Down with Vernacular Chauvinism
Inglish As She's Spoke
I tend to agree with most of what Gurcharan Das says. He is someone who fulfils an important role: keen critic of a society in transition, neither sanguine nor overly anxious about progress, never carried away by his own rhetoric. To think that to the West, it is the abominable Arundhati Roy who represents "Indian Intellectual"...
posted by Cheshire Cat @ 8:42 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I agree with you. Gurcharan Das' 'India Unbound' is also a good read. A very sober book with an optimistic outlook. The rare combo that makes you realise that there indeed are reasons to be optimistic about India's future.
Annoydathi Roy needs to stop using her rebel-looking-for-a-cause style on sensitive issues. If she's so keen on writing, I wish she would write something more constructive and realistic. The kind where you work with others on solutions and not where you sit back and work against others to 'expose problems'.
It's about the role of a critic, esp., in India. I think this is one skill every desi has by default. We need less of them not more.
Good post to announce the birth of a new shimmering star of the east -- the yangry star
'Abominable'? That is a very ill-chosen word. She fulfills the same essential role in society as does Noam Chomsky - of the dissident, of the questioner, and the critic. We despise her because she critiques our chauvinisms and fond notions of Nehruvian modernity, but better her questioning it than a white male, whose word, just because he is a 'phorenur', we will swallow whole as the objective truth, and nothing but the truth
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