| Title | : | India After Gandhi: The History of the Worlds Largest Democracy |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0060198818 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780060198817 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 912 |
| Publication | : | First published April 20, 2007 |
| Awards | : | Mark Lynton History Prize (2008), Sahitya Akademi Award English (2011), Kiriyama Prize Nonfiction (2008), Cundill History Prize (2008) |
India After Gandhi: The History of the Worlds Largest Democracy Reviews
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"If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.
— Terry Pratchett"
India is world's largest but least likely democracy. But how it still survives?
To me, Indian history always meant what happened till 1947 (year of Independence) or perhaps my knowledge expands one little year further till Gandhiji's death. I was kept in the dark all these years about what happened once India gained its independence. Remember? none of our academic books mention what happened after India got its independence,either. But ironically that is the most crucial period of our country which tests our integrity, intelligence, power, responsibility and many more constitutional lessons to come. And this epic volume offers mountainous account of our pains (partition, Riots, assassinations of leaders), conflicts (never ending Kashmir problem, Nagaland 'land issues', trouble with tribal), humiliations (war with China), challenges (Constitution, New political parties, foreign policies, plans) and glories (inclusion of princely states, first general elections, wars with Pakistan etc.,) of our country.
Though this book attracted some criticism that author distorted some facts and truths in the wake of his unquestioning loyalty to the congress party which celebrates a rich legacy, I feel, at-least this book filled my huge knowledge gaps by relating me the events that occurred in 65 years after independence. I can decide later which point of view I shall consider things from. So no complaints there.
Finally, If You have time (remember it's 900 odd pages volume) and curiosity (Motivation is what gets you started, but habit is what gets you going) about the affairs of our country, it's a great book to own.
4.75/5 to this near perfect book. History never seemed this entertaining. -
Just before a 3 week trip to India, I asked an acquaintance for the best book to read to help me gain perspective on this incredible country. India after Ghandi was his instantaneous recommendation. This is the perfect travelling companion for anyone who wishes to understand this great country. India has 1.2 billion people, 22 official languages, a mixture of religions including the second largest Muslim population making up 20% of its society and yet is one of the most successful secular democracies in the world. It is a complex country and the book helps us understand that complexity. It is a tough read but a perfect foundation for anyone who wants to both experience India and try to understand it.
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“Indians are better speakers than listeners, and Indian politicians especially so.”
There probably never will be a completely satisfying book about India but this one really far exceeded what I could have expected. In here is no talk about the ‘Hindu way of life’ (thank you Naipaul) or other vague expressions and generalizations like that. There is, in fact, the very opposite, a great diversity of voices looking at the subjects from different perspectives.
At a few times, I didn’t agree with author’s conclusions , but that is a matter of subjective judgement.
What is likable is that there are at least representations of different perspectives rather than just superlative judgements.
He is worshiping no idols either. What I feared was that he would present one or other icons in too good a light. While he has his favourites, here too he is willing to look at both sides of all the coins. M. K. Gandhi, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, India (the country) - have all received both praises and criticism mostly where due. The author is not afraid of calling it a spade if he thinks it is a spade - even if it is a religious spade. And you know how big a deal that is in India.
What is more, I learnt about a lot of Wikipedia page deserving people who have been mostly forgotten by popular mind. (Come to think of it, I should have a Wikipedia page!.) A good portion also went to recording experiences of minorities, marginalized groups and refugees. Then there are many very touching as well as hilarious moments in it. It might sound like a oxymoron but it is an entertaining history book.
One thing that has been heavily criticised by author (and rightly so) is the idea of Hindu nationalism, but I think I shall repeat author’s argument of the concluding chapter on this point:
"India is merely a geographical expression. It is no more a single country than the Equator.”
-Winston Churchill
You know what is common between India and the world? They are both predicted to be about to be fallen apart every few years. Churchill’s accusation, though ignorant, is at least understandable – not so much from Nobel prizing winning historian, not so much from a politician who had fate of India in his hands for several years but still. Look at what Wiki uncle tells about ‘nation’:
“Nation (from Latin: natio, "people, tribe, kin, genus, class, flock") is a social concept with no uncontroversial definition, but that is most commonly used to designate larger groups or collectives of people with common characteristics attributed to them—including language, traditions, customs (mores), habits (habitus), and ethnicity.”
Now above mentioned concept of nation is rather common. England wants her immigrants to learn English, because, well you know, it is England. U, S. A. Is worried that immigrants aren’t leaving their cultures behind and melting away into melting pot. The famous two- nation theory, forwarded by both Hindu and Muslim right, which lead to the red partition was based on this definition.
But then how do you explain India?
What is that attribute common among Indians? Language - European Union has 28 countries and 24 official languages. India alone has 22 scheduled languages (among others). There is no one language spoken or understood throughout the country. There are no common traditions and customs either – we have scores of different religions, festivals, food items, dances etc making tradition in different parts. Ethnicity – We are screwed there as well with simply countless Ethnic groups. A last theory is common struggle against common enemy. British government quickly comes to mind but those now living in Pakistan were a part of this struggle too and still there was partition, while there were parts of (new) India that didn’t participate in struggle.
There are a few things that do come close – Indians are fairly united in their wars against outsiders but that is more because of national identity rather than cause of it. Same for sports (cricket obviously getting special mention). Another thing is we enjoy same entertainment (movies, singers etc.) – but that entertainment too is shared with Pakistanis. (Still it is good to see that author should talk about those things that make us at least more Indian than our politicians ever did.)
So it would appear India is an impossible nation. And still, it was exactly the country that so many of the freedom fighters fought for. Ever since, although Hindu nationalists have tried to force some sort of common tradition down Indian throats – cow-worship and Hindi language among others, their efforts have got no long term success, India remains; and remains impossibly despite huge differences on the basis of religion, region, language, caste, class, customs etc. Somehow like members of a joint family who might at times fight and threaten to but won’t part, people have learned to live together through a sense of mutual respect. And that might just be what Indian experience have for Euro-American world to learn from. -
Unfortunately the book is extremely underwhelming for those who have more than passing interest in political history of India. It is consistently biased in favor of a Nehruvian/Congress/Leftist-Marxist viewpoint. Guha's hero-worship of Nehru, a leader with many flaws, is also less than neutral. He also sweeps under the floor the history of corruption in India since independence. Mr. Guha is partial toward First Prime minister Mr. Nehru and never criticize him at any moment and more over this writer is trying to save Nehru from any such side. Nehru is venerated like a god by writer. You will find half of book dedicated to nehru and as a fan on Nehru writer give his super human abilities of solving everything.
