by
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
1. ABOUT THE AUTHOR :
Ramachandra Guha is a historian and columnist based in Bangalore. He has taught at the universities of Yale, Stanford, and Oslo, and at the Indian Institute of Science. His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002). India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out and Outlook; and as a book of the decade in the Times of India, the Times of London, and The Hindu. Guha's books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The New York Times has referred to him as "perhaps the best among India's non fiction writers"; Time Magazine has called him "Indian democracy's preeminent chronicler".
Ramachandra Guha's awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Daily Telegraph/Cricket Society prize, the Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for excellence in social science research, the Ramnath Goenka Prize for excellence in journalism, and the R. K. Narayan Prize. In 2008 Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines nominated Guha as one of the world's hundred most influential intellectuals. In 2009 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan
2. Ramachandra Guha, the writer of this book, is known worldwide for his impeccable style of writing. His writing only gets better when he deals with anything that has any interest in the modern India
Ramachandra Guha, author of the internationally acclaimed "India After Gandhi, profiles nineteen Indians whose ideas had a defining impact on the formation and evolution of our republic and presents rare and compelling excerpts from their writings and speeches. These men and women were not only influential political activists they also wrote with eloquence, authority and deliberation as they reflected on what Guha describes in his illuminating prologue as the most contentious times in the most interesting country in the world . Their writings take us from the subcontinent' s first engagement with modernity in the nineteenth century, through the successive phases of the freedom movement, on through the decades after Independence.
This book highlights little-known aspects of major figures in Indian history like Tagore and Nehru; it also rehabilitates thinkers who have been unjustly forgotten, such as Tarabai Shinde and Hamid Dalwai. These makers of modern India did not speak in one voice: their perspectives are sometimes complementary, at other times contradictory. The topics they explore and analyse include religion, caste, gender, language, nationalism, colonialism, democracy, secularism and the economy that is to say, all that is significant in the human condition. These issues have a resonance in our own times, not just in India but everywhere in the world as well.where violence is opposed to non-violence, where people of different faiths have to learn to live with each other, where the marginalized struggle for their rights, and where states have to chose between privileging a single 'national' culture or permitting a hundred flowers to bloom.
3. Makers of Modern India is EDITED and INTRODUCED by Ramachandra Guha, literally meaning there's little contribution in terms of susbtance by the author in this. There's a short introduction by Guha for each 'Maker' and then a collection of extracts from the works of the chosed personalities. So the reader has to go through the original selcted works of the theme-by-theme and reach their own conclusions and make their own interpretations .Neverthless the book is more than a mere compilation of the words of the individuals who made modern India, says Sunanda K Datta-Ray, but the list is less than satisfying.In fact this fascinating book, whose two crowning glories are the elegantly written prologue (“Thinking through India”) and epilogue (“India in the World ,she adds.
In addition to this sandwich bread of prologue and epilogue, Ramachandra Guha seasons the filling of excerpts from the speeches and writings of his 19 “makers of modern India” with his own interpretative introduction to each of the five parts into which the book is divided as well as for each “maker”. That makes 27 pieces of original writing plus an 11-page “Guide to Further Reading”. A strong binding cord, indeed, that makes Guha an "author rather than only editor.
4 Guha says his book ' is a compilation of the writings of these 19 Indians who, he feels had a pivotal role in the shaping of modern India. He adds that it is a book of conversation and argument.
