This book should come with a statutory warning: not to be read by people with weak hearts. This is apocalypse now. In the sunset of his writing career, Khushwant Singh is shrouded in darkness. The End of India is bawdy, lovable raconteur-turned-doomsayer. If bedtime reading is your bag, this is guaranteed to provide instant nightmares or prompt you to make your last will and testament and perform the last rites.

THE END OF INDIA By Khushwant Singh Penguin Price: Rs 200 Pages: 163

Somehow, the doomsday clock ticking away on Khushwant's desk doesn't ring right. Nor does his logic. Certainly recent events, most notably the rise of Hindu militancy, are a cause for concern. But no one can seriously buy his argument that the country is about to break up. The villains of his piece, Pravin Togadia, Uma Bharati, Narendra Modi, Bal Thackeray and their fellow travellers are real enough but fascism has not replaced democracy and the rule of law, as Khushwant would have us believe. Nor is secularism dead and buried amid the ruins of Ayodhya. India's best loved author admits that he has written this book, more a pamphlet really, amid bouts of depression. But even so, it is an overly pessimistic view of contemporary India.

The cause of his angst is clearly the rise of Modi and Hindu fundamentalism spearheaded by the more rabid elements of the Sangh Parivar. Made more dangerous, he feels, with a BJP government at the helm. He delves into history to expose the roots of communalism and the emergence of religious fanatics like Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, reincarnated, as the author perceives it, as Modi.

Khushwant as author carries credibility, as a pamphleteer, less so. His solutions are simplistic: revive the Nehruvian notion of secularism, restructure the police force so that minority communities are over-represented, summary trials for perpetuators of communal violence and, most ambitious of all, create a new religion. The image of Khushwant as a prophet of doom is not a reassuring one. Maybe age has something to do with his dark and dangerous pessimism. India has survived greater crises and emerged with its vital organs intact. There is not yet reason to believe that the BJP, with A.B.Vajpayee at its head, will replace the Kohlapuri chappal with the fascist jackboot. Yet, for all his over-the-top gloomsaying, there are warning bells here that need to be heard. The End of India is, essentially, a cautionary tale.