Rating: 
Summary: An insightful portrait of India
Review: "India: A Million Mutinies Now" by V. S. Naipaul presents a snapshot of India during 1988-1990. It portrays small on-going struggles at that time through the stories of common people.
The book covers most of the India through observations at the places Naipaul visited and through the stories of people he met. Most of the people interviewed in these stories happened to come from small town or village and succeeded in settling in metropolitans. In that sense, it is not the first hand portrayal of rural India, but an indirect one. The stories, however, do provide an insight into the minds of Indians - this is, perhaps, the unique highlight of the book. With the passage of time, things have changed in India, especially after economic liberalization of 1991, but the psyche of the Indian people will take more time to change. For Indian readers, the book provides an unbiased account of the people from different states and their struggles - it will certainly change their prejudices about different provinces. For non-Indian readers, it provides a snap-shot that transcends the barriers of time, when it comes to depicting a picture of culturally diverse India.
Rating:
Summary: An insightful portrait of India
Review: "India: A Million Mutinies Now" by V. S. Naipaul presents a snapshot of India during 1988-1990. It portrays small on-going struggles at that time through the stories of common people.
The book covers most of the India through observations at the places Naipaul visited and through the stories of people he met. Most of the people interviewed in these stories happened to come from small town or village and succeeded in settling in metropolitans. In that sense, it is not the first hand portrayal of rural India, but an indirect one. The stories, however, do provide an insight into the minds of Indians - this is, perhaps, the unique highlight of the book. With the passage of time, things have changed in India, especially after economic liberalization of 1991, but the psyche of the Indian people will take more time to change. For Indian readers, the book provides an unbiased account of the people from different states and their struggles - it will certainly change their prejudices about different provinces. For non-Indian readers, it provides a snap-shot that transcends the barriers of time, when it comes to depicting a picture of culturally diverse India.
Rating: 
Summary: West Indian's India
Review: For this book, one has to fix up the frame of reference. For an Indian who stays in India, this book is not extensive. More details, more in-depth handling of the situations was required. It felt like a collage of events with a lot of hotch-potch. For any non-Indian or Indians staying outside India, it casts a different spell. For them, India is like what is potrayed in the book evasive yet undaunting, mysterious yet expressive. This book is an ideal book on India for non-Indians.
Rating: 
Summary: Curiously unengaging
Review: I was expecting more from this book. Naipaul is undoubtedly a massively talented writer and storyteller, but I found this work curiously unengaging. Maybe there *are* too many stories in this book to get fully engaged with any of them, or maybe the characters themselves aren't compelling. A disappointment on the whole.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Insight into India
Review: In this book Naipaul takes you through a fascinating journey through India of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Naipaul can really look deep into people's lives, facets and and their backgrounds. I have found this book one of the most interesting and insightful on India. I have lived most of my life in India and feel that Naipaul notices and thinks about things that I've come to take for granted.
Rating:
Summary: ***India*** seemlessly viewed by interviews with its people
Review: India is it's people, and Naipal seemlessly allows us to live with people from all stages and forms of Indian life, at the same time enriching our knowledge of the history, religions, and pragmatic realistic present of India. This book may aid your understanding of the politics of India today. Through an interview format one is left with the feeling of being in the room for the birth, life, and in some cases the death of the family of Man called India
Rating:
Summary: Exhaustively researched, finely crafted, not to be missed.