All the events described will be in and around congress and its activists. I think historians shouldn’t do such kind of things. Glorification of INC is the main propaganda of this book and hence lacks a balanced view needed for any keen history student. They should describe the events in an unbiased manner and leave the opinion to readers. Instead, in the whole book you find the authors opinion on how congress struggle or manage India. Few great people are just mentioned by name in some incidences and not about their contribution. Even state parties also contributed towards India.
Since Mr Guha has dedicated a large chunk of the book to the political lives of Indira Gandhi and Nehru, I would've like to have been informed more of the implications of their policy decisions (he does touch on some) and also their failings -Nehru's in particular. Not saying that I think Nehru was a failure, but Id have liked to have heard a mock debate between the pro and anti Nehru factions as well as the pro and anti Gandhi factions. There was no defense of these giants of the country (which makes sense since there were no real criticisms presented in the book). Even if the author felt no criticism was warranted, he could have addressed the criticisms of other writers/ thinkers. This is the least he could have done for Nehru (who he obviously admires).
No time devoted to the financial world and the industrial world and the world of the Indian scams! Ambani the entrepreneur and rule-breaker, Harshad Mehta, the fodder scam etc barely get a mention!
No mention of indigenous Indian governmental scheme's for the various reforms. There are some big holes in the book. Even details on wars was not properly mentioned.
The chapters on PV Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee primarily deal with Secularism issues totally ignoring the strides India made in Economy, Foreign policy, Defense etc during their era. Millions of Indians including me owe our jobs to PVN's economic policies. If India has finally emerged as a force to reckon with, it is primarily due to the economic policies of PVN and Vajpayee governments. It is truly astonishing that the impact the new policies have had on lifting millions of Indians out of poverty over the last two decades is not given the importance it deserves in the book. Even foreign economists like Robert Shiller who called PVN India's Deng Xio Peng. The author buries the legacy of PVN and Vajpayee in the issue of secularism.
There are so many things to point out but i don't have that much time to mentioned all that here. These kind of books set bad precedent. Even you can see this book have high ratings.
As another reviewer has said, one should remind Guha the words of the great historian R C Majumdar, who reiterated that "The aim of history is to solely tell the truth, by conscientious finding it out without any respect for individual or communities". But 'India after Gandhi' is dishonest history: there is no objectivity and Guha seems more interested to propagandize his readers than to present a neutral book.
Read it to know one side of the coin. No one book or may be any at all will ever completely articulate the other side of the coin. Even an extremely biased and opinionated book like this cannot spin it well to lead the readers to the authors point of view.
Highly disappointed.
I don't want to recommend it. -
Speaking of India the nation state, one must insist that its future lies not in the hands of God but in the mundane works of men. So long as the constitution is not amended beyond recognition, so long as elections are held regularly and fairly and the ethos of secularism broadly prevails, so long as citizens can speak and write in the language of their choosing, so long as there is an integrated market and a moderately efficient civil service and army, and – lest I forget – so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive.
Guha’s closing words
Acknowledgements/thanks
I first want to thank my many Indian friends who, actively or passively, have recommended this book to me. The first two wrote glowing reviews of the book, and all the others rated it highly.
Lit Bug; Sujeet; Riku Sayuj; Praj; Megha; Aniruddh; Sai Kishore; Dhandayutha; Sumirti Singaravel; Rohan; Santhosh. Thanks to you all!
short review
June 2015. I read the Prologue tonight, with increasing astonishment. What the author wrote about in the Prologue was the attitude that the West had about India's Independence: that they wouldn't be able to govern themselves, that there were too many divisions in the country, that it couldn't possibly survive as a single country (the diversities in the country - caste, class, religion, language - were so immense, people were writing (in the 40s and 50s and later) that it was less likely to survive than would be Europe if Europe became a single country). And on top of that it couldn't possibly survive, even in pieces, as a democratic nation or nations, because of it's incredible poverty.
So here we are six decades later (when the book was written), India still a single country, with democratic institutions, and yes still with a host of divisions and problems, but perhaps the single most astounding experiment in democracy that the world has seen.
As I read these fifteen pages it was as if blinders were falling off my eyes, I had never considered these things before. I was just overwhelmed by how this author, who writes extremely well, is setting out to make a narrative of the history of these years in India, to suggest what the underlying things were that made this so improbable thing come about. I suddenly understand that there is some sort of “miracle” involved in this country’s post-colonial history.
o o o o o o o
December 2016. And now, 18 months later, I’ve read the last word of this fascinating book. ”Eighteen months?”, you say. Well, I’ve struggled to read probably 60 other books during those eighteen months. But whenever I picked up his book to read another chapter or two, there was no struggle involved, rather pure pleasure.
And when finally done, having read the Acknowledgments, read (or scanned) every one of the hundreds of endnotes occupying over ninety pages (during the read), I thought this must be close to the best history book I’d ever read.
longer review
The book
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Following the Table of Contents Guha presents a Cast of Principal Characters. The list:
ACRONYMS & NICKNAMES
Here’s a list of acronyms, in some cases nicknames, Guha sometimes uses, made by referencing the Index.
Reading hints
1) The term “communalism” is much used. For American readers, I believe a good equivalent would be “parochialism”.
2) Before reading a chapter, scan the end-notes for it. For those that look interesting, find them and circle them in the text. Then keep a second book mark back in the notes section.
3) There are two fine maps in the Epilogue, pp. 752 and 754.
