“In 1962, in spite of five-year plans and universal suffrage, and talk of socialism and the common man, I found that for most Indians Indian poverty was still a poetic concept, a prompting to piety and sweet melancholy, part of the country’s uniqueness, its Gandhian non-materialism.”

“In 1962, in spite of five-year plans and universal suffrage, and talk of socialism and the common man, I found that for most Indians Indian poverty was still a poetic concept, a prompting to piety and sweet melancholy, part of the country’s uniqueness, its Gandhian non-materialism.”

— V.S. Naipaul