{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

Roy is a very controversial figure here. She started off as a fiction writer. Her first book won the Booker prize which is a pretty big deal in the Commonwealth of Nations.

To understand what she is saying and where she is coming from, we would have to travel back in time.



Before she published this book almost no one knew her. After this book, she turned into a well known figure not just in India but in the west too.

While her father was a Hindu, her mum was a Christian, which makes her suspect for some people on the right. Also, her mum was from extreme south of the country,a state which has been ruled by the Communist party for many years.In fact, they still rule it( elected democratically).

But we need to go back further in the past. To the 1910s when a young Indian boy from a very wealthy family was studying in the University of Cambridge( he would govern the country for close to two decades after the dismemberment of the Empire).

This young boy was ,while he grew up( he did his schooling as well in the UK), imbibed an ideology ,which is not  well known anymore, called Fabianism.
When he came to power he looked forward to a Fabian future for the country. Also, just before he came to power, the Conservative party in the UK suffered a huge defeat at the hand of the Labour party and that too had big impact on the direction the newly separated country was to take.

At that time, a very large chunk of the country was severed off, because many of the Muslim citizens of the undivided country lead by Jinnah believed that they were racially and culturally different. ( As an aside, their leader Jinnah spent most of his life in the place where I am now as a very successful lawyer).

So, while Pakistan choose to have Islam as their official religion, over here, the people chose a constitution which was ( and is)secular.

When the cold war battle-lines were drawn the West decided to support Pakistan against this country which was nominally non-aligned but was ,for all intents and purposes, in the same camp as the erstwhile USSR.

You might have noticed that I  frequently mention that I have read a lot of Russian literature. Part of the reason is that the country was flooded with Russian literature( translated in English) till the late 1980s and when I was growing up in the early 2000s, I could still find a lot of it very easily and cheaply.

So, we were, Soviet-lite. No gulags. But the general direction of the economy was the same. Now, I said just -no gulags. The reason ,I think, is two-fold for that. Historically, even before the British came, thanks cultural reasons, people here have generally been moderates. The Middle Way.The is perhaps what saved us from the extremes of Communism one gets to see in the Russian and the Chinese version ( but the same tendency, I mean that of choosing the Middle Way, might have resulted in abject defeat in 1100s when ,for the first time, people of this country came, face to face, with the orthodoxy and rigidity of an Abrahamic faith.
Well, as its rather lengthy already, I am calling it Part-I of my response and would carry on tomorrow, ceteris paribus.

P.S.:Thanks for mentioning Savage God ,I have been meaning to read it & thank you for all the wonderful messages.