SECTIONS
The first four parts of the book (the “history” so-called by Guha) have been placed here:
https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
PART V : A HISTORY OF EVENTS
The author
Ramachandra Guha (1958- ) is an Indian historian and writer whose research interests include environmental, social, political and cricket history. For the year 2011–2012, he held a visiting position at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
He was appointed to BCCI's panel of administrators by the Supreme Court of India on 30 January 2017.
Guha was born at Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh. He graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi with a Bachelor's in Economics in 1977 and completed his Master's in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics.
Between 1985 and 2000, he taught at UC-Berkeley, Yale, Stanford, the University of Oslo University, and the Indian Institute of Science.
Guha then moved to Bangalore, and began writing full-time. He served as Sundaraja Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2003.
Guha, not yet sixty, continues writing, books, articles, tweets – you name it. His web site is
http://ramachandraguha.in/ - an interesting site where articles and essays by Guha are posted in five categories: History, Politics and current affairs, Biography, Culture, and “Longer essays”. Recent posts are mostly from The Telegraph and the Hindustan Times. The longer essays appear to come from a variety of sources, such as The Hindu, the New Republic, and Economic and Political Weekly. The site has archives going back to 2002, and a search engine.
From what I’ve read in this book and on his web site, Guha, though certainly a realist, exudes optimism about India. He loves the country, has claimed, very possibly correctly, that it’s the “most interesting” country in the world, and seems enthusiastically surprised and genuinely proud that India since Independence has time and again proved the Western doomsayers wrong about the impossibility of India’s continuous march down the path they chose decades ago: of being a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious (though sectarian), and multi-linguistic state – the world’s largest democracy.
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The Soccer War -
This tome runs over 800 pages, and almost every page is interesting. I enjoyed all of it. It's such an important part of recent world history, and Guha provides an excellent basic education on the major developments. I was especially fascinated with Guha's clear, honest, and compassionate explanations of the ongoing tensions between secular respect for the rights of all religious communities and the demands to make India a Hindu state (or as Nehru described it, a "Hindu Pakistan"). Also, Guha shows how India's accommodation of regional autonomy for diverse language groups has generated increased national unity, which stands in contrast to the experience of other nations that imposed only one official language, such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the former U.S.S.R.
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Even the persons who are giving five stars to this book are not missing an opportunity to call the author a Congress party loyal and he distorted some facts to pay the homage to Congress party. That is enough for even an ordinary citizen to think about his writings. These kinds of writers only show their loyalty to a certain group rather than doing any great work.
The book has done nothing more than creating the image of Gandhi family as larger than life. The author like Ramchandra Guha tries to establish his hegemony over Indian history. What he is saying that is right and what others are saying is absolutely wrong. -
We Indians mostly read history, reluctantly though, only in school. After that, the next dose of history comes from media in the form of debates and analysis. "Reading History" as an hobby comes to negligible percentage of people. This is mainly because of the aversion we develop during our history classes in school, courtesy the insipid and tedious nature of the school curriculum focusing on 'when and what' rather than 'why and how'.
When I was in school, in the mid-90s, our history lesson on India ended with British leaving our country. What happened after that was never mentioned or discussed. So I was completely ignorant of the names like "Sheikh Abdullah", "Jai Prakash Narayan" or events of 'emergency' and 'Operation Blue Star' or the wars India fought with her neighbours. So there has been a huge gap of almost 50 years in my knowledge about my own country from the time of independence to the time when I started reading newspapers zealously.
This book fills that void.
Having read this mammoth of book on the political history of post-independent India, I find myself much more informed about the present state of country than before. So, as far as knowledge on India is concerned, there is now two Mes. Me before "India after Gandhi" and Me after "India after Gandhi"
This book recounts the events in the post-Independent India till the late 80s in chronological fashion as those unfold in a completely unbiased or un-opinionated tone, making it read like a political thriller than a scholarly work on History. The only other history book that had such pacy readability was "Freedom at Midnight".
After the 80s the remaining events of the last three decades have taken shapes of essays or as the author calls those 'historically informed journalism'. The author believes that thirty-years is probably the right amount of time to pass before concluding any event to be an historical account.
This book should be a mandatory reading in our high-school curriculum, if India is serious about building an informed generation to take her forward. -
In 1959, the Atlantic Monthly pitied India for having a democracy, when it might be better off as a military dictatorship. In 1999, the same magazine thought this very democracy had been India's saving grace.
It has often been said that India is a young nation, and a diverse one. We Indians have been told this in school and swallowed it without a question. On reading India after Gandhi, the depth of those adjectives sink in. -
4+
I was least interested/aware about Indian politics before picking this book.
Now, I want to explore so much more. Such is the way IAG draws you in.
Not just politics, albeit formation of India. Starting from drawing the constitution to uniting the states, origin and ideologies of emerging political parties....
Insights about partition, roots of Kashmir issue, Tibet, relations with Pak and China, picking a national language, Hindu Act, reservations, Naxalites, Maoists, Mizoram and Nagaland revolts...
In spite of India being centre stage, felt this book was about two protagonists - Nehru and Indira.
And many parts didn't feel like history, rather current events and future predictions :)
Why not 5?
1. Diplomatic. Highly diplomatic stance on many issues. Quite understandable, but would have loved it more if it was not.
2. Editing could have been crispier. Especially in the last part. Last 3 chapters were like gossiping with a friend. Slightly disappointed.
Loved reading this gem. Thanks Aparna for reco and Arpit for BR and
insightful discussions.
Overall: Thank you so much Guha ji for infusing this knowledge about my country. I have become a fan and will follow more works by you. -
Lest we begin taking the existence of India for granted. In this book, Ramachandra Guha takes on the difficult job of instilling a reasonable degree of patriotism in your average armchair skeptic without resorting to India-Pakistan jingoism or sanctimoniously reminding us of our glorious ancient history. He succeeds magnificently by furnishing an insightful post-independence (albeit Nehruvian) narrative history of India that sheds light on the unprecedented miracle that is the Indian nation-state. This book is essential reading for every Indian who's interested in understanding how we've come to be the way we are and where we might be going. After all, why must history end where India's tryst with destiny begins?
