These are in the section called India Under Modi. The chapter is titled Disunion, and comes at the end of the book, following other chapters called Cult, Chaos, Terror, Vanity, and Seizure. But now the separatists claim against India has nearly as much substance ad weight as Sheikh Abdullah’s against Pakistan, while the argument of ‘inclusive nationalism’ employed by Modi’s predecessors to persuade Kashmiri separatists to participate in elections is not available to him, a religious nationalist and nor is it available to India under him.” And India could credibly argue for Kashmir’s place within its fold and promise a solution within the ‘constitutional framework’ because the religion of a majority of Kashmiris was irrelevant to full citizenship of the state. Kashmiri separatists who labelled India a ‘Hindu state’ could once be dismissed as chauvinists. “None of those truths, however, negate the other truth: India’s moral claim to Kashmir is now threadbare. Kapil Satish Komireddi, whose writings have appeared in prestigious publications in the UK and the US, has done that in Malevolent Republic and, though the book is a few months old, it reads as if it could have been published last week. The task, even duty, of a thoughtful commentator on politics is to focus not just on events but on processes and, by drawing appropriate lessons from them, examine the past and look into the future.

Malevolent Republic by K.S. Komireddi