According to Mr Guha , , he has dealt with men, who according to- his view- are the makers of Modern India. .Elaborating further he says , in chosing the men for the list the criteria used was whether they were both thinkers and doers. Explaining this concept still further he opines,
""I chose people who were active in politics and social reform, but at the same time left behind a significant corpus of writing. That is to say, those who were both thinkers and doers. Which is why, for example, Sardar Patel is not in the list—he didn’t leave behind books or essays of any substance or depth. Nor did I want pure writers. So, they had to bridge the barrier between thought and action. Then, they had to speak to their time as well as ours. Even among the famous figures, I have highlighted their less-known works. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote three celebrated books before Independence, but since I was interested in Nehru the state maker, I focused on his fortnightly letters to chief ministers, which deal with minority rights foreign policy, economic planning, etc. Similarly, we are familiar with the writings of B.R. Ambedkar on the caste system, but not with his profound meditations on democracy and constitutionalism ... "
.Of course his criteria for chosing and similarly for exclusion o f some ,particularly SardarPatel, Indira Gandhi are not beyond criticism and also non inclusion of many important men/women ,who might not be writers but had more than contributed to the making of INDIA
5. Guha says he believes India to be the most interesting country in the world. He hastens to add that this is the impartial judgement of a historian and not a passionate claim of a citizen.
In his view what makes India interesting is not just the size of the country or its population or even its diversity... it’s actually the fact that India is simultaneously undergoing five dramatic transformations – the urban revolution, the industrial revolution, the national revolution, the democratic revolution, and the social revolution.
He further adds,"
'People featured in 'Makers of India' are people who have lived through these revolutions and have played their role in shaping it. What is unique about these people are that they were not only doers but able and excellent thinkers. Their writings have had significant impact on the people and the society. '
Throughout his massive, extensively researched historical work, India after Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha quotes Western doomsayers, who, before as well as after India’s independence, felt strongly that democracy in India could not survive, and that the country would collapse under the sheer weight of its diversity and social problems. In the epigraph of the very first chapter of his book, Guha quotes the former bishop of Calcutta who said in 1915 that “as soon as the last British soldier sailed from Bombay and Karachi, India would become the battlefield of antagonistic racial and religious forces”.asserts Hari Jagannathan Balasubramanian, in his blog 'Thirty letters in my name"
The bishop’s prediction did come true in the months following independence when the subcontinent was partitioned. And in the decades that followed class, caste, religious and secessionist conflicts have constantly rocked India. But despite all this, the country has managed to hold together; its democratic institutions have survived – though BR Ambedkar’s caveat that “democracy is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic” continues to be true in many parts of the country. Still, the success and relative stability of the Indian Union is remarkable given the upheavals and authoritarian regimes that have plagued other countries in Asia and Africa similarly emerging from colonialism.
This contrast – the contrast between the bleakness of all predictions about India and the country’s unlikely dodging of the pitfalls strewn along its path – is something Ramachandra Guha repeatedly heightens throughout the book; it is this contrast that gives his narrative its strength and tension.
6. Unlike Amartya Sen, who, in The Argumentative Indian, attributes the success of Indian democracy to historical precedents such as those set by the emperors Asoka and Akbar, Guha looks for answers in the political story of the country after independence (“...the real success story of modern India lies ... in [the domain] of politics”). He reserves his greatest praise for India’s founding fathers: Jawaharlal Nehru, to whom this book is a paean, and who succeeded during his 17-year long tenure in imparting his secular and liberal values to the country’s institutions; Vallabhbhai Patel, whose pivotal role in the integration of princely states ensured that territorially India would be what it is today; and BR Ambedkar, who, in his drafting of the Constitution made sure that the social iniquities of the past would – officially at least – begin to be reversed. Indeed, one of Guha’s main points is that though political leadership in India has steadily deteriorated, the decline cannot derail what was begun in the years after independence:
“In India, the sapling was planted by the nation’s founders, who lived long enough (and worked hard enough) to nurture it to adulthood. Those who came afterwards could disturb and degrade the tree of democracy but, try as they might, could not uproot and destroy it.”
Guha states early in the book that his approach to writing the history of modern India –an unimaginably vast and unwieldy subject matter – is that of an explorer “making a rapid survey of the horizon before plunging into thickets from which the wider view is no longer possible.” And so, while the political story of India after independence forms the main narrative thread, we also learn of a number of important and often ignored people and stories. To list just a few, we learn how Sardar Tarlok Singh, an Indian Civil Service officer, guided the effort to settle and allot cultivable land to tens of thousands of refugees from West Punjab in Pakistan; the sheer scale of the logistical and administrative effort that Sukumar Sen, India’s first election commissioner, faced in holding elections; how the reorganization of states along linguistic lines came to be, and the role the activist Potti Sriramulu, who fasted for 58 days and died, played in it; how movements for greater autonomy and separatism unfolded, guided by Sheik Abdullah and Phizo, in Kashmir and Nagaland.
