Caravan: India Shrugged – The Ayn Rand Cult That Never Took Off

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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2 Responses

  1. Aaron David says:

    Objectivism is still widely known in the country, though its official movement may have winnowed. In 2012, The Economist reported that in India, Rand outsells Karl Marx sixteen-fold. The story also reported that India ranks behind only the United States and Canada in the number of Rand-related Google searches.

    Mitra still runs the Liberty Institute, although he has scaled it down and now primarily uses it to advocate for stricter protections of private-property rights. Over coffee, he told me he plans to digitise the Malkanis’ collection. Objectivism will play a large role in India’s future, he said, and the Malkanis’ movement “could not be suppressed.”

    Fascinating.Report

  2. Stillwater says:

    This reminds me of Noam Chomsky recounting stories of in-house gatherings to talk about opposition to the Vietnam war in the 60s. At first it was 10, 12 people at a time. And how he THEN recounts that no material change in politics ever arose from those meetings, even when they went public!, until the PTB decided that Vietnam was a lost cause.

    I’m not saying those types of activism aren’t worth engaging in. More that it’s important to distinguish between the hoped-for policy changes and the personal impetus driving them.Report