In October 1947, two months after Independence, T J S George arrived in Bombay. He was 19 years old, with a degree in English Literature. He sent out job applications — to the Air Force and to the city’s English-language newspapers. Only one organisation cared to reply, The Free Press Journal. The editor was known to hire anyone who asked for a job, but most new hires were sacked in a fortnight. George was put on the news desk as a sub-editor and eventually became an assistant editor.
In Patna, as editor of The Searchlight, he was arrested by the chief minister for sedition. He spent three weeks in Hazaribagh Central Jail. In Hong Kong, he worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review as regional editor; in New York, he was a writer for the United Nations population division; and back in Hong Kong, in 1975, he founded Asiaweek. Six years later, he returned to India and settled in Bengaluru. He began a column for Indian Express that ran without a break for 25 years, until 2022.
Acclaimed for his widely historical, pan-Asian vision, George brings this varied experience to a compulsively readable new book, The Dismantling of India. It is the story of India told in 35 concise biographies, beginning with J R D Tata and ending with Narendra Modi.