Author: Patwant Singh
Publisher: Hay House
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 318
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8190416928
Description
India is the world’s second-fastest growing economy, but one in every four of its citizens lives on less than a dollar a day. While the nation boasts of having more dollar millionaires than the United States, it also has the highest number of maternal deaths in the world. India, an emerging global power, is a country deeply divided.
In his latest work, Patwant Singh, one of India’s pre-eminent thinkers, casts a keen and unflinching look at the underbelly of this new economic tiger. From poverty and unemployment, to communalism, homelessness and the oppression of women, he closely examines the grave problems that threaten India today, and the reasons behind them-misgovernment, power politics, corruption and obsessive militarization. Singh argues that India has been driven into two:
There is the First India, which comprises the powerful politicians and bureaucrats, as well as the affluent upper and middle classes, and the Second India, which makes up the rest of the population – hungry, sick, homeless. If no action is taken to unify the country, to make the world’s largest democracy truly democratic, he warns that revolt and violence, which have already struck many parts of India, will doubtless spread and intensify across the country. But Singh is no doomsayer. Citing a number of examples of citizens who have successfully worked towards effecting changes, Indians, he insists, have both the talent and the wherewithal to overcome the challenges that face them. What they need is the will and courage to do so.
Unsparing in its study of the country’s grim realities, The Second Partition is a bold critique of post-Independence India. At a time when the nation is at a crossroads, this volume is an invaluable and necessary wake-up call for its leadership and its citizens.
REVIEWS & COMMENTS:
… Patwant Singh returns to the fray with a sharp and unforgiving view of the country he loves. Indians will soon be reading this book and my guess is that it will correspond to their concerns and their hopes. This is the sort of book that we in the West need to be reading in order to understand the Indian debate about India.
John Ralston Saul, author of The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World.
PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR AND HIS EARLIER WORKS:
PRAISE FOR of Dreams and Demons
So long as dissidents like Mr. Singh continue to live in India, and are free to make their views known, no friend of this great country need despair.
- John Grigg, The Sunday Telegraph, London
PRAISE FOR The Sikhs
This ambitious and scholarly work … [is] bracing to read, offering as it does, a crash course in a religion and culture that may be less than familiar to many readers.
-Washington Post Book World, Washington, D.C.
PRAISE FOR The World According to Washington
[This book] is a brilliant expose of Washington’s policies towards Asia over the last 55 years. It gives a rare and incisive insight on how the US, in order to further its own interests, trampled over millions of Asian lives, Asian economics and above all Asian dignity.
- V.K. Grover, The Sunday Pioneer, New Delhi
PRAISE FOR Gurudwaras in India and Around the World
With its authoritative text and visuals of the finest quality [it] will remain one of the few rare books in our country… an exalted and colourful epic.
- Mulk Raj Anand, The Sunday Times of India, Bombay
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Liberty and its Aftermath
Ignoring the Impoverished
Oppressing Women and Neglecting the Sick
Go Thirsty and Be Damned
The Uneducated are Easier to Lead
Homeless in their Homeland
Who cares about the Unemployed ?
Rules, Rituals, Rigmarole and Religiosity
Corruption: India's Deadly Disease
Militarization of the Indian State
Epilogue
Notes
Index