INDIA AFTER GANDHI BY Ramachandra Guha
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy focuses on the significant events in the history of India which highlight the core of its past and present, its politics, culture and society. The chapters in the book deal with the struggle which India faced post almost a century of colonization, the components of Indian culture, the return of caste and the revival of religion and the effects of war and globalization. The book is also concerned with providing insights into the life of India's first Prime Minister, the troubled times of emergency during Indira Gandhi's regime, the liberation of Bangladesh and the lives of farmers, musicians, tribals and workers. India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy meticulously describes how a country plagued by the evils of discrimination in terms of caste, creed, religion and language rose to form the world's largest democracy. A detailed account of events that shook the foundation of India and the events that helped in joining the broken pieces together is given in this thoroughly researched and well written book. The book was first published in the year 2007. It is available in paperback and the publisher is Picador. This Indian ed edition was published on 14th August, 2008.
Review:-
It's in the nature of nations to be addicted to their own histories. Older, pre- national communities, one imagines, occupied themselves with mythology. The secular nation, agog, rehearses its history, the very reasons and outcomes of its existence, to itself. What's common to both activities is the endless familiarity of the subject-matter to the audience. It's safe to assume that very few people in a group of devotees listening to, say, the Indian epic Ramayana being read out would not have heard it before. It's equally prudent to assume that almost all the Indian readers of Ramachandra Guha's capacious history of democratic India would be familiar with a great deal of the story. What is it, then, that gives myths and national histories their appeal?
In mythic retelling, it is repetition itself, accompanied by improvisatory flourishes, that transfixes the audience by returning it to known terrain. Historical narrative, too, depends on familiarity enlivened by interpretative freshness and the surprise of new archival research; but there's also, at times, something else. Guha reminds us, more than once, that it's the historian's job to tell us what happened, and not spend too much time speculating on what might have. Yet it is precisely the possibility of what might have happened but didn't that gives an immediate but inexhaustible magic to some of the 20th century's most triumphal historical narratives. Both the American film-maker embarking on the new second world war movie and the Englishwoman wearing a poppy are thinking, yet again, of events that took place many years ago, but also, in some hidden but urgent way, of the world that might have come into existence had the other side won.
Similarly, a "What if?" animates Guha's reconstruction of the past 60 years of Indian history. Since 1947, the possibility of disaster has taken the form of certain questions and crises: "What if India were to disintegrate; or to become a totalitarian society; or a military dictatorship; or a Hindu state?" All these are scenarios that appeared plausible, at one time or another, to both the Indian and foreign observer. Guha tells us what happened elegantly, sometimes doggedly: but it's by constantly implying what might have, while disavowing it with the professional historian's gesture, that he brings his copious material to life. Guha's book reminds us of what some other recent studies of India have been getting at, but without this civilised single-mindedness: that it's not just the story of independence that's worthy of being counted as one of the great triumphal stories of 20th-century world history; that the survival and perhaps the flourishing of free India counts legitimately as another. Once this fact is acknowledged, its political and cultural consequences, I'm sure Guha will agree, need to be viewed with suspicion.
There are reasons for that tenacious feelgood experience. Guha delineates them effectively: the establishment of the machinery and the miracle of the elections (there's an excellently orchestrated chapter on how the first one happened); the creation of provinces along linguistic lines (which should have led to conflict) by forgotten historical figures; the survival of democracy and free speech in spite of poverty, corruption, sectarian strife, Indira Gandhi and, more recently, the waning of power at the centre and the rise of an opportunistic federalism. Every dubious development has a positive outcome; it's a story of incorrigible resilience and charm. The first two-thirds of the book, where Guha is describing the consolidation of the shaky state, are, notwithstanding the deluge of facts, surprisingly absorbing; by quoting frequently and shrewdly, Guha allows us to eavesdrop on the multiplicity and richness of the conversation - between politicians, writers, civil servants, well-wishers, detractors - within which change took place.
One thing the book lacks, despite its comprehensiveness, is a sense of interiority. It's hardly alone among recent Indian histories in this regard. Guha's understanding of the secular basis for Indian democracy is a constitutional one; that is, the "secular" is a product, in India, of ideals, laws and institutions articulated and validated by the constitution. But the "secular" in India is not only a political construct; it is a cultural space. The domain of culture was inhabited and produced by writers and artists and their audience from the early 19th century onwards; it's a domain that comprises the interior life of Indian secularism. In this sense, independence and the Nehruvian era that followed are not really the beginning of a history, but the last phase in the story of Indian humanism. From the 1980s onwards, the secular middle class and its culture is completely redefined; the parameters for a new free-market understanding of "Indianness" are put in place. As it happens, the single chapter Guha devotes to culture, or "entertainment", as he calls it, is the weakest one in the book, with Wikipedia-like accounts of cultural achievements; it attempts to place culture in the constitutional idea of secularism - as providing instances of pluralism and fellow-feeling - but doesn't locate the constitutional in the interior life that culture represents.
