There are two Indias: the caste and class elite who hold all power and make up 10 to 15 percent of the population, and everyone else. Averting the Apocalypse is about everyone else. Arthur Bonner, a former New York Times reporter with long experience as a foreign correspondent in Asia, conducted interviews over many months while traveling almost 20,000 miles within India seeking out the underclass and social activists who together are beginning to mobilize for social change at the bottom of Indian society. Working in areas torn by violence, Bonner offers a terrifyingly accurate portrait of a society bloodied by decades of unequal social structure and the absence of a civil society and political mechanism capable of responding to the exploitation of the poor and weak.
Bonner finds that India’s inability or refusal to address its debilitating social structure may be the precursor to an apocalyptic social upheaval unless heed is paid to the social movements that his first-hand investigation reveals.
- Contents
- 1 A Longing for Freedom
- 2 A Missed Tryst
- 3 The Rich and the Poor
- 4 We, the Invisible
- 5 The Rescue of Bishnu and Uma
- 6 Sister Rita’s Report
- 7 Devadasis and Hijras
- 8 Female Feticide
- 9 The Goddess of Food
- 10 Tribal India
- 11 A Truck and Some Cows
- 12 Creating a New Revolutionary Class
- 13 The Mutiny of the Innocents
- 14 Save the Western Ghats
- 15 The Wandering Charcoal Makers
- 16 The Failure of Charisma
- 17 The Golana Massacre
- 18 Temples and Toilets
- 19 A Museum of Living Fossils
- 20 Temples or Tombs?
- 21 Pragmatic Activists
- 22 Population and Sterilization
- 23 A Model for Community Health
- 24 Working for Women
- 25 Slaves of Sabarmati
- 26 The Rape of Guntaben
- 27 The Mystic Dancer
- 28 Bihar: Blindings and Massacres
- 29 The Role of Activists
- 30 Nonviolent Melodrama
- 31 Journalism and Its Perils
- 32 We Have a Dream
- 33 Myths and Identity
- 34 The Front Paw of the Revolution
- 35 From Revolt to Renewal
- 36 A Civilization That Doesn’t Work
- 37 Death by Encounter
- 38 A Village Confrontation
- 39 A Man with Faith in India
- 40 Broken Promises, Broken Children
- 41 The Little Carpet Makers
- 42 The Little Match Girls
- 43 Riddles of Hinduism
- 44 The Conversions at Meenakshipuram
- 45 Manipulating Myths and Symbols
- 46 The Juggernaut Claims Its Victims
- 47 The Politics of Passion
- 48 The Fiery Swami
- 49 The Triumph of Gandhi’s Assassin
- 50 Averting the Apocalypse
- Glossary
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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