6. The other success of the book is the perspective it is able to provide on some of the important developments in the Indian political scene in the last two decades. The rise of Hindu nationalist parties; the tendency towards decentralization evidenced in the growing strength of regional parties; the increasing importance of caste: all these trends, because of the scope and timeline considered, do not come across as isolated but as part of a larger story of ebbs and surges. By describing, for instance, the RSS and the views of its leader Golwalkar in the 1950s and the political role of the Jana Sangh in the 1960s and 70s, Guha is able to provide us a better understanding of the roots and aspirations of the Bhartiya Janata Party and the parties of the Sangh Parivar.
In telling his stories Guha liberally quotes and excerpts from reports, newspapers, essays of traveling journalists, and recently released archives and letters: his narrative is a deftly crafted collage. But there are also portions, particularly towards the end, where his prose turns into a monotonous recitation of events – Amit Chaudhuri, in his review of the book, calls the chapter devoted to entertainment the weakest one in the book, a “Wikipedia-like accounts of cultural achievements”. Also, Guha often only peripherally touches on many of the issues facing contemporary India, leaving the reader desperately wanting a deeper engagement. But these are minor quibbles; they should not detract from grand scale of Guha’s undertaking and the lucidity with which he has rendered it.
Readers will be grateful to him for bringing to their notice little-known but socially significant personalities like Jotirao Phule and Hamid Dalwai. Or, for that matter, the less publicised outpourings of better-known public figures such as B R Ambedkar and Ram Manohar Lohia. His spotlight might even illumine aspects of national icons like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore that may not have received sufficient attention.
But Guha’s own lyrical prose is what makes this an original work, distinct from potted biographies and popular histories. That also inhibits comment about the book’s ostensible subject — the people on whom he pegs his essays — for it would be unfair to evaluate them only in the light of someone else’s samples selected long after they died. Critiques based on a more comprehensive study of their lives would exceed the anthology’s parameters. However, even if the life and work of these 17 men and two women cannot be discussed here, their inclusion poses questions that bear asking.
It might plausibly be argued that their thoughts contributed to a collective national consciousness. But that alone cannot make Jinnah, the maker of Pakistan, also a maker of India, or vest the obscure 19th-century “subaltern feminist” Tarabai Shinde with responsibility for any aspect of the state we live in. Nor can today’s booming free market economy be said to owe much to Rajaji’s fulminations against the permit-licence raj. Much as one would like to share Guha’s faith in Jayaprakash Narayan’s legacy, his sampurna kranti foundered on the rock of political reality, as did his idealistic solutions for Tibet, Kashmir and Nagaland. The author must know that while JP would undoubtedly have approved of the 73rd constitutional amendment, the provenance for the panchayati raj law was embedded in the Congress party’s own Gandhian thinking.
Probably Guha’s choice of personalities came first and the criteria for calling them “makers” (original thinking, mass appeal, activism, lasting influence, etc.) afterwards. That does not invalidate either the criteria or the choice. They were men and women of commitment, capable of philosophical reflection, with proven writing skills and a willingness (usually) to plunge into the fray. Given the power, some might have made a better India. They had the ideas but not the opportunity, especially if they died long before independence. Others with a single focus (female emancipation or abolition of caste) did not seek the burden of authority. Yet others felt strongly about governance and did propose changes but were ignored.
A very few were in a position to make recommendations (Rammohan Roy on sati) that the first generation of India’s real makers noted and acted on.
