If you want to understand India, don’t talk to Indians who speak in English.

“If you want to understand India, don’t talk to Indians who speak in English” is a saying Ayyan Mani writes on the Institute of Theory and Research’s blackboard on the day the Brahmins come to see Adi Mani, whom they regard as a Dalit genius. Positioned against this encounter, the maxim links a skepticism about English-speaking authority to the spectacle of elite recognition—and to Ayyan’s knowledge that Adi’s invented genius is nearing its end.

Appearance and Attribution

Ayyan writes the saying as the “Thought For The Day” on a blackboard near the Institute of Theory and Research’s main stairway. The book presents it with an attribution to Salman Rushdie. Its setting is specific: Ayyan stands in the Institute’s porch, facing the board, while Adi waits some distance away near the lifts.

The Saying in Context

The Brahmins have summoned Adi after reading an article about him in The Times of India. They want to see for themselves a Dalit genius, though Ayyan understands that they have put their purpose differently. He watches them gather around his son and offer what he regards as grand acknowledgment of infant brilliance. The saying’s warning about seeking an understanding of India from Indians who speak in English therefore appears beside a scene of powerful men assessing a boy whose public identity Ayyan has manufactured.

Irony and Significance

The maxim’s placement gives it an irony the scene does not resolve: the line questions the authority of English-speaking interpreters, while the assembled intellectuals are themselves treating Adi as an object of observation and judgment. Ayyan, meanwhile, knows what the audience does not: this is the last day of the performance. He had told Adi the night before, on the tar-coated terrace of their BDD home, that the game was over. The blackboard saying thus accompanies both the public display of Adi’s supposed brilliance and Ayyan’s private decision to end it.