Revisiting a Vast Majority: A Journal from India

In The Vast Majority, a book published thirty-one years ago, Michael Harrington wrote of a trip to India during the reign of Indira Gandhi. He mused on the chutzpah of reporting his impressions after only a few weeks in this enormous country. But, he noted, "To know a country from the inside, one must live there for years; to know it infinitely better than someone who has never been there, weeks will suffice." With Harrington's words in mind, we offer some perspectives gathered during a trip to India by Western sociologists that we co-led under the sponsorship of the People to People Foundation—a nongovernmental organization formed with the support of President Dwight D. Eisenhower to bring American professionals face-to-face with counterparts in other regions of the world.