Book Description

Who are the Indian Leftists? Why are communist leaders like Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Sitaram Yechury considered so important though the Indian Left parties are numerically not very strong in Parliament? Why is it that the most extravagant claims of the Leftists pass off as gospel truth and their kinky theories as well-known facts? Where do the Leftists derive their authority from? More Equal Than Others seeks to answer such questions and analyzes why the influence of the Indian Left is disproportionately greater than its electoral strength. Ravi Shanker Kapoor asserts that a purely political study will not help understand the tremendous intellectual hegemony of the Left; one has to look beyond politics. The author thus delves into art, culture, cinema, literature, academics, and the media to map the pervasive influence the Indian Left wields. He probes into the antics and pranks of aristocratic socialists, elitist Left-libbers, and pinkish teenybopper intellectuals: how they revel in controversies like the ones caused by Hussain's nude Saraswati and the movie Fire; how they manufacture consent and ostracize dissent; and how they collaborate with the Establishment, their professed radicalism notwithstanding. More Equal Than Others is the first critical study of the Indian Left. And while the author's criticism of the Left is scathing, he is equally unsparing of the Indian Right which, he holds, suffers from "downright cerebral poverty".