We Indians

By MINOO MASANI

Summary

We Indians is Minoo Masani’s popular, illustrated primer on Indian identity, conceived as a companion to his hugely successful 1940 children’s book Our India and written for a young readership. In the rendered pages — the front matter and the opening chapters — Masani sets out to answer, in plain and conversational prose, who Indians are: where they come from, what their cultural and spiritual heritage is, and what it means to be ‘a good Indian’. The 2001 edition seen here is a reprint by the Indian Liberal Group of the work Oxford University Press first published in 1989, with cartoons by R. K. Laxman; a ‘Preface to Second Edition’ by S. V. Raju thanks OUP and the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and notes the text is unchanged save for updated statistical footnotes.

Chapter 1, ‘What Are Little Indians Made Of?’, riffs on the English nursery rhyme to ask what the ‘little Indian’ is composed of, and answers in terms of racial and ethnic mixing — a blend of Caucasian, Scythian, Mongoloid and (in larger proportion) Dravidian elements, varying by region. In the rendered pages Masani is at pains to demolish race-myths: he distinguishes race (common descent) from nation (a political grouping) and from language, insists that no race is ‘pure’, and singles out the notion of an ‘Aryan race’ as a confusion — Aryan, he argues, names a family of languages, not a race. He traces the error to the Orientalist Max Müller (who later recanted), cites Julian Huxley and a UNESCO study on the ‘notoriously disastrous, muddled thinking about the Aryan race’, and points to its abuse by Hitler.

The rendered pages then open Chapter 2, ‘The Melting Pot’, which extends the argument that India — like the United States and Brazil — is a melting pot of races built up by successive waves of immigration, quoting Huxley that ‘all great nations are melting pots of races’. This summary is based only on the front matter and roughly the first two chapters of a 21-chapter book; later chapters on religion, philosophy, language, the family, the village and city, honesty, discipline, commitment, population and ‘The Future is Yours’ were not in the rendered set.

Key points

• Popular illustrated book on Indian identity by Minoo Masani, written for young readers as a companion to his 1940 ‘Our India’.

• This 2001 edition is an Indian Liberal Group reprint of the 1989 Oxford University Press original, with a Preface to the Second Edition by S. V. Raju.

• Illustrated throughout with cartoons by R. K. Laxman, who also drew the cover.

• Chapter 1 asks ‘what are little Indians made of?’ and answers with a mix of Caucasian, Scythian, Mongoloid and Dravidian elements.

• Masani sharply distinguishes race, nation and language and insists no race is ‘pure’.

• He treats the ‘Aryan race’ as a myth — Aryan denotes a language family, not a race — tracing the confusion to Max Müller and citing UNESCO and Julian Huxley.

• Chapter 2 (‘The Melting Pot’) frames India as a melting pot of races formed by waves of immigration, like the US and Brazil.

• Rendered pages cover only front matter and the first two of 21 chapters.

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