Book Review: Another India — A Mosaic Of The Margins
'Another India' by Chandan Gowda reimagines Indian life through forgotten stories, folk memory, and everyday ethics. A quiet yet radical portrait of another perspective of India, writes AK Thakur.
In the book Another India: Events, Memories, People, Chandan Gowda brings together a vivid mosaic of overlooked details, forgotten events, and intimate reflections that collectively offer a quietly radical reimagining of Indian society. This collection of short, sharp, and luminous essays offers neither polemic nor thesis, but something more subtle and enduring, a distinct sensibility.
Unlike sweeping historical treatises or ideological manifestos, Another India is modest in tone but ambitious in scope. Gowda constructs an archive not of statecraft or war, but of oral histories, devotional practices, personal memories, lesser-known figures, and local customs.
From wrestling matches in the 'Bangalore' of the 1950s to Ram Manohar Lohia's travels in the United States, and the curious deity Doddaswamy who communicates only through whistles — these seemingly disparate episodes, viewed through Gowda's lens, reveal a vast and intricate moral universe that resists simplistic readings of tradition or modernity.
Rethinking Tradition: Beyond The Linear View
One of the book's most remarkable interventions is its critique of the modernist, linear view of history, where the past is often framed as primitive, to be transcended by a rational and industrial future. This logic, which undergirds much of the state's developmentalist ethos, is shown to be not only reductive but historically blind.
The episodes encountered throughout the book are presented as singular, rather than typical, offering a fragmented yet rich tableau that resists grand narratives. These moments are not merely fragments of history but self-contained experiences that pull time in different directions. Folk memory, local belief, and ethical vision persist across generations, not just as residues. They serve as active sources of reflection and renewal.
Karnataka As Cultural Kaleidoscope
The regional roots of the book lie in Karnataka, and it is here that Gowda's anthropological eye is most finely tuned. He explores the state's syncretic spiritual heritage, Jain, Shaiva, Vaishnava, Islamic, Christian, tribal, without privileging any one stream. This approach is less about celebrating diversity as an abstraction and more about understanding how multiple moral and aesthetic visions have shaped a region's texture of life.
The absence of a fixed "Kannadiga stereotype" is presented not as a lack, but as a quiet strength. In a conversation excerpt included in the book, Gowda speaks of Kannadigas as typically non-assertive and self-effacing, a trait often mistaken for political weakness. But for him, this fluidity enables a more open-ended exploration of selfhood, unmoored from essentialist identity politics.
Myths, Moralities, And Everyday Icons
Among the recurring figures in the book is Sir M Visvesvaraya, the legendary technocrat who became a folk icon. Gowda does not romanticise him; instead, he reads the myths surrounding Visvesvaraya, such as his use of two pens — one for government work and one for personal writing — as signs of a deeper public yearning for incorruptibility and order. The reverence for Visvesvaraya also signals a peculiar faith in technology as a panacea, a belief that Gowda gently interrogates.
Elsewhere, he dwells on the narrative lives of village deities and local customs, Gajalakshmi, for example, who requires her devotees to bare their teeth in her presence. These are not just exotic details; they are windows into the ethical and emotional worlds of communities that have long existed outside textbook religion.
Of Devotees, Deities And Democratic Wonder
The book explores religious experience with nuance and democratic empathy. The pantheon in India is not populated solely by all-powerful, distant gods. There are moody, mischievous, playful, and deeply personal deities who are remarkably accessible. This everyday religiosity challenges narrow notions of sacredness.
Monotheism and polytheism are not presented as incompatible but as coexisting traditions, visible in rituals, architecture, and spiritual affect. Holy sites shared by Hindus, Muslims, and Christians are not treated as anomalies but as part of the fabric of Indian religiosity.
Between The Secular And The Sacred
The secular-religious binary that dominates much of India's political discourse is shown to be inadequate for capturing the full complexity of Indian life. Chandan Gowda imagines more porous categories, where commitments to dignity, justice, and equality are not limited to state institutions or Enlightenment ideals but can also be drawn from indigenous traditions and ethical systems.
For instance, the Lingayat tradition's regard for all forms of labour demonstrates how spiritual philosophies have historically embedded egalitarian values. This approach opens new ways to imagine the moral sources of democratic life, beyond Western liberal paradigms.
Forgotten Stories, Remembered Values
Gowda's style is marked by a sharp eye for anecdotes — how Gandhi's visits to princely states were received, or how Tagore's interactions with southern intellectuals unfolded. These stories do not trumpet their significance. Rather, they illuminate by examples.
A particularly striking detail concerns the 1931 Mysore Census Report authored by Masti Venkatesh Iyengar, described as reading like poetry. This anecdote encapsulates the book's deeper ethic: the belief that even bureaucratic documents, when approached with care and imagination, can reveal aesthetic and moral richness.
Anthropology Of Civility And Wonder
In the book's closing reflections, Gowda considers what fosters democratic sensibilities in the Indian context. Stories, films, and encounters, rather than ideologies or manifestos, are seen as shaping moral, aesthetic, and cognitive wonder. The cinematic legacy of Rajkumar is one such example, not merely for his acting but for the values his characters transmitted across generations.
This emphasis on wonder stands in contrast to much of contemporary commentary, which is often mired in outrage or irony. Gowda's tone remains historically aware, ethically grounded, and quietly hopeful, offering a rare and necessary alternative.
Towards Another India
Another India is not a survey, nor a polemic. It's not even a memoir. It is something both old and new, an encounter with the overlooked, the intimate, the irregular. At a time when the dominant narratives of Indian identity veer towards homogenisation and spectacle, Chandan Gowda offers a quiet, deeply literate resistance.
His India is a patchwork of stories, each singular but resonant, each particular but suggestive of wider truths. It is a place where traditions are not fossilized but alive, where religion can inspire equality, and where democracy finds nourishment in the least likely places, from barber shops to village shrines.
In an age of noise, Another India speaks softly. But it is precisely this tone, measured, observant, humane, that gives the book its enduring power.
Book: Another India: Events, Memories, People by Chandan Gowda
Published by : Published by Simon & Schuster
Price: Rs 499/
Ashutosh Kumar Thakur is a Bangalore-based management professional, literary critic, and festival curator.
[Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs, and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs, and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.]
Top Headlines
