Review of 'Why Don’t the Poor Kill Us?' by Manu Joseph
Mohan Gulrajani
Why Don’t the Poor Kill Us? Manu Joseph Reveals Uncomfortable Truths About Privilege and Power in India
- His new book isn't a manifesto or a call for revolution. It's something potentially more powerful: a mirror held up to Indian society that reflects truths many would prefer to ignore.
The question hits like a punch to the gut: Why don’t they kill us?
It’s the kind of thought that might flash through your mind as you step over a sleeping homeless man on your way to a ₹5,000 dinner, or when your domestic help—who earns in a month what you spend on a weekend getaway—silently cleans up after yet another lavish party. But most of us quickly suppress such uncomfortable reflections. Not Manu Joseph.
After eight years of silence following his last novel, the acclaimed author has returned with perhaps his most audacious work yet: “Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us: The Psychology of Indians.” It’s a book that asks the question many of India’s privileged class have wondered about in their darkest moments but never dared voice aloud.
Joseph, 55, isn’t known for pulling punches. The author who gave us “Serious Men” and “The Illicit Happiness of Other People”—novels that dissected Indian society with surgical precision and dark humour—has now turned his sharp eye to non-fiction.
According to his publisher, this latest work represents more than just a genre shift; it’s a direct confrontation with the uncomfortable realities of modern India.
“The poor know how much we spend in a single day, on a single meal, the price of Atlantic salmon and avocados,” Joseph writes in his characteristically blunt style, according to Aleph Book Company’s official description. “Why do they tolerate it? Why don’t they crawl out from their catastrophes and finish us off?”
It’s a question born from observation, not malice. Joseph, former editor of Open Magazine and columnist for The New York Times, has spent years watching India’s extreme inequality play out in daily life. The statistics are staggering—India is home to some of the world’s wealthiest individuals while hundreds of millions live in poverty. Yet unlike other societies throughout history, this hasn’t led to violent revolution.
A Nation of Contradictions
The book’s premise emerges from a fundamental paradox that defines contemporary India. In a country where billionaires’ homes overlook sprawling slums, where luxury car showrooms sit adjacent to shantytowns, social peace has largely prevailed. The poor don’t storm the gates. The maids don’t poison the tea. The drivers don’t crash the cars.
“Why don’t little men emerge from manholes and attack the cars?” Joseph asks with characteristic irreverence, as detailed in the publisher’s synopsis. “Why don’t the maids, who squat like frogs beside kitchen sinks, pull out the hair of their conscientious madams who never give them a day off? Why is there peace?”
These aren’t rhetorical flourishes but genuine puzzles that Joseph sets out to solve. His investigation takes him deep into the psychology of both oppressor and oppressed, examining what Aleph Book Company describes as the complex web of cultural, social, and psychological factors that maintain India’s “fragile peace.”
Joseph’s approach is unflinching in its self-examination. This isn’t poverty porn written for Western consumption or academic theorizing from an ivory tower. This is an insider’s account—Joseph himself belongs to India’s privileged literary elite—examining his own class with ruthless honesty. “It shows us in pitiless detail just how hypocritical and exploitative people of privilege are,” the publisher’s description states, “and it also shows us how and why they get away with it.”
The book arrives at a time when such questions feel particularly urgent. Global conversations about inequality have intensified, but Joseph’s focus on the Indian context provides crucial perspective often missing from predominantly Western discourse. His examination isn’t just about wealth distribution—it’s about the psychological mechanisms that allow extreme inequality to persist without violent upheaval.
From Fiction to Uncomfortable Facts
The transition from fiction to non-fiction might seem surprising for an author known for his satirical novels, but those familiar with Joseph’s work will recognize the continuity. His novels have always been deeply observational, dissecting Indian middle-class life with anthropologist’s precision and a comedian’s timing. The jump to non-fiction feels less like a departure than a natural evolution.
What cultural, psychological, or social factors unique to India have prevented the kind of class warfare that has erupted elsewhere?
