New Delhi, Feb. 20 -- Most communities beyond the modern world's primary interpersonal and village boundaries are not monolithic. Socio-economic strata and variations in cultural norms, values and individuation diversify them. This is true for nearly 60 million people who consider Gujarati their mother tongue and ethnically perceive themselves as Gujaratis. Of these, 55 million people live in the state of Gujarat in Western India, and nearly six million live abroad. Salil Tripathi presents a portrait of this community as both an insider and an outsider in his latest book, The Gujaratis: A Portrait of a Community. He presents various facets of the community in over 700 pages, in 12 parts, divided into 87 chapters and an epilogue.

The book...