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"India is no longer a constitutional democracy but a populist one", this is one of the hard hitting ideas which this book puts forward. No doubt such a commentary has not been written about India after its independence. Detailed and lucid this book is a treat to all those who are interested in the "idea of India". You will never be bored with this book.
With all the surprises, the setbacks and, the pandemonium that is associated with Indian's freedom, we can surely say that democracy has not lost in India. It has become weak, but not lost. I can only hope that India becomes more secular, with poverty less pervasive and "where the mind is without fear and the head is held high".
The biggest challenge to our democracy comes from within, in the form of corruption. Many tend to believe that ills like overpopulation, illiteracy, etc. are the bane of the Indian society. I tend to think it's corruption. Last year we saw mass movements by groups led by apolitical people unified against corruption. We saw a union minister going to jail, the CM of a state resigning and many such events. But in a state where majority of the employees are corrupt all this is like a drop in the ocean. The Lokayukta bill (Ombudsman law) has not seen the day of light, since first being introduced many decades ago. Majority of politicians across party lines are conjoined to this evil of corruption. The government portrays itself as the saviour of the common man, only to forget its own manifesto once voted to power.
Corruption is the evil, the virus, which kills everything and the society as a whole disintegrates. An analogy can be drawn with the AIDS virus, which does not kill, but renders the immune system too weak to defend against anything else. I have met people who talk about the old days of glory, when public servants were honest and politicians more austere. Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Predictions are thick and fast to come, I won't predict, only hope that my country becomes what the founding fathers of freedom wanted it to, and take back its rightful place in history. -
My own view – speaking as a historian rather than citizen – is that as long as Pakistan exists there will be Hindu fundamentalists in India. In times of stability, or when the political leadership is firm, they will be marginal or on the defensive. In times of change, or when the political leadership is irresolute, they will be influential and assertive.
This sweeping history was a revelation. I feel as if I was simultaneously dazzled and lost. My chief response was a desire to read more both by Nehru as well as about him. I pondered concepts like communalism all week and made comparisons with other places, other history. Nehru apparently once confessed to Andre Malraux that his greatest challenge was creating and maintaining a secular state in a religious country. It was interesting how in the Nixon biography I recently read much was made about how Nixon felt Nehru and Indira Gandhi looked down upon him, a grocer's son. Little of that surfaced here--which is appropriate when considering the grand grievances of Nixon.
People have been predicating the doom of India since its Independence, some are now predicating that half of the nation is becoming California, the other half Chad. The resilient Indian embrace of democracy is the most encouraging, especially as across the world the institution appears to be falling from fashion. -
Informative, only if you're looking for a North Indian narrative of "India". The imagination of India is still majorly a North Indian idea. Narratives from South is minimal, East and North East is little to none, you'll find this in the book too. This is basically the UPSC idea of India- North Indian narratives and reeks of ignorance. Obviously, this was expected but definitely not from a historian like Guha with Bengali roots, genuinely believed that he would pen down a more diverse and inclusive history of India After Gandhi. Yet another reminder that miles to go before India becomes inclusive. Diversity is one thing, inclusivity and equality of diversity is another.
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It's a slightly strange genre, these giant histories of the present. Comparing to the other two i've read -
The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence and
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 - this one takes the cake for sheer human scope: India just has more people than either Europe or Africa. This kind of thing is inevitably always only a skimming of the surface, even if it is 900 pages long. The point would have to be to find some shape to that surface, some grasping towards a unified theory of the thing.
Guha, however, has the benefit here of working with a continent-sized place which is a single country, so theres an order of magnitude more detail about Indian political history than about any single government in Europe or Africa. This is also kind of the book's downfall though. A political history of modern Indian is - seemingly inevitably - focused on the Congress Party. The Party is inevitably focused on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Despite the massive scope, the book feels a little thin at times. The cast of characters, so to speak, remains relatively limited.
Figures like Ambedkar or Vajpayee show up...kind of around the edges. I think - as someone totally unfamiliar with the issues - I would have appreciated more of a follow through of those ideologies and political currents, understanding more of how they interacted with and influenced rule, than another political shenanigan pulled off by Nehru et all. Theres just so much here that merely summing it all up is too much information already, but I still felt that somethng of the grand shape of things, even on the most superficial level, was still out of my sight. Regionalism, communalism, populism, language, caste, religon...they're all brought up and addressed often, but always circling around the straightforward linear narrative.
As a total aside, in a chapter about entertainment at the end, he mentions that the Independece movement always had a puritanical streak (and that Gandhi apparently never saw a movie all the way through!) That's fascinating to me. What happened to that? Where did it meet Indian society? How do these things carry through? Not that there isn't a solid effort to get at social history- there is, as well as technological, cultural and economic. All of it is fascinating and none of it is quite enough.
Maybe it's because I couldn't help comparing it to Israel at times. The scale is so ridiculously different, and yet there are familiar beats to the broad outline. The dates kind of line up (independence in 47/8, strong socialist centralization, first time opposition taking power in 1977, shifts into capitalism in the 90's along with rises of identity politics and hardening of secterian positions, etc.) and of course the usual questions of religion, communalism, democracy, identity, etc as issues. On the one hand, it kind of makes me feel a little more normal, to think that this is just the way these things play out. On the other hand, it's probably not a very good comparison and sent me looking for patterns that might not exist.
If there is a connecting thread that he attempts to follow through, it's the question of democracy on this vast - and varied - a scale. It's amazing to see some of the disdain the very notion of democracy in India was held in at the beginning. Could this many people, unconnected, uneducated, make meaningful political decisions? It jumped out at me, the occassional mentions of groups of people mired in poverty, still, as the years go by, into the 21st century, and I wonder if everything just went over them or if it mattered there. Well, they end up voting for populists and demagogues and sons-of and movie stars. So, they're pretty normal, really. I think the ultimate conclusion, despite Guha's final fairly complex and not unpessimistic assessment of the state of Indian democracy, is that it really, really matters.
Very recommended, even if it mostly raised more questions than it answered, for me. -
Pretty informative...for people who think there's only men on this planet!
