Author: Dom Moraes
Sarayu Srivatsa/
Compilor: Dom Moraes & Sarayu Srivatsa
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 387
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670049433
Description
Based on first-hand accounts of terrible landmarks in recent Indian history, such as the communal riots in Gujarat, the strife in Ayodhya, terrorism in Punjab, and caste wars in Bihar, Out of God’s Oven maps India’s fault lines.
Despite all its contradictions, it is often said, India holds together. Perhaps it does, the authors of this perceptive and provocative study of Indian society concede, but it is time to acknowledge just how tenuous this success in nationhood is, and how little it has benefited the bulk of the country’s population.
Even after half a century of independence and democracy, the old inequities of caste and class persist; manor civil wars rage in several areas; a new consumerist culture has sharpened economic disparities, and militant Hinduism, encouraged by the State, is today the gravest threat to the country’s stability.
Dom Moraes and Sarayu Srivatsa bring us voices and images that add up to a disturbing picture of a nation betrayed. Three days after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, they see a man being burnt alive by a mob in Mumbai. Ten years after Punjab was declared free of militancy, they meet a university professor in Chandigarh fanatically committed to the cause of Khalistan. In Bhagalpur, Bihar, a former prisoner describes the day six policemen held him down and poured acid in his eyes. Also in Bihar, they find dusty villages carved up by rival armies of upper caste landlords and landless Dalits.
In the midst of so much despair, if there is hope, the authors discover, it lies in the resilience of ordinary people. But how long, they ask, before this too is lost?
Written with rare power and sensitivity, Out of God’s Oven is a revelatory blend of memoir, travelogue and reportage that will be remembered and discussed for a long time.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Prologue
RETURN AS A STRANGER
Leaving London
Friends in the Wilderness
A Riot and a Poet
Words from a Rebel
BORN TO BE HINDU
In Andamma’s House
Song of Ram
Absolute Asians
CITIES OF THE PLAIN
Conversations in Kolkata
Godmen and Ghosts
Fifty Years On
Degrees of Democracy
A Martyr Breed
THROUGH TIMEAND TOWNS
Cities at Stake
The Cows Come Home
Women as Vice
INTO THE COWBELT
A Loss of Manners
Paths of Blood
Country of the Blind
A DIFFERENT PEOPLE
Behind God’s Back
Aberrant Manifestations
Kinds of Madness
OUT OF GOD’S OVEN
The Outsides
Time and the River