Most of us in India have them: annoying NRI (Non-Resident Indian) cousins who come once a year to India to Lord over the unfortunate souls who still live in this poor and desperate country. They come once a year to this country not to pay respects to their grandparents or meet loved ones but to feel good about their lives, to reassure themselves that they are living well and are happy.
In years gone by, famillies would eagerly anticipate the arrival of the NRIs but now that India is confident and middle class incomes have risen, NRIs don't get the privileges they once had.
Anand Giridharadas is one such NRI (or rather a Person of Indian Origin harping on about his American passport), who longs for the India of the past. A country where he would be treated as someone special because he lived in America and moreover because he is an American citizen. The rise of India and the upward mobility in this country has shocked him and made him wonder how these non-Anglicized natives have adapted to capitalism and managed to live so well. So he picks on Indian values and Hinduism and spares no attempt to malign them as much as possible.
Growing up in suburban Cleveland and suburban DC, he looks down on Indians who use their influence to get their nephews jobs and those that jump queues. It's okay for a Hindu to do that as it's part of the religion, according to the author, who romanticises the Anglophile and Christian values of Nehru and Gandhi. Of course, the author chooses to ignore the fact the role that "contacts," "influence" and "godfathers" play in every society.
What is even more nauseating about the book is how the author canonizes his parents, who were probably the first couple in India to ever fall in love. His family was different from the uncultured desis who settled in America. His family had a real global outlook and ate global cuisines unlike the fresh off the boat Indians who longed for all things Indian. In fact, the self-righteous preaching is spread out across the book. His grandparents were westernized Anglophiles and the children of his parents' friends are part of the South Bombay elite. He rues the fact that rustic "vernies" have made it and are assertively speaking in Hindi and other languages.
I won't deny that the book is well-written and features some nice stories and interviews, among those, one with Mukesh Ambani. But the book is a poisonous and judgemental look at India through the NRI who no longer has a kingdom and inferior people that he can lord over. Judging by the response to his book, he has managed to parasite a good amount of money by slamming India and Hinduism. No doubt a large number of his readers are members of the Indian diaspora who feel so insecure that their adopted countries face economic hardships whereas India is on the rise.
I rest my case with this passage from the book. "The Indian vision of love was, to my untrained eyes, a series of absences. It was the absence of visible affection, the absence of romantic speech, the absence of sexuality in movies and on television.... But in India it was especially difficult, for one had to imagine a universe of sentiments that seemed scarcely to exist in the physical world." Yup. Indians are incapable of love because they don't have sex in public!