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I never liked history. All through school it was a mechanical exercise in fact mugging, presented in the driest form possible, an experience that had convinced me to never be interested in knowing the trivial matters of the past, as compared to the thriving present. The same feelings were reciprocated towards civics and economics.
As I turned 18, and became part of the Universal Adult Franchise, and earned this all glorified right to vote, my initial feeling was of confusion. Whom do I vote for? And why? Who are these people? Aren't they all corrupt? Should I even vote? What does it all mean anyway.
These questions are shared by a lot of my contemporaries, and is usually the driving argument for our disinterest towards anything to do with politics. We all thought that "Government" and "Politics" meant the same thing. And since all of us educated young people had no interest in politics, we had no interest therefore, in the government, in democracy, how India came to be, and what it really means to be Indian. No, seriously, what does it mean to be Indian anyway? What is India? Moreover, why was this government so bad? Why is India not as great as the US of A?
Having been born towards the end of the 20th century, the only picture of politics that I saw when I was old enough to understand anything, was that of abject corruption, sever mismanagement, which was followed by a rising wave of hindu nationalism. Through all this, there was one question that I hadn't asked, and that was, "What really happened after independence?" followed by a more prudent "What events have led India to the point that we live in today?". For some time now, we have ridden on the knowledge provided to us by propaganda, from all parties, and no one really has had time to gain a comprehensive knowledge of the history of our democracy.
What did I know of the history of Independent India? We were all asked to mug up the list of Indian Prime Minister's, Presidents and Vice Presidents, but beyond that I don't think a lot of educated young people like me really knew much about India as a whole. And honestly I didn't even remember the list beyond the first and second names.
Before I began this book, I had the following thoughts:
How can a book on the history of India ever be interesting? A relentless pandering of facts, of a time far gone, how can I really hold my interest through a colossal book of over 700 pages that talks about topics as uninteresting as politics, caste, religion, language, riots, rulers, the economy and so on? Wasn't I done with history at school? I'm not interested in more academic preaching!
All of those complaints were decimated within the first few passages of this book. Guha constructively lays down the shortcomings of our own study of history, and Indian history in particular. And that was it. From then on, I DEVOURED this book. There have been very few books at the end of which I have felt truly humbled by the knowledge that I acquired. After having read "India After Gandhi", I feel that at age 23, this has been my real coming of age.
Guha covers all of the major turning points in Indian history post independence, laying it down chronologically, in a prose that keeps the pages turning. I especially liked the chapters on the linguistic reorganization of states, the aftermath of the emergency, the initial chapters on the events following independence and partition, and emerged with a new found respect and appreciation for the our founding fathers who laid down the foundations of our country in times as turbulent as then.
I found the book overall extremely well researched and mostly unbiased. Guha clearly was a fan of Nehru and it shows, but evidently it seems like the respect is not wholly misplaced. There has been a cry of "bias" in the book. As for me, the opinions are for me to form after more thorough reading, but if you give this book a pass for shallow reasons as those, you really are missing out on a lot of enlightening information which is independent of any of the things you might have a conflicted interest in. Every page taught me something new, you tuly begin to appreciate the diversity of India, and the breadth of issues surrounding it. It is a rich history, and is much more than the communal angle that we have been prone to in recent times.
Particularly unknown to me were the issues in the Naga hills, the problems faced by tribals, and how India's foreign policy was shaped over the years.
If anything, Guha has inspired in me a penchant for more knowledge about some of the titular characters and events described in the book. History has never been so exciting!
If you, like me, are another millennial trying to figure out what this whole politics thing really means, I have one advise. Pick up this book the first chance you get, and devour it. You'll thank yourself for it. -
I don't know what qualities a good history book should possess, I'm no expert. Despite this, this book remains one of the most entertaining reads that I've had a chance to indulge in.
My respect for some of the founding members has grown manifold, independent of whether I agree with their policies. Indian TV and cinema (which by the way, is also touched upon in the book!) has a reputation for dramatisation and sensationalism. I'm pretty sure that they are influenced by some of the amazing gift-of-gab orators that the country seems to produce, without fail.
‘Lathi goli khayenge, phir bhi Bambai layenge’ - Samyukt Maharashtra Movement
‘Wo kehte hain Indira Hatao, hum kehte hain Garibi Hatao’
'All my father's works have been written in prison. I recommend prison life not only for aspiring writers but for aspiring politicians too. - Indira Gandhi
'In India, you do not cast your vote, you vote your caste.' - V.N. Gadgil, Congress Politician
These are some of the many gems you can find in this book.
Another amazing aspect of this book is the sources cited. I read this book on my kindle, which showed 66% completed after I was done with the epilogue. The rest of the book is just the sources. Although I haven't had a chance to go down the rabbit hole, just the fact that I can reinforces my belief in the quality of the research that went into it.
As the author rightfully points out, no version of history is untainted by the writer's opinion. In spite of, or even with that warning, I think this book has helped me gain great insight into the country that is India, today. -
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, by Ramachandra Guha, is a deep and fascinating examination of the world's most populous democracy from the death of Gandhi to 2008. The book begins by examining the fracturing of the Indian National Congress, with Pakistan and India splitting into two nation states. This led to a massive influx of internal refugee movements, and widespread violence between Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities. It is estimated more than one million people died in this communal violence throughout India and Pakistan.
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated during this split by a Hindu extremist. Gandhi sorely wished to see India and Pakistan unite as one nation, but his wish was ultimately dashed. His successor in the Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru strove to keep Gandhi's vision going. Nehru was an extremely adept politician, and one of the most widely respected characters in post-independence India. What he inherited were some issues, however. The British had left, but a collection of over 500 Princely States in India remained. It was the Indian governments goal to incorporate these states (and Pakistan's too).
