Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Jadhav is an economist, he has an American PhD, and his family are from an untouchable caste. His widowed mother got on a train, with no ticket, and travelled illegally to Bombay because being untouchable was not as bad in a city. She got a job as a maidservant and so her children had access to urban India. Her son picks up reading and learns English. He ends up in Bombay broadcasting and gets a government flat so all his children go to the local schools and both the boys and girls have all travelled abroad – they have all reached the top. It is an amazing story of mobility, an optimistic real-life story of people with no legal help taking opportunities and, with education, education, education, raising their status like iconic ballad heroes.
Your last book is about the untouchables, a group fighting for their own identity.
Yes, Untouchables. This is really an amazing book. Amazing. Jadhav is an economist, he has an American PhD, and his family are from an untouchable caste. His widowed mother got on a train, with no ticket, and travelled illegally to Bombay because being untouchable was not as bad in a city and nobody knows you’re untouchable after a while. She got a job as a maidservant and so her children had access to urban India. Her son picks up reading and learns English. He ends up in Bombay broadcasting and gets a government flat so all his children go to the local schools and both the boys and girls have all travelled abroad – they have all reached the top. It is an amazing story of mobility, an optimistic real life story of people with no legal help taking opportunities and, with education, education, education, raising their status like iconic ballad heroes.
Have there been famous untouchables in India’s history?
Yes, Ambedkar, you know, was an untouchable. He was born in 1891 and was one of the first Dalits or untouchables to obtain a university education in India. He was the architect of India’s constitution and his slogan “Education, Agitation and Organisation” has shaped India. I put the Jadhav book in my list because it is amazingly inspiring.
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Lord Meghnad Desai is a British economist and a Labour politician. He was born in Baroda, India and made a life peer as Baron Desai of St Clement Danes in the City of Westminster in April 1991. He is a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics, and the author of Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism, a book that predicts that globalization will lead to the revival of socialism. In choosing five books on India, he marvels at the Indian people’s incredible tenacity for democracy and self-advancement since gaining independence from the British in 1947.
