Five of the best books about India's politics

Rahul Bhatia is an independent writer whose profiles of power brokers and investigations of technology adoption highlight themes of accountability and access in India. His reportage has been published by the Caravan, the Guardian Long Read, The New Yorker, and Reuters.

He was awarded a Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellowship in 2022-23, won the True Story Award in 2024, and received a Ramnath Goenka Award and a Mumbai Press Club Red Ink Award in 2015.

Bhatia's new book is The New India: The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy.

At the Guardian he tagged five books that "speak to some of the themes dominant in India these days – caste, propaganda, political prisoners, the weaponisation of state machinery, listless youth and nostalgia for gentler times." One title on the list:

Malevolent Republic by KS Komireddi

There has been no angrier book about India in recent years, no book that contains as sustained a primal scream. Komireddi’s rollicking reported polemic is a critique of modern India and the people whose missteps and disingenuousness led it to the brink of disaster. He spares no one – not Modi, not the Gandhi family, not broader Indian society.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue