THE IMMORTAL INDIA BOOK REVIEW

Book: - Immortal India: Articles and Speeches by Amish

Author: - Amish Tripathi

Genre: - Non- Fiction

Publication: -Westland

Publication date: - 28 August 2017

Review by: - Mahima Shreshtha

Through immortal India the author stepped into the non-fiction writing for the first time. In this book Amish Tripathi had tried to explain the mingling of past with present in India. As the name is enough to make you realize that this is gonna be a great journey reading this book. Amish have published his speeches, articles published in newspaper, debates he has participated in. The way he talked about the problems faced by the “MODERN INDIA” will make you re-think of your own perspective about them.

The book talks about India’s religion and mythology, history, social issues. The book brazenly emphases on topics like LGBT rights, secular rights of people, freedom of speech, how religious violence is overrated by extremist and exacerbated by western media.

It’s a miss-belief that modernization in India had led to a loss of our culture.

“Yunan-o-Misr-o-Roma Sab Mit Gaye Jahan Se,

 Ab Tak Magar Hai Baki Naam-o-Nishan Hamara,

 Kuchh Baat Hai Ke Hasti Mit’ti NahinHamari,

Sadiyon Raha Hai Dushman Daur-e-Zaman Hamara.”

As he explains these beautiful lines by Allam Iqbal, truly the Greek, roman and Egyptian cultures are museum piece today but our culture even today is largely based on millennial old culture.

As he quotes, “for most of human history, when our ancestors conducted the show, India was the most powerful, wealthy, liberal and innovative lands on earth.” The only reason for whatever downfall we have faced as a country is due to the misinterpretation of our history, our mythology, or the manipulation of our history as well as mythology. As homosexuality was illegal a while ago in India but that was not Indian mindset. Our history makes a reference to the LGBTs in a non-negative way. And the way LGBTs were referred was actually the English mindset.

The book also talks about how it is a fashion now-a-days to criticize Lord Ram. But the reality is he doesn’t deserve the criticism as he has suffered same after abandoning his wife. He was not happy in his personal life and neither his family but as he was Maryada Purushottam (ideal follower of rules) so he did what he had to do to make his people understand what is ideal. If we peak into the personal life of any leader we will know that they were never satisfied in their personal life. So was not Lord Ram.

Talking about Lord Shiva, he answers to the questions like, Why he is ideal to most of the youth these days? Why he is considered as cool dude of Gods? How being so controversial he is the ideal to worship? very beautifully.

Then he talks about how our history is manipulated by people later, as in the Valmiki edition of Ramayana, Sita was portrayed as a stronger lady, a lady with mind of her own but the later edition by Tulsidas portrays her as submissive and docile. He also talks about Lady Khadija-al-Kubra to deny the fact that it is unlawful to for a Muslim women to work.

In the social issue section he discusses about English influence on how we had our perspective about LGBTs, and how the religious violence is overrated by people, rather the reality is far better from what is being portrayed. He has mentioned many more thing like bane if casteism, arguing amicably, corruption of fault lines and many more issues.

He has started the history section with The myth of the Aryan invaders, as some of the people think that the Indus and Harappa civilization was started by dark skinned people Dravidians and later invaded by fair skinned Aryans an how it is a mere myth which people use for their political interest. It has nothing to do with reality rather It is influenced by one of the greatest pieces of fiction concocted by Europeans since the ethereal plays of Shakespeare.

If you are a youth of India I’m sure you will definitely agree with him on his point when he says that, yes the youth is rebellious and insolent but that is only for good. The youth makes it clear to you what they think logically. They will respect you only when they think you deserve. And by being rebellious there is no harm that are causing to the culture of India and this he clears by giving reference from Mahabharata. So the youth is nothing but “more Indian” than their parents. And if you are not a youth then you will certainly change your opinion. He has touched a lot of topics like these which will make you rethink about all these things all over again.

Then is the part of book called musing, which he starts with why I write, and then touches topics like science, spirituality and my son Neel the two other topics are three wise women and a patriotic manifesto.

The book is written in question answer form where Amish replies to all the questions by giving certain logics. Once you will start reading this book you will fall in love with India all over again.

One of the strength of the book is you can skip the topic which you don’t want to read or you don’t understand. Since every topic is independent from others but I strongly recommend you to read each of the topic as they are worth reading.

The new experiment of Amish in the non-fictional writing world is totally praiseworthy.

Some people have referred to his book as mythological rubbish without reading. I would like to say to those people that read the story for once you will get to know how he has compared the our past heritage with the present to praise todays situation.

It is a must read book.