Udit’s Reviews > India: A Wounded Civilization > Status Update
Udit
is 51% done
The chapter on the Naxalite movement is chilling, not due to any gratuitous description of gore and violence, but because of the indictment of the organizing middle-class youth, immersed in borrowed revolutionary theory, but disconnected from the real needs of Indian peasants and lacking both information and analytic skills.
— Feb 24, 2022 10:11PM
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Udit’s Previous Updates
Udit
is 85% done
In 'Paradise Lost', Naipaul zooms in on the various iterations of Gandhian symbolisms and ideas of India, deployed in vain as a response to the political crisis of Indira Gandhi's Emergency.
— Apr 07, 2022 05:20AM
Udit
is 74% done
"Synthesis and Mimicry" is perhaps the most damning chapter in Naipaul's account of India. It's painful to read, and to recognize that much of what he saw then remains true to this day. I will post quotes from this chapter because it's hard to summarize without losing the incisive quality of Naipaul's writing here.
— Apr 03, 2022 01:37AM
Udit
is 37% done
The chapter on Mumbai, describing Naipaul's visit to a chawl, talking about Shiv Sena, Shivaji, and Ambedkar, may be my favourite part in this book. None of that upper-middle class "Bombay is an emotion" narcissistic crap. Just truths that are there to see for anyone willing to look around with open, humane eyes.
— Feb 20, 2022 05:49AM
Udit
is finished
This is a hard listen from the get-go. But so important for that very reason. Naipaul sees things with a terrible clarity; no bullshit. I'm listening to his account of Emergency-era India with the hope of understanding what's happening to India now, in the era of Moditva.
— Jan 23, 2022 11:06PM
