India's definition of its culture as non-violent seemed a fiction at every lynching undertaken in the name of the cow over the last six years. The fiction resembled a charade as those barbaric killings failed to spark a popular outrage. The charade turned into a cruel joke as Bharatiya Janata Party leaders resorted to the rhetoric of violence in their campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections, a testament to the party's belief that Indians do not necessarily recoil from hate and gore.

This puzzle of violence seducing a people who claim their culture to be non-violent is probed by Aparna Vaidik in her recently released book, My Son's Inheritance: A Secret History of Lynching and Blood Justice in India. It has the depth of an academic tome, traversing centuries to fathom the construction of the modern Hindu identity, yet it is as gripping as the best of fiction.