The sound and fury of Manu Joseph

THE JOURNALIST, columnist, novelist and screenwriter Manu Joseph is not a contrarian. Or so he insists, often exasperatedly. Never mind that he thinks India’s epidemic of farmer suicides, with thousands of indebted farmers taking their lives every year, is a “successful myth”, “a depression story, not an economics story.” Never mind that he describes higher education as a “false hope” held out to co-opt and tame the poor. Never mind that he once said that labels like “liberals, intellectuals and activists” don’t make sense to him because the people they apply to are all “equally the Taliban”, or that he dubbed The Wire, an independent news website known for its critical stance towards India’s ruling Hindu nationalist government, “an activist organisation.” No, Joseph preens, he’s only “on the side of sanity.”

“Contrarian” would suggest he’s trying too hard, which it’s doubtful Joseph would ever want to be accused of. Here he is in Firstpost: “My only interest in life is to write and to be of use to the people who say they like me.” And at the Times LitFest in 2017: “I work in morally ambiguous zones, so people call me a contrarian.” Here he is again, this time in Khaleej Times: “They are confused about me now and don’t wish to be exposed to what I might have to say.”