WAKE-UP INDIA

Nation-building requires more than periodic voting and passive pride. Shrinivas argues that too many Indians — across generations — have stood at the margins of their own country's story: bystanders during the independence movement, spectators during the decades of development that followed. The cost of that absence, he contends, is a lagging civilisation that has not yet made full use of what it inherited.

The book reaches into India's ancient cultural foundations and Hindu heritage to make the case for active citizenship rooted in a sense of ownership rather than entitlement. The argument is not historical nostalgia but a call directed at the present — at readers who consume the idea of India without contributing to its reconstruction.

Short and direct in its address, the book suits readers who want a provocation to self-examination rather than a policy programme.