Many of these states were small collections of villages, but some were massive, and yearned for independence. Hyperbad was a large state in south central India. It had long existed as a vassal to the Mughal Empire, and this treaty was inherited by the British Raj. After independence, the Maharaja of Hyperbad sought to keep his state independent. He set up armed forces to try and resist Indian occupation, and sought international support for his cause. India sent in thousands of troops and annexed Hyperbad soon after independence. Tranvacore was another valuable Princely state. Situated on the Indian coast, it had an efficient government, contained resources to construct nuclear devices, and had the backing of the British. The leader of Tranvacore also sought independence, but was attacked by Indian nationalists, and in hospital, gave his approval to join India. Kashmir, however, was the sore spot. Kashmir was a strategically important state touching Himalaya mountains. It was largely Muslim, but its ruling class were anti-Pakistan for political reasons. During the trouble of Partition and the subsequent refugee crisis, Kashmir was a bastion of stability. All this changed when tribal groups from Pakistan entered Kashmir to try and force its annexation to Pakistan. India retaliated with troops of its own, and general conflict began. When the dust settled, the area was split between Pakistan and India - the situation that largely exists today. This conflict has yet to be resolved, at the time of writing.
Nehru's India was chaotic, and many predicted it would fall to military rule after his death. The internal situation in India was fractured, due to the multitude of religious, ethnic, cultural, language, caste groups, ideologies and so on. The system of regional states within India was difficult, as many individual groups vied for their own independent states. Tribal groups in eastern India, like the Naga and Mizo fought pitched insurgencies (the Naga) for independence, or created political groups to try and create their own states (Jharakand, Mizoram etc.). Gujarati speakers did not want the city of Bombay to join the state of Maharashtra. Sikhs in the Punjab region also wanted their own state. The language of India was also contentious. What should be the language of the political centre and its courts? Some in the southern states cried foul when Hindi was proposed, and wanted the main language to remain English. On top of this, the complex caste system of India created situations of intolerance and favouritism. Those from the untouchable Caste struggled to find employment, and were discriminated against in every day life. Tensions existed between various castes and often flared up into violence. Hindu extremism, characterized by the RSS party, sought to end Indian secularism and create a Hindu state. This too resulted in violence between Hindu and Muslim communities.
Nehru balanced all of these issues fairly well, while keeping India on its democratic course. Nehru had little real political challengers during his tenure, as he was Gandhi's chosen successor. Nehru's Congress Party dominated India's political sphere for his 15 years in office. He deftly sidestepped challengers, and was able to hold his own during periods of strife and conflict. He fought hard to keep India from succumbing to Communalism on one had, and Communism on the other. He faced challenges from Hindu Nationalists. He supported state-led developmentalism, moving toward a more Soviet style economy. This had mixed results in India for a number of reasons, but did successfully start India down the road to Industrialization.
Nehru's foreign policy situation was also tricky. Originally, Nehru sought warm ties with China, but these ties soured over territorial disputes in the Himalaya's, resulting in war between India and China in the 1960's, which led to the loss of territory in both Eastern India and in Kashmir. China then sought relations with Pakistan. India also had frosty relations with the United States. On the surface, India and the US have much in common. Both are large and successful democracies. Both secularist. However, India's experiments with socialist economics and policies, and the USA's prioritization of relations with Pakistan, and subsequent arms deals soured all attempts. India turned to the Soviet block for support. The falling out between China and the USSR was a key moment for India to modernize its economy and armed forces, and India and the USSR signed treaties of cooperation and friendship. Even still, Nehru sought a middle road, and promoted non-alignment in Asia.
Nehru passed away during the Sino-Indian conflict, and was succeeded briefly by another Prime Minister, who also died soon after. His daughter, Indira Gandhi, succeeded to lead the Congress, and would dominat Indian politics for the next 16 years. She saw the annexation of Goa from Portugal, the incorporation of French remnants on the Indian subcontinent, the incorporation of Sikkim, but most importantly, a smashing victory over Pakistan. In 1971, East Pakistan rose up in revolt against West Pakistan. The Bengali's of East Pakistan did not have political representation, and were long abused by Islamabad. India supported Bengali independence with a direct invasion, and helped proclaim the independence of Bangladesh after a brief occupation. These victories were strategically used by Gandhi to stay in power.
Indira Gandhi's political and economic moves were more autocratic than her fathers. Gandhi supported a centralization of economics, and derided free trade or liberalization. She sought closer ties still with the Soviets, and helped build up the armed forces of India to become a regional player, and a direct challenge to China. On the political front, she struggled with political representation, and after protests and communal violence erupted throughout the nation, she proclaimed a state of emergency, jailing all political opponents and stifling the press. This state of emergency led to an easing of economic and social tensions, but was deeply unpopular for obvious reasons. Indira seemed set to create a dictatorship in India, and had been promoting her son, Sanjay Gandhi, as her successor. Thankfully, after a year of emergency rule, she suddenly released all political prisoners, and held fresh elections, which she lost to a coalition of Hindu nationalist parties, regional parties, and a defection of older Congress politicians.
This coalition would only last three years in power, as it succumbed to internal political tensions, and Indira Gandhi was reelected to power once more. This time in office saw her son Sanjay die in a plane accident, and she promoted her other son Rajiv Gandhi. However, she moved away from her authoritarian past, as she required coalition support to ensure an electoral majority. She chose the communists as a political partner - this cementing her state-run economic ideals. She also went on a charm offensive in the west to promote India's image. During this time, ethnic and religious tensions again flared, resulting in conflicts across the country, and violent communal violence. The worst hit Punjab, the Sikh region of India, where tensions between Sikhs and Hindus - unheard of in the past, flared into extreme violence. An armed uprising of Sikhs looking for political autonomy/independence for their state, was violently put down. In retaliation, two of Gandhi's Sikh bodyguard assassinated her.
Her son, Rajiv, was next in line. He saw to an opening of the Indian economy, movement toward liberalization of trade and economics, and to soothe tensions between India's communities. He successfully ended the Sikh insurrection, and the issues with the Mizo and Naga tribes. He sent troops overseas to Sri Lanka to assist that governments conflict with Tamil rebels. He also saw India move toward a more Parliamentary style democracy, with frequent elections, coalition politics and a strengthening of democratic practices - which led to his electoral defeat. In the subsequent election campaign, Rajiv was assassinated by a Tamil extremist.
