What distinguishes genius—the domain it inhabits or the manner in which it thinks? A Touch of Genius: The Wisdom of India’s Nobel Laureates, edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee, approaches this question obliquely by assembling a constellation of Nobel laureates connected to India and tracing the habits of mind that underpin exceptional thought. Spanning more than a century—from Rabindranath Tagore in 1913 to Abhijit Banerjee in 2019—the anthology is organised into ten sections, including literature, science, economics, religion and philosophy, politics, and inequality and injustice. These categories remain fluid: through essays, lectures, and reflections, many of the laureates move beyond their primary disciplines, demonstrating a mode of thinking that is curious, integrative, and unconfined.
The intellectual architecture of the volume is established in its introduction, where Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between the hedgehog and the fox serves as a conceptual thread. Genius, in this formulation, resists confinement within a single organising principle; it draws connections across fields rather than reinforcing boundaries. This insight lends coherence to a diverse collection and foregrounds a deeper unity: that the intellectual concerns of these figures are “moored in their profound and enduring humanity.”
This expansiveness is evident in CV Raman’s essay The Story of the Diamond. Known for his groundbreaking work in the 1930s, he writes with a sensibility that exceeds disciplinary limits. Diamonds emerge not merely as objects of analysis but as catalysts for wonder. His observations move from physics to speculation, and from there to ethics. As he puts it, “The essence of the scientific spirit is to look behind and beyond and realise what a wonderful world it is that we live in.” The remark captures both the curiosity that animates discovery and the sense of wonder that sustains it. A similar crossing of boundaries appears in Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s lecture, Shakespeare, Newton and Beethoven, or Patterns of Creativity, where he reflects on the affinities between artistic and scientific creation, suggesting that the pursuit of beauty, truth, and perfection shapes both.
Tagore’s presence gives the anthology a distinct depth. In My Reminiscences, he recalls childhood through fragments of memory and sensation, pushing back against the rigidity of formal schooling. His remark—“What I learnt there [in school] I have no idea… it is for psychologists to debate”—is both wry and revealing, questioning the value of institutional learning. From here, his reflections open into a meditation on modern life. Remembering a childhood shaped by a lack of abundance, he notes that “what little we did get we enjoyed to the utmost,” contrasting it with a present where excess dulls appreciation.
The narrative examines what makes these laureates “Indian.” Rather than reducing identity to geography, the anthology offers a layered understanding shaped by intellectual formation and engagement
In his writing, the personal turns naturally philosophical, culminating in a broader ethical vision captured in his assertion (from the Isha Upanishad) that “he who sees all beings as himself… knows truth.” This sense of unity, grounded in empathy, points to an understanding of knowledge as an expansion of perception, finding a simple and direct echo in Mother Teresa’s words: “Love begins at home, and destruction and hatred begin at home also.”
The anthology’s humanist core is most evident in the section on inequality and injustice. Amartya Sen’s observation, in More Than 100 Million Women are Missing, that “These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women” transforms data into ethical urgency. Kailash Satyarthi adds a complementary voice, foregrounding the internal dimensions of oppression—fear, vulnerability, and mistrust among the marginalised. Together, these reflections suggest that meaningful change must address both structural conditions and lived experience.
In the economic essay, Inside the Machine: Toward a New Development Economics, Abhijit Banerjee critiques the discipline’s emphasis on macro-level frameworks, arguing that it overlooks the messy realities of implementation. As he suggests, economists remain “in machine mode,” searching for the right button to push rather than examining where and why systems fail.
The book examines what makes these laureates “Indian.” Many—including Har Gobind Khorana, Chandrasekhar, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, and Banerjee—did their most influential work outside India. Rather than reducing identity to geography, the anthology offers a layered understanding shaped by intellectual formation and engagement. Laureates such as Tagore, Raman, and Sen remain anchored in Indian contexts even as their ideas acquire global resonance, underscoring the transnational character of intellectual life.
It also turns to the question of India’s relatively limited representation among Nobel laureates, seeking explanation in educational practice—particularly the persistence of rote learning at the expense of critical inquiry. Education, in this framing, risks becoming transactional rather than transformative, oriented toward outcomes rather than the cultivation of independent thought.
The final section, comprising Nobel lectures and speeches, brings together reflections on intellectual discovery and the processes that shape it, while returning to larger questions of beauty, unity, science, and humanity. In the closing line of his lecture, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar observes that “the simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendour of truth,” distilling a sensibility that runs through many of these writings. These concluding pieces do not seek closure; instead, they open outward, extending the conversation and inviting continued engagement.
A Touch of Genius creates a dialogue among extraordinary minds while preserving the distinctiveness of each, arriving at a larger insight: that genius resides in a way of thinking—restless, expansive, and deeply human.