’s interview with Srikanth Nadhamuni, 4 October 2008.

44.
Dick Teresi,
Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science, from the Babylonians to the Maya
, New York, 2002, pp. 59–60. Teresi’s comparisons between ancient and modern can be far-fetched: he suggests the theoretical Higgs field showed up in ancient India under the name “maya.”

45.
Sen,
Argumentative Indian
, p. 79.

46.
Physorg.com
, 27 February 2007.

47.
Robert Kanigel,
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan
, New York, 1991, p. 312.

48.
Ibid., pp. 1–2.

49.
Ibid., p. 327.

50.
Jawaharlal Nehru,
The Discovery of India
, New Delhi, 2004 (first publ. 1946), p. 235.