The time after Rajiv is a blur of names and figures. The BJP (as of writing the ruling party in India) took prominence as a collective of Hindu nationalist parties. This party successfully competed with Congress in elections post Rajiv - by this time the Congress had split many times under the Gandhi/Neru political clan. This period (1980's forward) saw many wonderful things happen in India, and many terrible ones too. Literacy, economic well being, women's rights, caste rights, and so on increased markedly. The Indian economy began to open up to more neo-liberal policies, moving away from its experiments in socialism and centralized economic planning. This led to both an increase in GDP per capita and average income, and saw a massive shift in poverty levels toward the middle class. It also saw rising tensions between minority groups, unequal distribution of income, massive environmental damage (ie. Bhopal disaster) and so on.
I won't go on any further. But what did I think of the book? India After Gandhi was highly engaging, and offered a deeply analytical look at India's history. It maps the political, internal and external pressures the Indian state has faced during its history. Ethnic tensions and violence continue to be the norm in this massive and varied state, but India continues to be a democracy - defying many Western analysis throughout history. It is slowly building itself to be a powerhouse economy, and is widely thought to be on its way to Great Power status in the future. India is a nation that is not often written about in Western literature, and is often overshadowed by China's economic dominance. Even so, is is with great pride that India remains a stable democracy. It suffers from internal strife, poverty, nepotism (as clearly shown above), corruption and environmental degradation. However, it has strong democratic institutions, and is making great strides in all its endeavors. Guha's book examines all aspects of this nation with a critical eye, offering facts and analysis, and avoids glowing prose in favour of realistic analysis. Highly recommended for those looking to read about India and its incredible journey from colony to colossus. -
As I set to type this review, I also seriously consider not doing so, on account of my naivete. In all fairness, I am new to this genre and this book had been lying around for more than a year in my shelf, till I started reading it after I had finished some 100 odd pages in a friend's copy.
I have not read any other book that was so dense as this and yet so well-paced. The amount of information in each page is staggering. The only book I know that has more footnotes than this is, perhaps, the Infinite Jest.
I started off by watching a TEDx video my Mr.Guha. He was so articulate in his views that I was compelled to read the book immediately. And in his book, he is more articulate, more evocative than I had imagined a writer of history can be.
India, is in it's own right, an exception in the world, as a nation. It had not satisfied any condition that major historians and theorists of the day mandated to the formation of a successful, lasting nation. There was no unifying language, no unifying way of life, no absolute majority of a religion. There was only the common theme of being at the receiving end of European colonialism. And that was not enough to forge a united nation, many historians and journalists predicted, at the time, of which Guha is generous to include many samples.
One cannot blame those people who predicted the downfall of India as a nation soon after the British left. The Indian populace was illiterate, yet granted adult franchise. A wave of nationalism dominated the first election. It was famously said that 'even a lamp post can win if it contested under Congress auspices'. In essence, India was the first modern complete democracy. It started off as a constitutional one, and has morphed into a populist one.
India had its share of wounds too. It was deeply hurting from the communal riots incited as a result of the partition. In fact, the communal violence would continue to dog the country well into the twenty first century, initially condemned by the government and sometimes condoned and actively aided by it, episodically.
There was no scarcity for secessionist claims either. It seems like throughout the second half of the century, after the Indian Union came into being, almost every corner of the country wanted a separate nation, every province harbored a desire to be declared a sovereign nation. Domestic terrorism had its share, for good(!) measure.
There was the issue of neighbours, their aggression, non pragmatic foreign policies and internal economic policies, all product of the nationalist sentiment that ran high when these were enacted and enforced. And they have all come to pass, with better versions replacing them, albeit slowly, often obstructed by recalcitrant politicians with vested interests and policy makers with Anchor bias and tunneled visions.
It is to be noted that, as an (unfortunate) consequence of adopting a democracy, India had to tolerate its politicians. That the literacy rates were below the average of similar democracies / freshly liberated colonies didn't help. India was gifted with great statesmen, who seeded the revolution, nurtured it and lived long enough to see it mature. In the initial decades things were decidedly better than they are now.
Since then, India has come a long way. And this book tells you the story of this country. Ramachandra Guha has done an excellent job of chronicling it, without even a hint of distaste towards the politicians or the policy makers or its executives. This is a remarkable achievement in itself.
India is the seventh largest country in the world. It is no mean task to select issues that need to be covered, in order to be representative of the government, the nation, and ultimately the populace. However, Mr.Guha proves to be just the man for this task. Nowhere does one feel that some issues were left out, or downplayed, or exaggerated. It must have been very hard to resist those temptations and be non-partisan. Too many historians have claimed to be authoritative re-tellers of the great Indian History. And Mr.Guha shames them all, and not through attacks, but through sheer scholarship.
I do not claim that I am enlightened now, even as far as the subject that has been covered in this book. But it is because of my own inability to retain and evaluate all the facts objectively. That I may have to re-read it multiple times to assimilate even the outline of the book is in no doubt.
The book is one giant story, sometimes titillating, sometimes depressing and sometimes neither. I made reading this book a ritual, covering a hundred pages in the morning every day. And it has paid off, richly. In part, it also subjected me to much chagrin, at the knowledge of just how much I didn't know about my own country. But Mr.Guha himself vindicates the great nation through his book. For all its imperfections and shortcomings, India has survived this long, and shall survive long enough that it will come to be seen as a country that has always been a democracy.
Near the end of the book, the author points out the lamenting of Isaiah Berlin, who pointed out that countries like India shouldn't be seen only as liberated subjects of European colonialism. They have their own distinct history, character, she says. And Mr.Guha's book does justice to that claim. No doubt this will go down as a classic, for it already has become a standard and authoritative text on the subject.
Highly recommended. -
A very comprehensive history of modern India, and it's surprisingly interesting and gripping given that it is a historical record. A must read for any one who wants to know how modern India came to be, esp. for those of us who were not born when we were not the fast developing nation we are today. Some of the descriptions and narratives are very transcending. They make you fell nostalgic of an event even when you never were there in the first place. It makes you proud and sad and excited and ashamed all in the same book. In short, it tells you about India, why it is unique and what is good and bad about it, and also what we need to do to improve.
