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Title:
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy
Type: Book
Author(s): Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages: 944
Binding: Paperback
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Other reviews |
| Product Description: |
Amagisterial account of the pains, the struggles, the humiliations, and the glories of the world's largest and least likely democracy, Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is a breathtaking chronicle of the brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation and the extraordinary factors that have held it together. An intricately researched and elegantly written epic history peopled with larger-than-life characters, it is the work of a major scholar at the peak of his abilities. |
| by ankur_shah99: |
Excellent book, needs more honest cartography
This is an excellent survey of the last 60 years of Indian history, and as many reviewers have stated above, well written and informative. Accessory material - maps referring to geopolitical changes and images that are referred to verbally in the book - is sorely lacking. History and clarity would have been well served by these additions as well as an acknowledgement that the official maps of India (those including Kashmir in its entirey) are incorrect. |
| by girishlal: |
Very good historical account of India as a new nation state.
India After Gandhi The History of the World's Largest Democracy By Ramachandra Guha
A very good historical account of India as a new nation state.
"India After Gandhi" covers a long period in Indian history from 1947 to 1990. There is an extended post script ("A history of events") that covers the incidents and movements after 1990 to up until 2004. The book ends with author's perception on why India survives regardless of many doomsday predictions that it has encountered throughout its 70 or so years of existence, about its survival as a single nation founded on democracy and secularism.
The story starts with independence, but does not cover the events and personalities that lead up to it. The longest part of the story in the book narrates a very engaging story of a young country trying to define itself, by creating a constitution that guarantees universal adult franchise, building a bureaucracy by extending the British ICS, providing a judiciary that is independent and generally infusing the county with optimism and ideals of a just born country. At the same time the country was dealing with division of the country into two, the "biggest human migration in history" that left many thousands killed and left many more thousands with no property, arduous resettlement of refugees, intricate and complex integration of more than 500 princely states into a country and the mammoth task of building its infrastructure. Author also gives a details account of various insurgencies including Kashmir issue. It is this part that covers era of Nehru and Shasri that is well written and well researched.
The second part deals with how the constitutional democracy slowly transformed into a "populist" democracy under Indira Gandhi and how the emergence of local politics changed the topology of Indian politics. Here Author's research seems to be constrained to Haskar's (A top bureaucrat in Mrs. Gandhi's inner circle) papers and newspaper journalism. The depth of analysis suffers because of the weakness of primary source materials.
The third part, that is aptly named as "history of events" deals with most "current", in terms of history, events in India. They are mostly depended upon journalism rather than any historical research, but in some way present a good analysis of emergence of caste, religion and regional based politics in India
All in all a very good history of India, especially on its inception stage as a nation.
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| by pritzlm: |
Great read
Although this book can read like a text book at times, I had a hard time putting it down. I vaguely remember many of the events starting with Indira Gandhi so it was great to put these in context for myself. The history prior to that (post British rule) was very interesting, well written and easy to follow.
I would've liked to have seen more pictures or photos, but alas everyone including myself is a critic.
I highly recommend it. |
| by anonymous customer: |
Fair, comprehensive and just slighlty nationalistic
Ramachanrda Guha's history of "India after Gandhi" is a fascinating, fact-rich, comphrehensive history of late 20th Century India. Except for a an ocassional and understanable tint of nationlistic pride, Guha is impartial. He writes without political agenda. He just wants the reader to know the story and why the story is important. And unless you are already very well-versed in the recent history of India, you will learn much.
While I give this book four stars, but be fair-warned "India after Gandhi" is essentially a textbook, albeit a very good textbook. If reading a textbook -- no matter how good -- is not for you, buy someting else. But if you are an armchair historian, who like me, enjoys reading "something different", or you are interested in India for some personal reason, then this book a is must read. |
| by kashyap: |
Discovery of India (independence onward)
If Nehru were to pick his choice of a historian to chronicle Indian history starting where he left off with his Discovery of India letters to Indira from 1942-46; he would probably have lived a decade longer in his excitement after finding Ramachandra Guha. Never before has a historian (or any human being for that matter) undergone the momentous task of uncovering and articulating the history of the world's largest democracy the way Guha has with India After Gandhi. Leave opinion, judgment, agenda, and agency aside; it is little doubt that Guha is the most aware Indian alive.
I had the good fortune of spending hours listening to Ram in person earlier this year, and was amazed at the wisdom-per-second spewing out from head-to-mouth impromptu. It is one thing to collect, select and organize information in chronological order; and it is another to hold that infinity in the back of your mind and retrieve, synthesize and present it on demand. It reflects passion, experience, genius, and wisdom. The series of talks were a follow-on to his controversial article in The Outlook about seven reasons why India will not be a Superpower, and why that is a meaningless goal to aspire towards.
I have received several new-found insights about India as a result of this book. It would be silly to attempt any summary or conclusions of the book and trivialize its very essence. Yet, the most important insight is that it is a miracle that India has overcome the challenge of surviving as one country. The initial conditions before, during and after independence were so unfavorable that historians, intellectuals, politicians and journalists worldwide did not give the "India experiment" a chance to survive too long (read the book for hundreds of revealing quotes on this topic). In our detachment from the freedom struggle and ignorance of history, we often fail to acknowledge the fact that India's biggest achievement might be the fact that we survived as one country, a fact now beyond question; and so beyond reproach that it would take a deep conspiracy to imagine otherwise.
In a world where hindsight is 20-20, over a billion people are unable to speculate on what could've should've would've been a better road for India to travel since Independence - Pakistan or no Pakistan, Nehru or Patel, Gandhi right or wrong, Hindu or secular, etc. It is easier to chart a path (any path) to utopia lined up with reversal of outcome at key turning points, but much harder to understand the gravity of flaws in the idea of India and the fragility of initial conditions, despite which we made it. An awareness of the initial conditions followed step-by-step with the path to where we are today, would provide much-needed closure (and surprising optimism) to every Indian or worldly soul interested in this most crazy country; and a brand new set of goggles as we look ahead.
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