Tinderbox

‘Sadanand Dhume tells the urgent story of India’s faltering pluralist democracy and its takeover by insurgent right-wing Hindu nationalists. Drawing on years of on-the-ground reporting, Tinderbox is a sobering and stylishly-written reckoning with the tumult lurking beneath the world’s largest democracy. It confirms Dhume’s position as one of the most important and incisive writers on South Asia today’
James Crabtree, author of The Billionaire Raj
‘Tinderbox eloquently catalogues how the unraveling of pluralism, the stalling of economic reform, and the erosion of democratic institutions could arrest India’s promising rise. Dhume’s arguments might be inconvenient, but they must be reckoned with’
Milan Vaishnav, Senior Fellow and Director of the South Asia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
‘In his brilliant new book … Sadanand Dhume punctures the notion that India is another China in waiting, arguing that the impressive numbers on GDP growth mask a deeper malaise. He makes a compelling case that the Modi government’s excessive focus on making India a Hindu nation has harmed its ability to live up to its ambitious economic promises, while eroding the country’s democratic institutions and undermining its famed pluralism. Tinderbox is a wakeup call to the dangers of India’s slide towards authoritarianism’
Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance

Sadanand Dhume is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal whose writing focuses on the politics, economics and foreign policy of India and South Asia. He is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of My Friend the Fanatic, which charted the rise of the radical Islamist movement in Indonesia. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and two dogs.

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