Independence Day special: 12 books that tackle the complex reality of India

1. A Feast of Vultures – The Hidden Business of Democracy in India; Josy Joseph (HarperCollins, 2016)

Corruption has been the buzzword in public discourse since the 'India Against Corruption' (IAC) movement of 2011. IAC didn't make a dent in corruption but it reaffirmed the perception most have of politicians and bureaucrats as unscrupulous self-seekers. Josy Joseph's book – the result of two decades' experience as an investigative reporter negotiating the corridors of power – not just confirms this impression but lays bare exactly how corruption works. Read about how it was in 2003 that the home ministry ignored telephone intercepts between Dawood Ibrahim and Jet Airways' promoter Naresh Goyal so as to give the airline security clearance, and other stories of the seamy underbelly of today's India.

2. India's Long Road, The Search for Prosperity: Vijay Joshi (Penguin, 2016)

'Aspirational Indians' – may their tribe increase! – love to believe that theirs is the world's "fastest growing economy". Sadly, the reality of India doesn't quite square with their optimism. Sure, we are more prosperous than before, but will we ever get near the West or beat China? A number of recent books have attempted to answer this question but none with such candidness as this one. Or with as much lucidity. Joshi, whose impressive credentials as a long-time teacher at Oxford University are bolstered with stints at government and business houses, not only analyses what's wrong with the economy but also gives a fairly practical roadmap of "radical reform" to get more Indians to a higher level of prosperity.

3. India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy: Ramachandra Guha (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007)

It's the answer to your quest for a single book that covers the history of independent India, recounting major events from before the British left in 1947 down to the 21st century. Guha's book gives not just factual details, but also a sense of perspective as it strings together the jumble of events into a coherent narrative of how an "unnatural nation", as Guha calls India in the prologue, has managed to stay together despite many challenges – external aggressors, secessionist movements, the fissiparous forces of language, religion, caste, economic disparity, threat from authoritarianism and internal distortions such as communal ill will, corruption and nepotism. A bravura effort that should find place on the shelf of anyone who wants to understand present-day India.

4. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity: Amartya Sen (Penguin, 2005)

This is an erudite and absorbing cultural history of India. Sen unearths and describes an essential and defining characteristic of Indian culture since ancient times, one that explains its astonishing syncretism – the vibrant culture of public debate and intellectual pluralism. But there's also another way to look at this book that is a compilation of 16 essays – as a political tract reminding contemporary Indians of what they seem to be losing fast, and the dangers of it. No wonder, this book by the Nobel prize-winning economist has been invoked so much in recent times, especially during the so-called "intolerance debate". This is essential reading for our times.

5. Incarnations: India in 50 Lives: Sunil Khilnani (Penguin, 2016)

This book, by one of India's most astute contemporary historians, is a comprehensive history of India presented as the story of the lives of important men (and very few women). Khilnani packs a disparate cast of characters – starting with Ashoka to represent ancient India followed by Rajaraj Chola, Akbarand Shivaji. The moderns, closest to us in time and mindspace, are represented by Gandhi, Jinnah, Sheikh Abdullah, Indira Gandhi and Charan Singh. Khilnani also includes spiritual seers such as Buddha and Mahavira and Mirabai have had as much of a role as have scholars such as Kautilya, Aryabhatta, artists Nainsukh and Amrita Sher-Gil, writers Saadat Hasan Manto and Rabindranath Tagore, and filmmakers Satyajit Ray and Raj Kapoor. Pop history at its best.

6. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India: William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury, 2009) 

The West loves to portray India as the land of spirituality – so much so that we've started to believe it ourselves. This book is Dalrymple's attempt to map the many dimensions of the phenomenon in this travel book – Hari Das, a Dalit labourer in Kerala who personifies a deity when he occasionally performs the Theyyam dance and has his feet touched by Brahmins; Prasannamati, a Jain nun who has renounced the world but decides to embrace Sallekhana, voluntary death, when her friends dies; Tashi Passang, a Buddhist monk who fought the Chinese, and so on. Dalrymple has the unique advantage of the insider-outside – having lived here more than three decades he's very familiar with India and its ways and yet retains the unfamiliar eye of the foreign born.

7. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India: Akshaya Mukul (HarperCollins, 2015)

Hindutva as a political agenda is a fact of Indian democracy today. But Hindutva didn't just begin with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. It has been a growing undercurrent of the political consciousness among large sections of people, especially in north India, even before Independence. And Gita Press, a little known publisher based in Gorakhpur, UP, that specialises in publishing editions of the Ramayana, Gita and other Indian scriptures, has played no small part in marshalling the simple piety of Hindu masses into a suspicious and fanatic programme that's seeking to change the basic tenets of Indian democracy. Senior journalist Mukul's history of Gita Press is thus essential reading to understand the rise of communal politics in India.

8. Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity: Katherine Boo (Random House, 2012)

Boo's book may be set in a slum in Mumbai, but it is one of the most powerful evocations of contemporary India. It's about residents of Annawadi slum, where Boo spent more than three years researching, who constitute the salt of our nation, the not-too-pretty reality that most of us pretend does not exist. Boo describes the goings-on in Annawadi meticulously – the squalor, cramped tenements, abusive relationships, the violence and harassment by officials – but it's not "poverty porn" like the Mumbai represented in films and books. There's understanding and dispassionate sympathy in the account that gives Boo's subjects dignity and individuality so they transcend their circumstances, rather than be bogged down by it.

9. Another Way of Seeing: The Magazine of New Writing: Granta 130 (Granta, 2015)

This is only the second time that literary magazine Granta has devoted an entire issue to India, the first time being in 1997 to mark the golden jubilee of Independence that year. That issue lived up to the 118-year-old British quarterly literary journal's reputation for bringing forth the best of contemporary writing with pieces by Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Anjum Hasan, Raghu Karnad, Amit Chaudhuri, William Dalrymple and Urvashi Butalia. So does this one with an impressive line-up of new writers such as Hari Kunzru, Deepti Kapoor, Aman Sethi, Raghu Karnad, Karthika Nair, Anjum Hassan and so on. Read it to get a sense of the plethora of voices writing in English today and the varied stories they have to tell.

10. India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in 21st Century: Ira Trivedi (Aleph Book Company, 2014)

An account of the immense changes in sexual mores that's been sweeping India, especially since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s. Trivedi, a former fashion model, speaks to students in schools and colleges across India, couples – married, on the verge of it, living in, or of the same sex – their parents and guardians, marriage counsellors, astrologers, divorce lawyers and moral vigilantes to give a comprehensive picture of this revolution that's lifting the veil on many centuries of repression. The picture, however, is not all rosy – the greater licentiousness is mostly limited to the cities, while the rural parts lag behind, given to less freedom for women and violence.

11. A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces: Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th Century to the Present: David Davidar (Aleph Book Company, 2014)

Fiction, often, has a better handle on reality than history. Davidar includes the choicest of short fiction by the most acclaimed writers from India, written in the last century. Not only does he include all the known writers – Saadat Hasan Manto, Khushwant Singh, Ruskin Bond et al – but also translations from little-known stalwarts such as Gopinath Mohanty in Oriya, Paul Zacharia in Malayalam, UR Ananthamurthy in Kannada, Vilas Sarang in Marathi and Harishankar Parsai in Hindi. As a whole, the collection, though marked by differences in caste, economic standing, language, gender and religion but held together by a universality of human feeling and experience.

12. 2 States: The Story of My Marriage: Chetan Bhagat (Rupa & Co, 2009)

Bhagat has as many detractors as he does acolytes, but there's no doubting that he succeeds spectacularly in crystallising the spirit of the times. This is true of all his novels, and especially so of this one which tells the story of love triumphing over regional divide. The divides of language, caste and religion mean much less to today's generation, it is true, than it did to earlier ones. But what resonates even more with the times is the reversal of traditional gender roles that Bhagat depicts – it is the wife who holds a regular job while the husband stays at home and writes, and neither he nor she think less of each other because of it. It might be a simplistic and limited view of contemporary Indian society, but it's also a more egalitarian one.