As to who these makers Jaswant Singh says elsewhere, India was not territorially defined until the colonial era. Guha does quote Marx’s claim that colonialism “was the unconscious tool of history” in modernising India but probably cannot reconcile any constructive outcome with what he sees as Britain’s “vile interests” (strong words for a historian!) in the subcontinent.
But Philip Woodruff’s Founders and Guardians, “the men who ruled India”, helped to create the clay on which our own thinkers and activists — including these 19 worthies — left their mark. In the view of James Cameron, a distinguished British journalist and great friend of India, one of them, Nehru, soaring above the rest, “made India and lost it”. Guha cites Escott Reid, a Canadian high commissioner, to corroborate at least the first part of Cameron’s comment.
No one else exercised such power. Even Gandhi had no executive authority. Sardar Patel did, and his handiwork is still very much in evidence, but he is not included apparently because he did not “think” or “write”. But those criteria to justify Subhas Chandra Bose’s exclusion,( since circumstances denied him any hand in post-independence nation-building, however much he inspired a generation) appear unjust.
Indira Gandhi’s more surprising exclusion is not fully explained. It may have been because “the speeches and writings that carried her name were written by her staff” or because “her legacy remains controversial”. On that count this also applies to others like M S Golwalkar. As for thought and sound, her actions proclaimed both; not only were they entirely her own but they had far-reaching impact. It would be a shabby denial of history to exclude her on the charge of being undemocratic which would also be a denial of Indian reality.
The recent change of guard in Maharashtra hardly bears out the prologue’s claim (modified somewhat in the epilogue) that India’s political culture has changed from “feudal and deferential” to “combative and participatory”.
7. The interpretation of their writings were done by Guha in the context of the then prevailing situations. Though, there is notable exclusion from the book not a single Indian Marxist has been covered by Guha. There is no doubt that Indian Marxists are great thinkers, but when it comes to the pragmatism of their high level of thinking, there is none. Definitely, there is not an iota of pragmatism in the thinking of Indian Marxists.
Reading through the selections of the 19 makers of modern India, one is struck by the sheer diversity of concerns that gripped their minds—the gradual reformism of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the militant populism of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the enlightened globalism of Rabindranath Tagore, the attacks on caste by E.V. Ramaswami, the feminism of Shinde, the nation-building of Nehru, the futile quest for alternatives to parliamentary democracy by Jayaprakash Narayan, the fight for a free market economy by C. Rajagopalachari, the sharp investigations into caste as a central fact of Indian life by Ram Manohar Lohia and the insights into tribal life by Elwin.
These and other leaders have continued relevance. The splendid economic boom that India is in the middle of will inevitably be socially disruptive as well. It is a well-documented fact that the social strain of such disruption often leads to rebellion or hyper nationalism, to anarchy or oligarchic rule. We see early signs of all these in India, in tribal rage harvested by the Naxalites and the flag waving encouraged by the mainstream political parties. It is critical at such as juncture that India remains in touch with the enlightened political thought that emerged in response to colonial rule and later gave us a liberal republic.
A sound understanding of Indian political traditions would also help us understand the importance of Ambedkar’s perceptive warning on 25 November 1949.
The two core sections of the book, sections III and IV, have Gandhi and Nehru as their central figures, respectively. In section III, the debates revolve around Gandhi and his work. In section IV, Nehru plays the same role. Thus Nehru’s writings are followed by the writings of his critics to the right, such as Golwalkar, and to the left, such as Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan (JP). A forgotten figure this book rehabilitates is the Muslim liberal, Hamid Dalwai, who spoke of the need for modernizing Islam. In the 1960s he wrote that unless an avant garde liberal elite Muslim developed in India, there would be a revival of Hindu conservatism. Dalwai is relevant not just to present-day India but to a post-9/11 world.
8 While speaking about the launch of his new book he observes :
" Although " History "always seems top-heavy; dynasty after dynasty but there is a rich tradition of subaltern history "opines Mr Guha while talking about his book,
Indians are desperate to reduce men of international stature into regional and sectarian leaders
which is unfortunate; we should overcome it.
