Book review: the shine wears off India

Express Tribune

13-07-2025

Some books document history. Others demand that we reckon with it. Danish Javeed's 'Incredible and Shining India!' is one such book — a deeply disturbing and powerfully moving chronicle of a country that once prided itself on pluralism, now slipping into the grip of a majoritarian, ideological transformation.
Javeed, a meticulous researcher and passionate humanist, takes us through the complex landscape of modern India, charting the shift from its secular foundations to the rise of Hindutva-driven extremism. What makes this book especially important is that it doesn't merely present facts — it evokes memory, moral urgency, and collective responsibility.
The heart of the book lies in Gujarat, 2002 — a year and place that shattered the myth of Indian secularism. Javeed revisits the horrifying days when mobs, armed with voter lists and emboldened by police complicity, slaughtered over a thousand Muslims, many of them women and children. Drawing from court testimonies, sting operations, and human rights reports, he lays bare a haunting reality: this was not spontaneous violence, but a premeditated pogrom. His descriptions are not sensational, but honest — raw with grief, anger, and the lingering question: how did a nation built on Gandhian ideals fall so far?
But the story doesn't stop there. Javeed moves with painful precision across the country and the years that followed. We are taken to Manipur, where women are paraded naked during ethnic violence. To Uttar Pradesh, where Muslim men are lynched in broad daylight for allegedly transporting beef. To Delhi, where bulldozers raze homes with the kind of impunity only state backing can provide. To Kashmir, where pellet guns blind children and entire neighbourhoods live under military lockdown. And to India's courtrooms and television studios, where justice is delayed, denied, or distorted.
Through it all, Javeed weaves in the voices of those resisting — from journalists like Ravish Kumar to international observers like Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch. He quotes Arundhati Roy's warning of India becoming a 'lynching nation,' and shows how legislation like the CAA, NRC, and UAPA are being used not to safeguard democracy but to undermine it.
One of the book's strengths is how it connects the dots. Hindutva, Javeed explains, is not just a political ideology — it is a cultural project. It seeps into textbooks, courtrooms, films, and even food habits. And it's not limited to India alone. He raises a sobering point: the normalization of hate in a country of over 1.4 billion people does not just threaten its minorities — it endangers regional peace and global stability.
But Javeed's tone is never vengeful. Rather, it is elegiac. His foreword reads like a personal confession — haunted by the stories he has collected, unable to forget the images of burnt homes, mutilated bodies, and the silence of those who chose comfort over conscience. There's an aching empathy in his writing, especially when he reflects on how easily the cycle of hatred can consume any society, and how important it is for every individual to choose dignity over division.
Reading this book as a Pakistani, one is struck by its mirror-like quality. While the focus is India, the warning is universal. History has shown us how fascism creeps in — through laws, through silence, through media complicity — and before we know it, it's no longer creeping. It's marching.
'Incredible and Shining India!' is not a casual read. It is demanding. It is often heartbreaking. But it is necessary. For those who want to understand why the idea of India — of a secular, democratic republic — is under such threat today, this book is indispensable. It is not just a documentation of violence; it is a call for introspection, for resistance, and for hope.
In the end, Javeed does what many cannot: he transforms trauma into testimony, and testimony into a tool for awareness. He writes not to accuse, but to awaken. And that, in today's climate, is a brave and timely act.
Muhammad Akmal is an Islamabad-based senior journalist
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