The epilogue, "Why India Survives" (echoing RK Narayan's unflappable assurance to Naipaul in the 60s: "India will go on"), is a strangely moving coda, and clarifies the country's peculiar appeal. At one point, Guha mentions he's "speaking as a historian rather than as citizen"; but allowing the historian to be in commerce with citizenship is what provides the book with impetus, and gives it its most palpable strength. Guha, as a citizen, has been "exasperated" by India, but, in the light of historical evidence, has been won over by it. This mixture of distance and surrender is fairly emblematic of why many middle-class Indians continue to invest themselves, emotionally, in the country; it's quite distinct from patriotism. To suggest the ambiguity of his own relationship with the country of his birth, and also his utter investment in it, Guha has often in the past used some oddball Englishman of distinction who's lived in India or thought about it as a metaphor: Verrier Elwin, EP Thompson. In his epilogue, Guha invokes the biologist JBS Haldane, who, moved by the "wonderful experiment" India had embarked on, decided to become an "Indian citizen". Guha's book reminds us that the citizenly pride that permeates it is not incompatible with judgment, hindsight, intelligence and distance; that citizenship is not a natural thing, but that it is, in some cases, inevitable.
About the Author:-
Ramachandra Guha is a historian with major interests in the field of social, environmental, political and cricket history. Guha holds a B.A. degree in Economics from St. Stephen's College (1977) and is a post graduate from the Delhi School of Economics with a fellowship from the IIM- Calcutta. He has won the Padma Bhushan Award, R.K. Narayan Prize and the U.K. Cricket Society's Literary Award. Ramachandra Guha is an avid columnist along with being an author of books like the Picador Book of Cricket, Patriots and Partisans and the Wickets in the East.
SYNOPSIS:-
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy focuses on the significant events in the history of India which highlight the core of its past and present, its politics, culture and society. The chapters in the book deal with the struggle which India faced post almost a century of colonization, the components of Indian culture, the return of caste and the revival of religion and the effects of war and globalization. The book is also concerned with providing insights into the life of India's first Prime Minister, the troubled times of emergency during Indira Gandhi's regime, the liberation of Bangladesh and the lives of farmers, musicians, tribals and workers. India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy meticulously describes how a country plagued by the evils of discrimination in terms of caste, creed, religion and language rose to form the world's largest democracy. A detailed account of events that shook the foundation of India and the events that helped in joining the broken pieces together is given in this thoroughly researched and well written book. The book was first published in the year 2007. It is available in paperback and the publisher is Picador. This Indian ed edition was published on 14th August, 2008.
Review:-
It's in the nature of nations to be addicted to their own histories. Older, pre- national communities, one imagines, occupied themselves with mythology. The secular nation, agog, rehearses its history, the very reasons and outcomes of its existence, to itself. What's common to both activities is the endless familiarity of the subject-matter to the audience. It's safe to assume that very few people in a group of devotees listening to, say, the Indian epic Ramayana being read out would not have heard it before. It's equally prudent to assume that almost all the Indian readers of Ramachandra Guha's capacious history of democratic India would be familiar with a great deal of the story. What is it, then, that gives myths and national histories their appeal?
In mythic retelling, it is repetition itself, accompanied by improvisatory flourishes, that transfixes the audience by returning it to known terrain. Historical narrative, too, depends on familiarity enlivened by interpretative freshness and the surprise of new archival research; but there's also, at times, something else. Guha reminds us, more than once, that it's the historian's job to tell us what happened, and not spend too much time speculating on what might have. Yet it is precisely the possibility of what might have happened but didn't that gives an immediate but inexhaustible magic to some of the 20th century's most triumphal historical narratives. Both the American film-maker embarking on the new second world war movie and the Englishwoman wearing a poppy are thinking, yet again, of events that took place many years ago, but also, in some hidden but urgent way, of the world that might have come into existence had the other side won.
