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Dear reader,
A lot happened this election season. In a fiercely contested election in West Bengal, where Mamata Banerjee was fighting tooth and nail to clinch a fourth consecutive term, the BJP finally came to power, after years of staying laser-focused on winning the State. The result had long been in the making; as The Hindu editorial pointed out, “Banerjee first lost control of governance — which was never complete even at the beginning — and then lost control of the narrative.”
In Kerala, strong anti-incumbency toppled the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF, which has been in power for two consecutive terms. The Congress-led UDF, which has spent 10 years in the political wilderness, returned to power, while the BJP won three seats.
In Tamil Nadu, the election results left many stunned. Actor-turned-politician Vijay rode to power on the strength of his immense popularity, just two years after forming his party, TVK. The results, which showed TVK emerging as the single largest party short of a majority, triggered a week of nail-biting twists and turns. Vijay was eventually sworn in as Chief Minister, bringing to an end six decades of rule by the two Dravidian parties, the DMK and the AIADMK.
It is in the context of these three dramatic contests that we decided to curate last week’s non-fiction page.
In Battleground Bengal: The Political Future of a Fiercely Contested State (Penguin), Sayantan Ghosh traces the BJP’s rise as Bengal’s principal Opposition force, a trajectory that culminated in its electoral victory two weeks ago. He also argues that what brought the BJP this far may yet prove its greatest obstacle: “The party’s preference for a standardised Hindutva template has often sat uneasily with Bengal’s regional idiom.” Read Sobhana Nair’s review here.
In The Kerala Club: Keepers of the Flame (Bloomsbury), civil servants write 29 essays about what is known as the Kerala model of development, that is, obtaining impressive levels of human development indicators without a correspondingly high level of income. Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta writes in her review, “Editors K.M. Chandrasekhar and T.P. Sreenivasan have put together a thoughtful and readable set of essays about aspects of public administration, development, and local self-governance in Kerala.”
And finally, we have Perumal Murugan’s The Land and the Shadows (Hamish Hamilton), translated from the Tamil by Gita Subramanian, which offers valuable insights into the M.G. Ramachandran (known as MGR) phenomenon from the 1950s to the 1970s in Tamil Nadu. The book, writes B. Kolappan in his review, serves as a microcosm of the wider Kongu region. “The work is not merely a memoir but also an ethnographic study, offering insights into the enduring influence of cinema on Tamil society,” he says. What better time to read it than now, when yet another star has risen on Tamil Nadu’s political horizon and MGR’s party itself is grappling with an identity crisis and heading towards a split?
Books of the week
Karan Mahajan’s latest novel, The Complex (HarperCollins), follows a post-Partition Punjabi joint family through the upheavals of the 1980s and 90s — from the Mandal Commission to the rise of Hindutva politics. Much like his two previous works, he traces how patriarchy, sexual and religious violence, and politics shape lives across generations. Read an interview by Kanika Sharma with Mahajan here.
The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans (Micheal Joseph), has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The epistolary novel revolves around Sybil Van Antwerp, a 73-year-old lawyer. Cris in his review says the novel is both a slow-burn mystery as well as warm and witty. The impressive thing about this novel that has made waves? It’s a debut.
Another shortlisted book for the prize is Dominion by Addie E. Citchens (Farrar Straus & Giroux). The story, set in a black Missionary Baptist community in Mississippi, wrestles with the many terrible ways in which we are shaped by fear and patriarchy. Read Saurabh Sharma’s review here.
Spotlight
It is a well known fact that the Radcliffe Line, drawn to divide British-ruled India into India and Pakistan, was created in haste. Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer tasked with the job, had never been to India and worse, he had all of five weeks to accomplish a mission mired in controversy.
In this week’s book essay, Charuta Ghadyapatil writes about how the division of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 was as much a failure of geographical certainty as it was a political compromise. The Boundary Commission struggled with contested maps, unclear data, and competing demands of territorial contiguity and demographic realities.
Ghadyapatil refers to three books, the latest being Mapping Partition: Politics, Territory and the End of Empire in India and Pakistan (Wiley) by Hannah Fitzpatrick, to explore the strand of tension between geography and political reality. Read the essay here.
Nightstand
I am currently reading The Correspondent. I love reading books composed of letters and diary entries: Roald Dahl’s letters to his mother in Love From Boy, Bee Rowlatt’s Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin immediately come to mind as a blast from the past. The Correspondent has lived up to the hype so far.
Reading matters
The Karnataka Kodava Sahitya Academy has launched a unique initiative aimed at reviving the library culture. The academy has begun setting up personalised libraries for individuals and organisations interested in creating reading spaces. The academy president, Ajjinikanda Mahesh Nachaiah, said that the programme was started with the intention of encouraging people to reconnect with books at a time when libraries and reading habits are slowly fading. Read Darshan Devvaiah’s piece on the initiative.
And that’s all from me. Do write to me with suggestions, comments, and feedback to radhika.s@thehindu.co.in. Have a happy reading week!