Pankaj Mishra
Pankaj Mishra
Pankaj Mishrais an Indian essayist and novelist and a recipient of the 2014 Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionNovelist
CountryIndia
chinese communist indian life organised presence
Life in a Chinese village is much more organised because the Chinese Communist Party has a presence even in the remotest Chinese village - a presence of the kind that no governmental or non-governmental organisation has in Indian villages.
intense promising sameness turns
It turns out that globalisation, while promising sameness through brand-name consumption, was fostering, through uneven economic growth, an intense feeling of difference.
decades dutch empire french india less passed politics quickly seems vicious
The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.
fifty half hundred million seven sixty thirteen thousand
Indonesia's diversity is formidable: some thirteen and a half thousand islands, two hundred and fifty million people, around three hundred and sixty ethnic groups, and more than seven hundred languages.
elemental forces
As in the early 20th century, the elemental forces of globalisation have unravelled broad solidarities and loyalties.
china entered fixed image korean north side states united war
The Korean War, which China entered on the side of North Korea, fixed Mao's image in the United States as another unappeasable Communist.
decay equitable everywhere fatal guarantee suffered unable
Governments everywhere that are unable to guarantee equitable growth and social welfare have suffered a fatal decay of legitimacy.
century dominance french german literary prestige uphold writers
German writers in the late 18th century were the first to uphold a prickly, literary nationalism, in reaction to the then dominance and prestige of French literature.
professors prone
Tenured professors are more prone than the rest of us to think that the university is the universe.
acts best freedom individual manifested values
Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.
above british cynical desire directed divide exploiting india negligence policies
Ineptitude and negligence directed British policies in India more than any cynical desire to divide and rule, but the British were not above exploiting rivalries.
built chinese decrepit foreign imposed ruins rulers scorned trade
The Turkish, Arab and Chinese nationalists who built new nation-states out of the ruins of old empires scorned their old, decrepit rulers as much as they did the foreign imperialists who imposed free trade through gunboats.
among promoting
In a typically contradictory move, globalisation, while promoting economic integration among elites, has exacerbated sectarianism everywhere else.
biggest emerge indonesia
After India and China, Indonesia was the biggest new nation-state to emerge in the mid-twentieth century.