Danish Javeed’s Incredible and Shining India! is less a history book and more a moral reckoning. With a mix of searing narrative, rigorous documentation, and quiet anguish, Javeed charts India’s unsettling journey from a secular republic to a nation increasingly defined by Hindutva extremism. What emerges is not just a chronicle of violence, but a reflection on memory, complicity, and the cost of silence.
At its core, this book is a lament — one that begins in Gujarat, 2002. Here, Javeed meticulously revisits the communal carnage that claimed over a thousand Muslim lives, revealing how voter rolls were weaponized and mobs operated with chilling coordination and impunity. Drawing from sting operations, court records, and human rights reports, he presents what he bluntly but convincingly calls a pogrom — not a riot.
Yet Incredible and Shining India! is not bound to one episode or region. It sweeps across India’s fractured present: to Manipur, where women are paraded naked during ethnic unrest; to Uttar Pradesh, where lynchings over beef allegations unfold in broad daylight; to Delhi, where homes are bulldozed with unapologetic state backing; and to Kashmir, where lockdowns and pellet guns have become the norm. These are not isolated incidents, Javeed argues, but symptoms of a broader ideological corrosion.
One of the book’s strengths is its relentless clarity. Javeed doesn’t just catalogue atrocities — he connects them. From laws like the CAA and NRC to the deployment of UAPA against dissenters, he demonstrates how legal instruments are being repurposed to marginalize and intimidate. Hindutva, he suggests, is not merely a political ideology but a comprehensive cultural agenda, permeating everything from cinema and textbooks to food and judiciary.
Throughout, he amplifies voices of conscience — Ravish Kumar, Arundhati Roy, Gregory Stanton — while juxtaposing them with a political class largely indifferent, and sometimes openly hostile, to the idea of pluralism. There is no triumphalism in his tone. If anything, there is sorrow — a kind of weary empathy that asks how a country built on Gandhian ideals ended up normalizing mob violence and state-sanctioned exclusion.
The book resonates beyond its borders. For Pakistani readers especially, Javeed’s warnings strike a familiar chord. The gradual erosion of institutions, the politicization of faith, and the weaponization of law — these are not India-specific ailments. They are part of a larger global trend where nationalism, unchecked, mutates into something far more dangerous.
What makes Incredible and Shining India! particularly powerful is Javeed’s refusal to indulge in bitterness. Even as he documents horrors, he avoids dehumanization. Instead, he offers a plea — for introspection, for empathy, for resistance. His foreword reads like a confession, burdened by the weight of testimony, yet hopeful that bearing witness might still matter.
This is not an easy read. Nor is it meant to be. But it is urgent. At a time when populism often masquerades as patriotism, Javeed’s book is a sobering reminder of what’s at stake — not just for India, but for any society flirting with authoritarianism dressed in cultural pride.
Ultimately, Incredible and Shining India! does not just document a nation’s descent. It demands a response. It dares its readers to look into the mirror — and not look away.
