India is a difficult country for outsiders to gauge its level of intellectual culture. I know India has an ancient tradition of religious learning and philosoph

India is a difficult country for outsiders to gauge its level of intellectual culture. I know India has an ancient tradition of religious learning and philosophy based on the study of texts. It has produced 20th-century novelists that are known the whole world over. And yet when I spent a year traveling all over India, there seemed to be so few bookshops even in upper-class districts, and so little reading in public. I could only conclude that reading and the intellectual life was the pursuit of only a small minority, but because of India’s huge population, even that small minority was large enough to be self-sustaining and make its impact, even if it was rather hidden away from sight.