If you are interested in Dalits, then Gandhi and Ambedkar are both relevant and important. Similarly for the history of democracy, Nehru, Lohia and Rajagopalachari are all important. One of the aims of my book is to get beyond parochial limitations. "
.Speaking about the role played by thinker-activists who played key roles in making India a Republic we have been able to retain our ‘unity is diversity'. We have democracy despite many disparities. This term is more suitable to India than any other place in the world. India is a multi-religious, multi-lingual experiment without a parallel; that is what makes it. There are many fault-lines, many darker sides but that is all part of the story.
About our right wing politicians he says,
"Rammohan Roy was cleansing Hinduism from within but our right-wing politicians claiming to follow his legacy but actually dont do that.They don't look at Roy. They only look at Savarkar and Hedgewar. They can't accommodate Rammohan as their leader because he was a thorough modernist and outward looking thinker-activist. At best, they can only distort his views to achieve their ulterior motives. Roy is simply beyond them
Critically observing about Jinnas role ,he adds:
Pakistan which was created as an Islamic state but Jinnah was a man who ate pork, drank wine... leaving a question whether Pakistanis are justified in calling him ‘The father of the nation'.Actually a debate is on in Pakistan on his western attire because people there can only accept him in sherwani and cap. He never offered prayers. But Jinnah organised the Muslim electorate as a consolidated political rock by successfully convincing Muslim intelligentsia that the Congress was a Hindu party. He was a master political technician. His private actions were overshadowed by his political acumen. I disagree with some other scholars because I think Jinnah was a Muslim separatist who wanted a Muslim political block. He was the other side of the coin called Savarkar.
9. Broken though their setting, some of the excerpts do indeed shine. Nehru, of course, is always rewarding to read, his clarity and humanism calming. Mahatma Gandhi, in the breadth and uniqueness of his concerns, is perplexing, disturbing, moving, infuriating, and constantly surprising. (At the end of an argument for temple-entry for Dalits, he casually urges technical education for them, too.)
Rammanohar Lohia’s invective is delightful, making one pity Sharad Yadav his constraints; and if Ambedkar is ill-served by Guha’s chosen extracts, Periyar makes up for that, with four pieces of sustained, wonderful radicalism. He tears into religion, of course, with one passage mocking the cost of a trip to Tirupati. But he also speaks for contraception, widows’ rights and against marriage
10 With all these Ramachandra Guha is, quite evidently, a man dissatisfied. He is displeased that our politicians are not as well-read nor, in his opinion, thinkers as profound as those who preceded them. He is disgruntled at the dominance of Bengalis in the social sciences, and thus the dominance of Bengal in the narrative of modern India.
He is dismayed that modernists seem to have died out among our “thinker-activists”.
And he is deeply discontented with the stranglehold on India’s 20th century historiography of a telling of our past that owes much to a Congress-CPI view of the world, one he would view as insufficiently liberal.
The hardest hitting message this book provides as Guha says, “The tradition that this book has showcased is dead. No politician now alive can think or write in an original way or even interesting fashion about the direction Indian society and politics is or should be taking.” Sad state of affairs but true state of affairs.
Present day politicians and intellect certainly does not go hand in hand in India. This book is worth a read to understand the rich repository of wisdom and knowledge we had that shaped our history and made us a unique and resilient nation.
Since Guha is also a man of considerable energy, he has attempted to outline and correct these great wrongs. With Makers of Modern India, his readers have to judge whether he will succeed.
All the same this is an interesting and useful book. The information it does contain handsomely fulfils the author’s aim of making “Indians more aware of the richness and relevance of their modern political tradition”. There can be no quarrel with the book’s contents. The quarrel is with the title’s presumption. A less pretentious “Eminent Indians” might have been more appropriate
konthai
References:
1. Articlein One India by
2, Review in The Hindu Magazine
3 .Review in Indian Express by Mihir S Sharma
4. Review byDr SUNANDA
in BUSINESS STANDARD
5. Article in Ek Kitab
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