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These prophetic words find resonance in Undaunted, the latest book by P. Chidambaram, in which he helps readers understand what has happened to India in 2018, rather than what has happened in India.

Like every free citizen, thinker and liberal, he feels deeply and strongly about the developments of the Modi era, which, in his own words, have been the ‘most challenging and adventurous that I have spent as an Opposition politician’.

Carrying on undaunted by the power of the State, he writes boldly on a plethora of subjects—the interference of the central government in institutions, the complete derailment of an economy that was previously cruising at a growth rate of 7.5 per cent and the polarization of an ancient civilization that threatens its very survival. He also casts a sharp eye on the sweeping changes in the political battleground and the significant setbacks suffered by the government in the foreign policy arena.

In this collection of incisive essays published in 2018 as a weekly column in The Indian Express, Chidambaram brings to bear a wealth of experience, mastery of the subject matter and an engaging writing style to critically examine the most defining question of 2019—Are we facing the end of the ‘idea of India’ given to us by our founding fathers?

Undaunted serves as a contemporary record of the most important events that affected the country—for better or worse—in the year gone by.