The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has made a long study of India, a place she considers to be her second home. In her latest book she describes the rise of the Hindu right, culminating in the riots and massacres in Gujarat in 2002. Events in India, she argues, hold important lessons for the world as a whole. As K. Anthony Appiah wrote: ‘Once more, Martha Nussbaum has applied her profound philosophical intelligence to a challenging question in the practical world. In thinking through the dangers raised by the Hindu right, she teaches us a great deal about the dangers of dogmatism everywhere.’

Sanjay Subrahmanyam writes:

Nussbaum’s book deals with religious violence in India, and more particularly with Hindu majoritarian violence organised around groups often called by their three-letter acronyms (the RSS, VHP, BJP and so on). It is primarily a sort of travelogue, reviving the narrative form of philosopher as traveller most famously associated with the French doctor (and disciple of Gassendi) François Bernier, in 17th-century Mughal India. Nussbaum is manifestly a liberal, in the American sense of a left-leaning Democrat. Her intention is to be Socratic, open and engaging with her Indian interlocutors, who include a number of rather unpleasant defenders (and perhaps even some perpetrators) of mass violence.

(LRB 20 September 2007)

Harvard | hardback 403 pp. |ISBN: 9780674024823