India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy eBook PDF

Kali Srikanth

Rating: really liked it
"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.

Bob Foulkes

Rating: really liked it
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.

Sidharth Vardhan

Rating: really liked it

“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 (view spoiler), 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. (view spoiler)

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.

Ashish Iyer

Rating: really liked it
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.

Ted

Rating: really liked 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: (view spoiler)

ACRONYMS & NICKNAMES

Here’s a list of acronyms, in some cases nicknames, Guha sometimes uses, made by referencing the Index.(view spoiler)

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

(view spoiler)

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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Brian Griffith

Rating: really liked it
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.

Amit Mishra

Rating: really liked it
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.

S.Ach

Rating: really liked it
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.

Vipassana

Rating: really liked it

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.

Gorab

Rating: really liked it
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.

Rajat Ubhaykar

Rating: really liked it
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?

Katrin

Rating: really liked it
Having finally finished this massive book, I feel I know much more about India now. Some parts are a little boring, but mostly it is hugely interesting to witness the biggest democracy on earth unfold after 1949. One is left with the feeling that it is a true miracle that India is still relatively stable, has not sunk into civil war and chaos and is still a democracy, for all its problems. The book details the huge effort and labour it took to transform a colonized state (and a very large one!) into a real democracy. Which political model to choose? How to incorporate all the small kingdoms? How to form a government, how to write a constitution? How to distribute millions of ballot boxes to rural areas? How to divide the country into districts? How to please everyone? It is fascinating to see how much of all this depended on few people, most notably Jawaharlal Nehru, an amazing politician, which I hadn't known before. All the economic considerations and plans were also new to me, as were details of Indira Gandhi's and Rajiv Gandhi's governments. There is too little emphasis on popular, everyday culture for my taste, but at least there is a chapter on the Indian film industry.

obh

Rating: really liked it
"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.

Jonfaith

Rating: really liked it
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.

Shailee Basu

Rating: really liked it
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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India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

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