The Empire Strikes Back

With some vengeance that too. Ram Guha in this week's Outlook savages Dalrymple's claim that Pankaj Mishra is more of an 'authentic' Indian voice given his mofussil background than those educated at 'Doon School' or 'St. Stephen's College'. I'm not sure where Guha was educated- I know he went to Stephen's but I'm not sure if he went to Doon, but that partly accounts for the savagery of his response. Part of his argument is valid- that there is no singular Indian voice that can be truly representative, that the urban voice is as authentically Indian as the rural one. But I wish he'd left out the personal digs at the end- by his own argument, Dalrymple is no less an 'authentic' voice than Ram Guha himself, and by arguing thus, methinks Guha hits well below the belt.