The Twice-Born

When Aatish Taseer first came to Benares, the spiritual capital of Hinduism, he was the Westernized teenager of an Indian journalist and a Pakistani politician, raised among New Delhi’s intellectual and cultural elite. Nearly two decades later, Taseer leaves his life in Manhattan to go in search of the Brahmins, wanting to understand his own estrangement from India through their ties to tradition. Known as the twice-born, the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But, for Taseer, Benares is the window onto an India as fractured as his own identity. At every turn, the seductive, homogenizing forces of globalised modernity collide with the insistent presence of ancient customs amid a rising tide of nationalism, driven forth by a brutal caste system, cries of “Victory to Mother India!,” and vengeful anti-Muslim violence.