Similarly, a "What if?" animates Guha's reconstruction of the past 60 years of Indian history. Since 1947, the possibility of disaster has taken the form of certain questions and crises: "What if India were to disintegrate; or to become a totalitarian society; or a military dictatorship; or a Hindu state?" All these are scenarios that appeared plausible, at one time or another, to both the Indian and foreign observer. Guha tells us what happened elegantly, sometimes doggedly: but it's by constantly implying what might have, while disavowing it with the professional historian's gesture, that he brings his copious material to life. Guha's book reminds us of what some other recent studies of India have been getting at, but without this civilised single-mindedness: that it's not just the story of independence that's worthy of being counted as one of the great triumphal stories of 20th-century world history; that the survival and perhaps the flourishing of free India counts legitimately as another. Once this fact is acknowledged, its political and cultural consequences, I'm sure Guha will agree, need to be viewed with suspicion.
There are reasons for that tenacious feelgood experience. Guha delineates them effectively: the establishment of the machinery and the miracle of the elections (there's an excellently orchestrated chapter on how the first one happened); the creation of provinces along linguistic lines (which should have led to conflict) by forgotten historical figures; the survival of democracy and free speech in spite of poverty, corruption, sectarian strife, Indira Gandhi and, more recently, the waning of power at the centre and the rise of an opportunistic federalism. Every dubious development has a positive outcome; it's a story of incorrigible resilience and charm. The first two-thirds of the book, where Guha is describing the consolidation of the shaky state, are, notwithstanding the deluge of facts, surprisingly absorbing; by quoting frequently and shrewdly, Guha allows us to eavesdrop on the multiplicity and richness of the conversation - between politicians, writers, civil servants, well-wishers, detractors - within which change took place.
One thing the book lacks, despite its comprehensiveness, is a sense of interiority. It's hardly alone among recent Indian histories in this regard. Guha's understanding of the secular basis for Indian democracy is a constitutional one; that is, the "secular" is a product, in India, of ideals, laws and institutions articulated and validated by the constitution. But the "secular" in India is not only a political construct; it is a cultural space. The domain of culture was inhabited and produced by writers and artists and their audience from the early 19th century onwards; it's a domain that comprises the interior life of Indian secularism. In this sense, independence and the Nehruvian era that followed are not really the beginning of a history, but the last phase in the story of Indian humanism. From the 1980s onwards, the secular middle class and its culture is completely redefined; the parameters for a new free-market understanding of "Indianness" are put in place. As it happens, the single chapter Guha devotes to culture, or "entertainment", as he calls it, is the weakest one in the book, with Wikipedia-like accounts of cultural achievements; it attempts to place culture in the constitutional idea of secularism - as providing instances of pluralism and fellow-feeling - but doesn't locate the constitutional in the interior life that culture represents.
The epilogue, "Why India Survives" (echoing RK Narayan's unflappable assurance to Naipaul in the 60s: "India will go on"), is a strangely moving coda, and clarifies the country's peculiar appeal. At one point, Guha mentions he's "speaking as a historian rather than as citizen"; but allowing the historian to be in commerce with citizenship is what provides the book with impetus, and gives it its most palpable strength. Guha, as a citizen, has been "exasperated" by India, but, in the light of historical evidence, has been won over by it. This mixture of distance and surrender is fairly emblematic of why many middle-class Indians continue to invest themselves, emotionally, in the country; it's quite distinct from patriotism. To suggest the ambiguity of his own relationship with the country of his birth, and also his utter investment in it, Guha has often in the past used some oddball Englishman of distinction who's lived in India or thought about it as a metaphor: Verrier Elwin, EP Thompson. In his epilogue, Guha invokes the biologist JBS Haldane, who, moved by the "wonderful experiment" India had embarked on, decided to become an "Indian citizen". Guha's book reminds us that the citizenly pride that permeates it is not incompatible with judgment, hindsight, intelligence and distance; that citizenship is not a natural thing, but that it is, in some cases, inevitable.
About the Author:-
Ramachandra Guha is a historian with major interests in the field of social, environmental, political and cricket history. Guha holds a B.A. degree in Economics from St. Stephen's College (1977) and is a post graduate from the Delhi School of Economics with a fellowship from the IIM- Calcutta. He has won the Padma Bhushan Award, R.K. Narayan Prize and the U.K. Cricket Society's Literary Award. Ramachandra Guha is an avid columnist along with being an author of books like the Picador Book of Cricket, Patriots and Partisans and the Wickets in the East.
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