When I finished reading Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi, for some reason I felt as if I’d just enjoyed a really good meal.

Pick up most books about India’s history, and they draw to an end with the author’s flowery description of India celebrating her independence. The more ambitious books that aim to be ‘comprehensive’ extend themselves to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. Most books about independent India’s journey are written from the point of view of a sociologist or political scientist. Did history really end on the 15^th of August 1947? Ramachandra Guha does not think so, and his book India After Gandhi looks to fill this historical void. It is a richly detailed, exceedingly well-researched work that does to the mind what a fresh, hot cup of filter coffee does to the body.

I am not much of a history buff, but have long been fascinated by the snatches of Indian history that I came across while reading the news. My only true experience with ‘recreational’ history was with Freedom at Midnight, a brilliant book by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins that dealt with India’s struggle for independence. The authors wrote history as if it were fiction, replete with characters that spoke dialogues and behaved like they were taken out of a storybook. I expected India After Gandhi to be similar – but when I received it, the book sitting on my desk was bulky, had small print, boasted few pictures and virtually no ‘dialogue.’ And yet it is this simplicity of Guha’s approach that made the book all the more appealing – it is as if he realized that India’s post-independence history is fascinating enough on its own.

Ramachandra Guha’s insights and analyses are sprinkled throughout the narrative and prove to be one of the most fascinating aspects of the book. His narrative shines when he talks about the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, where he compares her actions to those taken by many world dictators just when they were seizing power. He also contrasts the daughter’s actions to those of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, and finally concludes that Nehru would have sat in the opposition against her policies. Guha manages to weave his arguments seamlessly into the narrative, just like a good chef manages to assimilate the ingredients of his best dish.

This is not to say that the book did not have its faults. There are some incidents that could do with more detail; then again, some passages, such as those dealing with insurgency in the Northeast, could have been shorter. Sometimes, the book seeks to be so comprehensive that significant incidents are shorn of their glory as they are lost in the cacophony of facts. But despite its meticulous attention to detail, India After Gandhi remains astonishingly readable. While he may not possess a resplendent writing style, there is no point when Guha the writer fails Guha the historian.

In a fascinating epilogue titled ‘Why India Survives,’ Guha tries his best to answer the question that has flummoxed many a political observer. Why did India not go the way of other failed democracies? And why is India, a conglomerate of incredibly diverse beliefs, languages and ethnicities even a united country? “Behind every successful nationalist movement in the western world has been a unifying factor, a glue holding the members of the nation together. This has been provided by a shared language, a shared religious faith, a shared territory, or a common enemy…By contrast…the Indian nation does not privilege a single language or religious faith.”¹And yet India endures, a constant eyesore to all the political scientists who predicted her early demise. There is no definitive answer tothat question; but Guha details all the factors that led to an enduring India. It is hard to read this section and yet remain skeptical about the path India has taken in her journey towards a better society.

At no point of India After Gandhi does Ramachandra Guha shy away from noting the negative aspects of the Indian democracy. His descriptions of major events in Indian history are strikingly unbiased - while he mentions the Emergency’s excesses, he does not shy away from talking about how it made the country function more efficiently - and his arguments are solid and founded on fundamentally logical positions. In his own words, the book “is…simply an attempt to tell the modern history of one-sixth of humankind.”² And how well it serves that purpose!

India After Gandhi had all the ingredients in just the right quantity – drama, tragedy, humour, even action. All in all, the book is a fantastic read, as satisfying as an entire Thali meal complete with payasam and gulab jamun.

Go get it.

Rating: 4/5

Publisher: Harper Collins

Full Title: India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy

Pages : 912

Price : $35

References

1. Guha, Ramachandra. 2007 India after Gandhi : the history of the world’s largest democracy / Ramachandra Guha Ecco, New York , p.739

2. Ibid, p.15

Photo Courtesy: HarperCollins

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