India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest DemocracyBorn against a background of privation and civil war, divided along lines of caste, class, language and religion, independent India emerged, somehow, as a united and democratic country. This remarkable book tells the full story—the pain and the struggle, the humiliations and the glories—of the world's largest and least likely democracy. Ramachandra Guha writes compellingly of the myriad protests and conflicts that have peppered the history of free India. But he writes also of the factors and processes that have kept the country together (and kept it democratic), defying numerous prophets of doom who believed that its poverty and heterogeneity would force India to break up or come under autocratic rule. Once the Western world looked upon India with a mixture of pity and contempt; now it looks upon India with fear and admiration. Moving between history and biography, this story of modern India is peopled with extraordinary characters. Guha gives fresh insights on the lives and public careers of those long-serving prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. There are vivid sketches of the major "provincial" leaders whose province was as large as a European country: the Kashmiri rebel turned ruler Sheikh Abdullah; the Tamil film actor turned politician M. G. Rama-chandran; the Naga secessionist leader Angami Zapu Phizo; the socialist activist Jayaprakash Narayan. But the book also writes with feeling and sensitivity about lesser known (though not necessarily less important) Indians—peasants, tribals, women, workers and musicians. Massively researched and elegantly written, India After Gandhi is at once a magisterial account of India's rebirth and the work of a major scholar at the height of his powers. |
From inside the book
... Governor- General's Council. Now, in retire- ment in England, he set his Indian experience against the background of recent political developments in Europe itself. Large chunks of Strachey's book are taken up with an 2 PROLOGUE.
... ment in the great democratic experiment launched at the end of the eighteenth century by the American and French revolutions . " Each of these experiments " released immense energies ; each raised towering ex- pectations ; and each has ...
... ment in their dealings with the Muslim League. In the 1920s, Gandhi ignored Jinnah and tried to make common cause with the mullahs. In the 1930s, Nehru arrogantly and, as it turned out, falsely, claimed that the Muslim masses would ...
... economic dependence , with the states relying on British India for raw materials , industrial goods , and employ- ment opportunities.8 The larger native states had their own railroad , currency APPLES IN THE BASKET 53.
... ment were — he had joined the government of India as a clerk and steadily worked his way up . He had been reforms commissioner and constitu- tional adviser to successive viceroys , and had played a key role in draft- ing the Indian ...
Contents
1 | |
17 | |
19 | |
41 | |
51 | |
74 | |
Refugees and the Republic | 97 |
Ideas of India | 115 |
Minding the Minorities | 365 |
THE RISE OF POPULISM | 387 |
Leftward Turns | 417 |
The Elixir of Victory | 445 |
The Rivals | 466 |
Autumn of the Matriarch | 491 |
Life Without the Congress | 519 |
Democracy in Disarray | 542 |
NEHRUS INDIA | 135 |
The Biggest Gamble in History | 137 |
Home and the World | 160 |
Redrawing the Map | 189 |
The Conquest of Nature | 209 |
The Law and the Prophets | 233 |
Securing Kashmir | 249 |
Tribal Trouble | 267 |
The Southern Challenge | 287 |
The Experience of Defeat | 306 |
Peace in Our Time | 342 |
This Son Also Rises | 569 |
Rights | 597 |
Riots | 624 |
Rulers | 651 |
Riches | 682 |
A Peoples Entertainments | 709 |
Why India Survives | 733 |
Acknowledgements | 761 |
Index | 859 |
Other editions - View all
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy Ramachandra Guha Limited preview - 2017 |
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy Ramachandra Guha Limited preview - 2008 |