India After Gandhi: The History Of The World's Largest Democracy (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
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.
A good compilation of post independence Indian history by Ramachandra Guha. It also gives a good perspective to understand present day India. The book is rich in detail and the writing style of Guha is brilliant and makes the book a very interesting read. But at a few places Guha does compromise objectivity in favour of Nehru, especially in his telling about Nehru's grand centralized socialist economy and his foreign policy of Non-Aligned movement( India and the Non-Aligned Movement.) both of which are more or less proven wrong in retrospect(NAM is debatable).In short, the pros of the book –The period between 1947 and 1950, the making of the constitution and the consolidation of the princely states was very well covered. It could have been made better by covering in more detail Ambedkar's contribution,and his story and how he came to be in the Constituent Assembly in the first place. This part of the book makes the whole book worth reading.The reordering of the states on linguistic lines and Potti Sriramulu's battle.The cons of the book are –The author has hardly written about Indian politics since Rajiv Gandhi's time. Guha goes off on a tangent about the role of cricket, Bollywood and other cultural events. Nothing gets spoken about the liberalization of 1991, the effect of the collapse of the Berlin Wall on India, Pokhran nuclear tests, the Bofors scam etc.. The events that take place after 1985 have been given very little space in the book.( I personally think that this was done because it becomes impossible to tell India's tale beyond 1985 without pointing out the many mistakes made by Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which the author seems very reluctant to do)Should have covered the period of emergency and the Janata Party's first non-congress government that followed in more detail.A certain amount of objectivity would have been good while discussing Nehru's policies and his five year plans in the 1950s and the events that led up to the Indo-China war.Another similar book which I have not read but intend to is Bipin Chandra's India Since Independence. I hear the book covers post 1990 events in more detail, should check it out.But overall the book is well written and definitely worth a read( a couple of reads actually).
What do You think about India After Gandhi: The History Of The World's Largest Democracy (2007)?
Historian Ramachandran Guha, the author of Environmentalism: A Global History (1999) and The Unquiet Woods (1989), among others, and a current resident of Bangalore, writes of what he knows. Weighing in at nearly 900 pages, India After Gandhi successfully clarifies the convoluted history and contradictions of the world's second most populous nation. That Guha leaves questions unanswered in a book of this scope, as one critic asserts, might be considered nit-picking. To be sure, the author does choose his questions-giving particular attention to Nehru, India's first prime minister-and he doesn't shy away from offering his (mostly optimistic) opinions on important issues throughout. Still, critics agree that Guha's effort succeeds in putting a face on a country whose political and economic history, despite its size and growing influence in the "flat-world" model, remains virtually unknown by many outside India.This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
—Bookmarks Magazine
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.
—Viplove Tyagi
Ramachandra Guha clearly brings out the problems and issues faced by the then independent India and thereafter in a lucid and objective manner. What impressed me most was the succinct description of class, caste, regional and religious issues faced by an independent India without exemplifying his own prejudices. I was struck with wonder and excitement at the vision and idealism of our leaders and the effort expended by them to make India a prominent nation among nations. I was also impressed by the way prominent leaders like Vallabbhai Patel expedited the process of unifying India steadily through intelligent strategic maneuvers when at the time of independence, India still had 562 princely states. The sheer diplomacy and resolve with which the whole problem was solved taking into the confidence the will and opinion of some rulers/autocrats and bureaucrats, was simply brilliant. The book also discusses the brilliant diplomacy of Nehru which other world leaders appreciated. In fact, India was seen at that time as a propagator of a new "mixed economy" model within a democratic set-up which refused to be aligned with any leading blocs. It was Nehru's charm and personality which held sway not only over foreigners but also millions of Indians, who dreamed of a prosperous country through meaningful nation-building activities under the aegis of Nehru. At the same time, the author has tried to pinpoint the exact fallacy in the political ideology of Nehru and how it ruined the economic model of growth for India (since Nehru was overly enthusiastic about the "mixed economy" model after witnessing the nationalization of major industries in Russia). The author has also tried to reflect on the past and the then current trends which cast a dominating influence on the workings of the national mindset including the intellectuals, the middle-class Indians and the lower class workers. He has also looked at the perception of India among the western countries, at that time. Particularly, we can have a glimpse of the change in stance of some nations towards India with the change in their leadership positions and how western intellectuals were very much skeptical of the idea of a "United India". The author has dug up a plethora of useful resources and has done extensive research to come up with such a brilliant novel and I think this book would set a benchmark for any other literature which covers the theme of India after independence. I would go onto say that this unparalleled piece of non-fictional work should be included in the syllabus of a 11th standard student, through which he(the upcoming generation) can appreciate the trials and troubles through which our leaders underwent and at the same time, fully comprehend the origins of the present-day problems/challenges faced by modern India.
—Sandeepan Mondal
