Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution in the
Subcontinent by Robert W. Stern : A Book Review

chillibreeze writer — Poornima BV

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This book is about India and the changing face of Indian society. For too long, the West has looked at India only as a land of naked sadhus, snake charmers, bandit queens and Rajasthani women in colorful costumes. But there is another much unnoticed side to India as well- the emergence of India as a lively, genuine and stable parliamentary democracy. This forms the central story of this book.

Did you know that of every six people in the world, one is an Indian? Over the past decade or so, India has become an important player in the global economy. And as the author puts it, an increasingly assertive, nuclear and missile-armed Indian Union is a major power today in Asia, the Indian Ocean and the world. Stern takes us on a journey through family households and villages of India, bringing to us, the essence of India.



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This is a book that’s packed with information on contemporary India. It’s a journey through India’s villages and its little understood caste and class systems, faiths and extraordinary ethnic diversity. As you savor these different flavors of India, the author describes how families, castes and religious communities are being brought into the political and economic streams of the Indian society. He shows us how the basic social institutions in rural India are all changing, bringing with it changes in families, particularly in the women. The book describes what Caste and Class are all about and their various manifestations. The book also deals with the ethno-linguistic homeland-cum-states of the Indian Union and their religions, particularly Hinduism.

Stern explains how statistics confirm that the upper 50 per cent of income-earning households account for about 70-75 per cent of Indian household expenditure. Although India still provides the world with its largest national pool of poor people and illiterates, India’s development is not taking place here. It is taking place in the expanding middle classes. The author observes that in India, the poor are neither the focus of change nor the directors of change and they are certainly not its major beneficiaries. But they affect the course of change and its pace as the recipients of some incidental trickle-down effects of a bourgeois revolution.

What’s remarkable about this book is that it gives an unbiased, factual representation of the factors that have contributed to these changes in Indian society. The days of the Raj, Hindu nationalism, Muslim separatism, the creation of Pakistan, the Kashmir issue, governance in post-colonial India and the emergence of the English-educated middle class, the Mandal issue, the Hindutva ideology have all been discussed in detail. But as Stern observes, the remarkable achievement of parliamentary democracy in India is that it has survived so well in so apparently unpromising a social environment. Stern demonstrates how and why India remains the largest and most endearing democracy in the developed world.

Referring to the Kashmir issue, the author says, “Pakistan is unlikely to start a war that it is likely to lose. The cost of defeat would be high, if not catastrophic. India is unlikely to start a war that it need not fight. Its only quarrel with Pakistan is over Kashmir and India’s hold on Kashmir is secure.”

This is one book that would be of great value to students, teachers and researchers interested in South Asian Studies. And to the general reader, it gives an apt and up-to-date picture of what India is all about, from the time before Independence to the days of globalization. The book-cover aptly has the picture of a traditionally dressed Indian woman with a cellular phone. This, perhaps, sums what this book is all about-the changing face of India through the years.

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Poornima writes for chillibreeze.

Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution in the Subcontinent by Robert W. Stern : A Book Review

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Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution in the
Subcontinent by Robert W. Stern : A Book Review