Review: India, A Million Mutinies Now is like going to India with a friend who knows everybody, and takes you to meet everybody: holy men, politicians, authors, princes, revolutionaries, gangsters, women's magazine publishers... At first, the prospect of so many interviews and anecdotes seemed daunting, but as I read on I found that somehow Naipaul was able to drop one after a few pages and go on to the next almost seamlessly, just as a skilled conversationalist moves from one group to another at a party. It's a testament to Naipaul's considerable ability as a traveler and writer. Although the interviews and mini-biographies are all about his subjects and their lives, there is ever a sense of his presence, at once gentle and piercing, the antithesis of the loud, gauche Western tourist. He is critical without being crass, intellectual without being dreary. When he's finished, a portrait of considerable depth and color has emerged. I got exactly what I wanted from it: a lot of perspective and innumerable fascinating details. Like the U.S., India is a pluralistic nation limited by its bigotry. Like Israel, it is sitting on a powder keg of ethnic aspirations. Like China, it has way too many people. How they cope (or do not cope) with that last problem is a recurrent topic. A family of ten can live together in a 10'X10' room by working and sleeping in shifts. A talented young professional must turn down a good job because it requires nine hours of daily commuting through Calcutta. People are loath to walk outside because their clothing and skin gets begrimed with dust and soot in a matter of minutes. Washing is difficult because the supply of water is intermittent, as is the supply of electricity. Naipaul presents basic facts like these, which any journalist could provide, but then builds upon this framework vignettes and tableaux that are often surprising or ironic or astonishing. India has perhaps the largest collection of slums in the world. Yet, for legal reasons, their film industry (also the largest in the world) must build their own slum if they want to depict a slum in a film. The most cursory reading of Indian history will tell you that the priestly class of the Hindus (brahmins) must keep away from the latrine cleaning class (sweepers). But did you know that a brahmin could be "polluted" by a menstruating woman at a distance of up to fifteen feet? Or that brahmins should only drink water that comes directly from the earth (not from a pipe)? Or that some poorer brahmins, with the rising wages of sweepers, have been reduced to cleaning their own latrines? There is much affection and empathy in Naipaul's account, as in the description of a family of five riding together on a motorcycle: "father on the main saddle, one child between his arms, another behind him holding on to his waist, mother on the carrier at the back, sitting sideways, with the baby." One sees in a glance the flirting with catastrophe that is necessarily a part of most Indians' daily struggle.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books about indian culture
Review: It is interesting the way Naipaul talks about his motherland, at the same time completely in love with it but in a non-passionate way. He describes the different cultures in a way that makes it easy for an ocidental to understand, something that is quite difficult to be done. The descriptions are so rich that you can really discover the country and learn how to think about it. I recommend specially for those who, like me, want to travel to India: it is possible to collect really important information about how things work there.
Rating: 
Summary: Laboriously drawn-out for a book so loosely structured.
Review: Naipaul overdid it with this 500+ page book that wanders through snippets of countless stories, but never dwells long enough in any of them. The book is valuable for the slices of East Indian life revealed, but its charm wore off halfway through. I would recommend looking elsewhere for Indian material. A novel would have continuity of plot and character, whereas this had only the continuity of pulling the rug out from underneath the reader again and again
Rating:
Summary: A must read for travelers
Review: Nobel prize winner V.S. Naipaul's masterpiece on India is a must-read for any Westerner seeking a deeper understanding of India. Naipaul tells the story of this incredibly complex country person by person, through in-depth interviews of his subjects not on politics, culture or religion but on their personal lives. Naipaul tells the stories of a wide range of characters--a secretary to a prominent businessman, members of the Bombay underworld, a Marxist rebel. He tells the story of Amir, the descendant of the Raja of Mahmudabad, now living in the palace his ancestors had gotten from the British, lost after Partition, and regained after he became a successful Muslim politician in a Hindu area. And the story of Kakusthan, a modern man who returned to tradition and the life of a pure Brahmin, in a ghetto surrounded by a Muslim neighborhood. And the story of Ashok, who rejected an arranged marriage, managed to break into marketing as a career, and now struggled with the decline of the genteel, Anglo business world he had grown up in. Naipaul's great talent is in ferreting out the details of everyday life--what his people ate, wore, above all where they lived--often in tiny 10' by 10' rooms with wife and children. One comes away with a great appreciation of the notion of caste, so embedded in the society and culture for religious and non-religious alike. One also begins to appreciate what a struggle life in India is for everyone, especially those who live in cities. This book is full of stories of struggle--against tradition, to preserve tradition, between castes, between Hindu and Muslim--and of more down to earth struggles--to find a job, to find housing, to choose a career. Unfortunately Naipaul wasn't able to interview women with the ease he interviewed men--not surprising in this traditional society--and women appear only as shadowy wives and mothers in the narrative. But a great book nevertheless.
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