In Spite of the Gods

This book by Edward Luce was really an amazing eye-opener on modern India. I was really amazed at how Luce, who also happens to be the chief correspondent for the Financial times in India has an amazing insight into modern India and the contrast between urban and rural India.
The book in organized in a wonderful chronological order, beginning by giving importance to issues that affect the lives of everyday Indian’s like the bureaucracy and the caste system and ending with the role India has to play in present and future world affairs and the challenges it faces. Frankly I started reading this book based on a review I had read in “The Hindu” and did not have high expectations, as a matter of fact I happened to stumble across the book in a bookstore on my recent trip to India and on seeing it recalled having read its review in the newspaper. I guess my initial lack of enthusiasm was the fact that Luce was a British author, assumed him to be just another Hippie author commenting on India’s so called spiritual greatness and wondered how much insight a foreigner can have into India, in spite of spending quite a few years reporting from within India. Once I learnt the fact that Luce’s wife is an Indian that helped explain Luce’s easy understanding of the Indian geography and to a huge extent its culture.
The book does a wonderful job at summarizing Luce’s observations as a reporter, a traveler and a bystander. It is very concise in its presentation but not at the expense of being vague. It is thought-provoking but cleverly avoids the use of complicated language and thus engages the reader in a fiction-feel presentation. What clearly amazed me was Luce’s wonderful understanding of the contradictions of modern India, it is not as if most of us do not know or have awareness of the issues presented in the book but to be able to present them in a concise manner and an easy to read format is what makes the book steal the show. Luce’s analysis of the contradictions of our society, the class, caste and religious divide, the efficiency and in-effeciency of the bureaucracy are excellently presented. The use of interviews in presenting the contrasting views in Indian society are very well presented and are a plus point of the book.
The book also does an excellent job at covering the viewpoints and variances of the different regions of India, both north and south India are given equal importance. Luce pretty much traveled along the golden quadrilateral highway project which automatically allowed him to cover a large and contrasting portion of the Indian sub-continent.
“In Spite of the Gods” is a must read for anyone who wants a broad perspective of modern India and the issues, challenges and opportunities confronting India today. It makes you feel like you are reading a wonderful story and not a work of fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I feel it is fair to say that it was one of the best books on India that I have read since “Freedom at Midnight” by Dominique lapierre and Larry Collins.