It has it's shortcoming and there are points where the author's personal views have influenced what should otherwise have been an objective record (Nehru's regime and later BJP's hindutva) but the sheer length and breadth of the content that Guha has presented here, is just so humbling and detailed. The minor flaws are actually minuscule in the larger picture. -
So, it took me ~3years to read this mammoth of a book. I was attracted to the book hoping to read about the history of post independence India. Growing up in India, you are taught a lot about the history of India leading to the freedom struggle but nothing after.
I was amused initially as I felt I am learning a lot about the developments post independence, how the princely states were brought into Índian union etc. What I wasn’t as affected by was the slow pace. The book keeps dragging on and on pages after pages to communicate what could have been shared in one sentence. It doesn’t get to you as much till almost halfway through the book but after that it’s almost annoying.
Here’s are very honest and unfiltered comments/reactions:
+ It is basically a compendium of what foreign authors/media wrote about India all these years. It almost feels like the author has no opinion of his own and Índian media/authors never said anything worth quoting in 50+ years.
- I have nothing against foreign media/authors, just that having lived outside India for 7+ years, I know how distant people’s views here are about what’s going on in India despite us being in the age of internet
+ Depressing account of all that went wrong in India in the last 50+ years. If someone knew nothing about India he/she would think nothing was ever done right e.g., lots of print about the China war we lost while mere mentions about the 72’ war that we won
+ He did a great job in the last chapter and epilogue where it is synthesized and author has his own views for a change
+ Way too much print is spent on the two decades after independence while the last 30-40 years are a wash
+ Learning about Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship was eye opening. I wish the author spent time on non Congress leadership like Atal Bihari Vajpayee
+ I wish there was more coverage of Rajiv Gandhi’s rein and murder
+ The author could have really benefited from ‘brevity and synthesis’ [yes, that also applies to my review to drive home the point ;)] -
I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time, and was finally motivated to do so after starting Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, which is an engaging read about what might be considered the ‘dry’ subjects of Israeli foreign policy and domestic politics. I was hopeful that this history of the Indian Republic would be similarly engrossing, especially given the striking parallels between the two countries.
After all, both nations came into existence within the space of nine months, carved out of a larger territory that was under British rule; both have been involved in numerous wars with their neighbours since their inception; both are nuclear powers that are not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty; both are democracies that have had to grapple with the tensions between secularism and majoritarianism; both contain substantial religious minorities, with religious majorities that are themselves divided along the lines of caste or regional origin; both were founded by men of the secular left whose parties were dominant until the religious right gained power in 1977; and both elected their first and (so far) only woman Prime Minister in the second half of the 1960s.
Ramachandra Guha does not disappoint. Like Shlaim, he is a distinguished historian who is no stranger to controversy. An avowed proponent of India maintaining its secular, liberal and democratic status, he was briefly detained by police a few years ago after peacefully protesting against a citizenship law which was said to discriminate against Muslims (with minor echoes, incidentally, of Israel’s nation state law that was passed a year earlier). Even so, he is fairly even-handed in his discussion of these topics, giving as much space to Islamism as he does to Hindu nationalism, and devoting time to discussing the machinations of both India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Political leaders of all stripes come in for praise as well as criticism, and his discussion of economic and social policy is data-driven. He is also excellent at providing insights into the everyday lives of Indians (I enjoyed his account of how large parts of the nation would, every Sunday morning when it was on in 1987, sit down to watch the TV series Ramayan, based on the Sanskrit epic).
This book was first published in 2007, and ended on a note of optimism. At the time, he notes, the President of India was a Muslim, the Prime Minister a Sikh, and the leader of the ruling party an Italian-born Catholic woman. People of Parsi and Jewish descent have held prominent positions across Indian society, and the country’s film industry is renowned for its capacious cosmopolitanism. The author Kapil Komireddi recently observed that during its 1971 intervention in favour of Bangladeshi independence, India’s ground forces were led by a Sikh, its air force in the eastern sector was commanded by a Muslim, its eastern command was led by a Jewish general (who secured Pakistan’s surrender), and its armed forces as a whole were led by a Parsi.
As anyone who has followed their work knows, neither author is seeking to minimise the sectarian tensions that simmered and sometimes erupted into violence during India’s first sixty years. But, at least at the top of Indian society, pluralism reigned. It is fair to say that Guha is not quite so optimistic about the future of India’s institutions today. In the book, he cautions against calling the BJP a fascist party and is sceptical about its danger to India’s secular democracy; today, he at least draws parallels and links between European fascism and the Hindutva ideology which animates the BJP faithful. That said, while India’s institutions have been weakened by the current government, there is no real prospect of democracy in its narrow sense being overturned. It will endure for some time to come. -
Never has history been told in such colour and with such emotion. Rightly deserves to be called Guha's masterpiece.
A book that takes you through the fight of a young nation against the veritable elements threatening secularism, its dangerous but nevertheless great gamble with democracy, its idealist argument against the more realist one for alignment, its parenthood falling from that of great men of integrity to mortals with vanity, and the rise of populism on the price of constitutional democracy. Selflessness and foresight of some, pettiness and fanaticism of some more, revolts for secession, linguist processions, theocratic and socialist movements, poverty and hunger, rights of minorities, even the strange cinema and much more, all find their due description in one volume.
With every other statement referenced, one wonders the pain undergone and diligence shown with every book or magazine the author refers, each document that he dusted and each letter that he unearthed.
The unnatural idea of an Indian Nation opening the book, and the appreciation of that strange idea being successfully conceived and perpetuated ending it, is sure to fill every democrat's heart with admiration for India, and every nationalist's eyes with tears. -
What a beast to conquer. Wow.
The book largely covers, without going into too much depth, the history of India since freedom, but still manages to make it sound like a story. The author has covered each event from several perspectives, while being neutral and firmly based in fact as much as possible. Commendable and extremely informative, at times too much to take in, but an excellent read overall. -
A political treatise glorifying the Nehru-Gandhi Family !!!
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yeah according to history genre.am not a big fan but i thought it could be knowledgeable but it wasnt that help
