My new article, Deconstructing Hindu Extremism is up in Satya Circle.

I think as people we do very little self-examination. We tend to avert our eyes from the uncomfortable realities that do not conform to our world view. It is just so much easier to conform and let it all slide away.

An increasing percentage of people in India have an affluent lifestyle in the metros. The money cushions them from the violence and the disparities. Of course, the widespread upheavals that shake the country from time to time (e.g. the partition in 1947, the anti-Sikh riot of 1984, the violence against the Kashmiri pandits in the late eighties, the riot in Gujarat last year) etc.) don?t distinguish between the rich and the poor or the powerful and the weak. But the English speaking upwardly mobile of the metros are to a large extent shielded from the biases and the glass ceilings that affect the rest of the society.

Unfortunately, this section of the society is not as much a vehicle for change as one might think. Too many have a shallow fascination with the Western society, but have no appreciation for the values of independent thinking and egalitarianism that made the West great in the first place. Many tend to retain the prejudices.

In the rest of India, we seem to be getting the worst of all worlds; the economic disparities remind me of the South American countries like Argentina where the division between rich and poor is deep and permanent and the increasing religious divisiveness is akin to that of central European countries like erstwhile Yugoslavia where historic animosities tore the country apart. It is possible that I am being unduly alarmist, but I don't feel terribly hopeful about India right now. The political and social infrastructure of the country is badly in need of some healing.

The article is obviously an opinion piece and I am willing to be convinced otherwise.