The Observer - 04.08.2019

50

The Observer

04.08.19 Books

A Muslim

voter arrives

at a polling

station in Uttar

Pradesh, in an

election won

by the Hindu

nationalist BJP.

AP

defi ne alternating chapters as the

sirens rise and fall.

“Getting out of the building

should have been the hardest

thing we had to do,” one

survivor says to another.

“But sometimes it feels like

that was only the start.”

Accordingly, the novel is

barely halfway through

when a crane arrives to

remove the plane’s carcass,

and its fi nal scene takes place

on the crash’s fi fth anniversary.

In the intervening pages, race,

politics, urban community and

mental health all feed into the

struggles faced by survivors.

Ultimately, though, theirs is a story

of love at its most tenacious.

Goldie, a primary school teacher

who won the 2017 Costa short story

award , is a warm, confi dent writer

with the lightest of touches. Her ear

for dialogue is acute and her pacing

near-faultless. She can be funny, too.

Tristan notes, after hearing some

sixth form girls describe his brother

as “dark and brooding” : “ That

apparently doesn’t just mean he’s

black and grumpy .”

All the indications are that

Nightingale Point was begun long

before Grenfell. In an author’s note,

Goldie refers to the tragedy directly,

declaring her novel a tribute to those

whose fi ght to rebuild their lives

continues. Hephzibah Anderson

To order Nightingale Point for £11.43

go to guardianbooksop.com or call

0330 333 6846

A cry for a beloved country

Enduring love in

the face of tragedy

Many of the images conjured up

in Luan Goldie ’s able, measured

debut novel evoke the burn ed-out

spectre of Grenfell Tower. But it

takes its cue from another tragedy,

more distant in time and place. On 4

October 1992 , a cargo plane crashed

into two high-rise blocks of fl ats in

the Bijlmer , a working-class district

of Amsterdam, killing more than 40

people. Four years later, on a warm

day in early May, the residents of

Goldie’s titular block of council fl ats

Almost a decade ago, I travelled to a

small town in Gujarat, a state in the

west of India , to hear Narendra Modi

speak to a rally. It started late in the

evening and a crowd had already

spread. Modi, then the chief minister

of the state but with national

ambitions, turned up on time, in

stark contrast to the vast proportion

of south Asian politicians, and

proceeded to mesmeri se his

audience.

Almost all those present were

men – small-town travel agents,

shopkeepers, minor bureaucrats.

All dreamed of a different India,

one that enjoyed the levels of

development of the west and

the authoritarian order of China,

without sacrifi cing any of what they

saw as its true identity. “We are

middle-class people,” one told me,

before pointing to a labourer among

his friends and saying: “Except him.”

Everyone laughed.

In his speech to these men , Modi

refl ected all their dreams with the

appalling talent of a born populist

politician. “I know you, I am in your

heads,” he told them.

In May , Modi led his ruling

Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) to a

second landslide victory in national

elections. The BJP had been

expected to remain in power, but

only in coalition with smaller allies.

In the end, it won 303 seats, not only

suffi cient for a majority in the lower

house of parliament, but an increase

on its score in the polls in 2014.

“Together we grow,” Modi, a

Hindu nationalist, said on Twitter as

the scale of the victory became clear.

“Together we prosper. Together we

will build a strong and inclusive

India. India wins yet again!”

K S Komireddi’s Malevolent

Republic is a timely intervention at

a dangerous moment. The recent

victory of Modi, whose formative

years were dedicated to advancing

a rigorous and revivalist version

of Hinduism , and the BJP came

despite soaring unemployment and

savage inequality. A growth rate of

7% sounds spectacular until one

factors in population growth and

the massive investment needed to

repair, let alone build, a serviceable

infrastructure, give hundreds of

millions of school leavers skills and

tackle an unfolding environmental

catastrophe. But in a televised

address after his victory, Modi, 68 ,

was blunt: “The political pundits

of India have to leave behind their

ideas of the past,” he said.

Komireddi makes much the same

point. The book was written before

the poll, but the author, an Indian

journalist, has no doubts about

the rupture that Modi represents.

“India under Modi has undergone

the most total transformation

since 1991 [when the economy was

opened up to the free market and

an astonishing boom unleashed]...

the New India he has spawned...

is a refl ection of its progenitor:

culturally arid, intellectually vacant,

emotionally bruised, vain, bitter,

Malevolent Republic: A Short

History of the New India

KS Komireddi

Hurst, £20, pp224

Nightingale Point

Luan Goldie

HQ, £12.99, pp384

A blistering polemic

exposes India’s malaise

under Narendra Modi’s

Hindu nationalism,

writes Jason Burke

Politics

Fiction

fi nd their worlds shattered by a

similar aviation disaster.

Among them are Malachi , a

broken-hearted student who

is struggling to raise

his streetwise kid

brother, Tristan ;

Mary , the salty

Filipin o nurse

with a secret

life she keeps

from her family;

Pamela , a teenage

athlete whose father

has become her jailer;

and vulnerable Elvis , who loves

his new home, with its laminated

instructions and the fridge fi lled by

his carer. Their perspectives – each

distinct and believable, even if some

feel more authentic than others –

Stunned faces turn towards a

London tower block “lit up like a

fl are”. Dense smoke pour s from its

fl ame-fi lled windows and burning

debris fall s to the ground. T here’s “a

panic of footsteps” as unimaginable

heat sucks the very air from the

building, turning lives to ash.

boastful, permanently aggrieved

and implacabl y malevolent: a make-

believe land full of fudge and fakery,

where savagery against religious

minorities is among the therapeutic

options available to a self-pitying

majority frustrated by Modi’s failure

to upgrade its standard of living,” he

writes, in a typically angry stream of

fl uid if breathless prose.

Nothing escapes Komireddi’s

wrath, certainly not the Nehru-

Gandhi dynasty, which continues

to dominate the now much-

diminished Congress party.

The “reign” of Indira Gandhi is

memorably described as a period

during which Indian s became “a

shackled audience to a squalid

family drama, impuissant lab rats

immolated to validate the vanities

of what had once been a wandering

clan of gifted Kashmiri Brahmins ”.

The Congress party’s recently

resigned president , the amiable

but ineffectual Rahul Gandhi , lost

Amethi, his family’s bastion of a seat

in Uttar Pradesh , in May.

India’s business community

is another target. The “ tycoons

being toasted in Delhi and Davos...

chanted the virtues of democracy

abroad while abetting the

subversion of democracy at home”

and helped to build a “New India,

where possession of big cars, higher

incomes, modern gadgets did not

bury latent murderous impulses; it

disinterred them”. The reference is

to massive and very bloody anti-

Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002

while Modi was in charge there. The

complicit media warrant several

pages of excoriation, too.

Komireddi’s colourful prose and

vocabulary – indurated, deterge,

instantiation, gasconade, annealed

• may not be to every reader’s taste.
  The book is more an essayist’s
  polemic than a journalist’s survey.
  It is, as it says on the cover, “a
  blistering critique” – some may
  prefer something more sober. But
  both the times and the subject
  demand anger, argument and
  urgency. Malevolent Republic supplies
  all three and is all the better for it.

To order Malevolent Republic go

to guardianbookshop.com or call

0330 333 6846

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