Joseph brings his novelist’s eye for human psychology to bear on sociological questions. His analysis promises to be neither purely academic nor purely anecdotal, but something more complex—a blend of observation, analysis, and the kind of uncomfortable insights that come from someone willing to examine his own privilege without flinching.
The author’s credentials lend weight to his observations. Winner of The Hindu Literature Prize and The American PEN Open Book Award, Joseph has been praised by PEN Award jurors as “that rare bird who can wildly entertain the reader as forcefully as he moves them,” according to his official biography from Aleph Book Company. His work has transcended literary circles—his Netflix series “Decoupled” brought his satirical sensibilities to a global audience.
The book’s publication feels particularly significant in 2024, as conversations about inequality gain urgency worldwide. From climate protests to political upheavals, questions about class and power are reshaping global politics. Joseph’s examination of why such upheaval has been largely absent in India—despite having perhaps the most extreme inequality—offers insights that extend far beyond the subcontinent.
The subtitle, “The Psychology of Indians,” suggests Joseph isn’t just documenting inequality but examining specifically Indian responses to it. What cultural, psychological, or social factors unique to India have prevented the kind of class warfare that has erupted elsewhere? The answers, Joseph suggests, are complex, sometimes absurd, and often counter-intuitive.
The Art of Uncomfortable Questions
What makes Joseph’s approach compelling is his refusal to provide easy answers. He’s not advocating for violence—the question “why don’t they kill us?” isn’t a call to action but an attempt to understand the forces that prevent such action. His investigation into social stability amid inequality doesn’t celebrate it as much as it tries to understand it.
This nuanced approach reflects Joseph’s evolution as a thinker. His novels established him as a master of dark comedy and social observation, but this non-fiction debut suggests a writer grappling with weightier questions. The humour remains—Joseph’s irreverent style is unmistakable—but it’s deployed in service of deeper analysis.
The book’s power lies not just in its willingness to ask uncomfortable questions but in its potential to generate meaningful dialogue. By forcing readers to confront their own positions within systems of inequality, Joseph performs the essential function of literature: making the familiar strange, the comfortable uncomfortable.
“Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us” isn’t a manifesto or a call for revolution. It’s something potentially more powerful: a mirror held up to Indian society that reflects truths many would prefer to ignore. Joseph’s examination of privilege and power doesn’t offer simple solutions because the problems aren’t simple.
Instead, the book appears to function as what the best non-fiction should be—a provocation that forces readers to think differently about familiar realities. In asking why the poor don’t resort to violence, Joseph implicitly examines all the conditions that might lead them to do so, creating a work that’s part sociology, part psychology, and part warning.
The question that gives the book its title isn’t really about the poor at all—it’s about the rich. It’s about examining the systems that allow extreme inequality to persist, the psychological mechanisms that make privilege feel natural, and the cultural factors that maintain social peace despite obvious injustice.
The Fragile Peace
As Joseph himself notes in the book’s description, “It is a fragile peace, and we need to understand how it has come to be.” In an age of increasing global instability and social unrest, understanding the mechanisms that maintain stability—even unjust stability—becomes crucial knowledge.
Whether Joseph’s analysis provides satisfactory answers to his central question remains to be seen. But in asking the question with such boldness and insight, he’s already performed an essential service. He’s forced a conversation that many of India’s privileged class have needed to have with themselves for decades.
“Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us” stands as both mirror and magnifying glass—reflecting uncomfortable truths about contemporary India while examining the complex psychology of inequality in microscopic detail. For readers willing to confront these truths, Joseph offers not comfort but something more valuable: understanding.
In the end, perhaps the most unsettling aspect of Joseph’s question isn’t the possibility that the poor might one day rise up, but the realization that they haven’t already. The book promises to explore not just why this violence hasn’t occurred, but what its absence says about both the oppressed and those who benefit from their oppression.
The question haunts because it has no easy answer—and Joseph, thankfully, doesn’t try to provide one.
“Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us: The Psychology of Indians” by Manu Joseph is published by Aleph Book Company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJLVWYwCFsQ
Professor (Dr.) M. L. Gulrajani F.S.D.C. (UK)
Former Professor and Dean (I.R&D), IIT Delhi
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