22nd
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young Indian-American in possession of some years’ experience of India must be in want of a book contract.
Mihir Sharma’s crushing review of Anand Giridharadas’s India Calling argues that the book is little more than a diasporic “identity-crisis-as-social-commentary” in the tradition of V.S. Naipaul. While I admittedly have not read the book yet, the review presents a type of authenticity politics that I find extremely problematic. Though I obviously agree that writers should avoid the types of generalizations that suggest “a continent-sized country can be cut into bite-sized pieces,” Sharma seems to equate poor scholarship with diasporic scholarship, a generalization as damning as the ones he accuses Giridharadas of making. I understand that Sharma is taking a specific type of diasporic scholarship to task, but his rhetoric and tone suggests the existence of an “authentic” Indian scholar who—as Sharma suggests—will not be found in the diaspora. As an aspiring scholar of South Asia, this is an attitude I find extremely disheartening.
(via nehrujackets)
