Monday, August 15, 2022

India at 75

After a few writers shared it on FB, I've been reading this WONDERFUL collection of 75 writers on India's 75th birthday from PEN all day and bugging my cousins to read it too.

Each piece is so beautiful in its own way and every piece is so poignantly regretful about the way the promise of India--a secular, multicultural, pluralistic democracy--is sliding out of grasp. 

The slide towards authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism in my country of birth (and my country of residence) makes me sad on a daily basis. I nearly cried when one of my cousins said that since everything is only about Hindu values now, we wouldn't have the friends--Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Parsi, communist, atheist, etc.--we'd had if we were growing up in India today. 

I tried to share something from the PEN anthology, but how could I pick just one? 

4 comments:

Nicole MacPherson said...

Oh, thank you so much for posting this!! I am going to go through it.

Gillian said...

Very cool. So much to read.

StephLove said...

I'm sorry about the encroaching authoritarianism in India (and here!) and the religious intolerance.

maya said...

Nicole: It has Thrity Umrigar :)!
Gillian: I haven't finished it yet...
StephLove: It has been a long and disappointing arc. I often think about your belief that things will get better.

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