VIRTUAL: K.S. Komireddi / Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India

Booksmith is thrilled to host K.S. Komireddi for his first book Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India. Please note our early start time of 12pm PT.

This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.

You can order Malevolent Republic here – we’re currently offering free shipping throughout San Francisco and the East Bay. We are happy to fulfill orders anywhere in the world – international postage will be invoiced separately. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact us at events@booksmith.com.

About the book

Hailed as the world’s largest democracy and feted by the Trump administration in events like “Howdy Modi” in Houston, India is rapidly mutating into a plebiscitary autocracy under the sectarian rule of Prime Minister Modi. In this blistering critique of India from Indira Gandhi to the present, Komireddi lays bare the cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India’s past, and demeaning bribes to minorities that led to Modi’s rise. If secularists fail to reclaim the republic from Hindu nationalists, Komireddi argues, India will become Pakistan by another name. An incandescent narrative history of the world’s largest democracy, Malevolent Republic is also a passionate argument for the reclamation of India’s soul.

“Kapil Komireddi ranks high among the wisest, most astute, and most humane observers of modern India” – David Frum, The Atlantic

“Written with passion and savagery, this is a polemical and highly readable short history of modern India from Indira Gandhi to Narendra Modi” – Gideon Rachman, The Financial Times

“K.S. Komireddi is the V.S. Naipaul of his generation … arresting, essential, devastating” – The Spectator

“In precise and sharp language, Malevolent Republic takes readers on a terrifying and yet illuminating journey through the rapidly transforming political, social, and religious landscape of Modi’s India” – Rafia Zakaria, The Times Literary Supplement

“Komireddi is one of the most thoughtful and thorough journalists writing today. His range of interests is impressive in its breadth and cosmopolitanism. His is a rare voice that can comment on global affairs from a truly comparative perspective” – Amitav Ghosh, author of the Ibis trilogy.

About the author

K.S. (Kapil Satish) Komireddi was born in India, and was educated there and in England. His commentary, criticism, and journalism—from South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East—have appeared, among other leading publications, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist, the Indian Express, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, TIME, Foreign Policy, the Spectator, and the Jewish Chronicle. In 2019, his oped highlighting the Indian government’s brutality in Kashmir provoked an angry demonstration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s supporters outside the offices of Washington Post in Washington, DC. A highly regarded observer of modern India, Komireddi is one of only 2,300 individuals Modi follows on Twitter (Modi himself has 66 million followers). He is a contributor to Monocle24 radio. Malevolent Republic is his first book.

This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.