Ramachandra Guha — India After Gandhi, Pts. I to III

For all sorts of reasons wholly to do with the state of the State of India today, I’ve felt compelled to immerse myself in the history of India and the story of what it means to be Indian. The most popular and exhaustive history of post-independence India is Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi, a book that’s graced several of my bookshelves from college to today; it’s been a hardbound book, a paperback, an audiobook, and finally a Kindle book. I’ve attempted it in each of its roops, before my now successful undertaking reading it on the Kindle app of my mobile phone. Perhaps it’s an indictment of the digital age, perhaps it’s a sign that we will be resilient to it, but I’ve sat entranced as I’ve scrolled through the first 20 years of India’s post-Independence history, from India’s tryst with destiny to its second war with Pakistan in 1965. No doubt many educated Indians reading this would have encountered this book, perhaps on your own bookshelves, perhaps on the bookshelves of others. Many might have read it (some as I had earlier, through casually flips of chunks of pages). Most would have heard great praise. After reading the first three of its five parts, I can assure you that the praise is well-deserved. 

I intend on explaining why I feel this is true once I’m through with the book in its entirety, but I will give you the top five things I have found most enlightening. First, the roles of Nehru, Ambedkar, Patel, and others, often collinear, often conflicting. Second, the ambitions of the drafters of India’s Constitution when it came to the treatment of its many minorities and the realities on the ground, and how these two were often at odds. Third, India’s differences with its neighbour Pakistan, in ethos, in governance, and ultimately militarily. Fourth, the challenges that came with the signing of the Instruments of Accession by the several princely states, but most importantly, Kashmir. Fifth, India’s place in the world as its most populous democracy. The book contains several more fascinating insights into things that were glossed over by the history textbooks of my youth, particularly re. how consensus was reached on issues that many in my generation just assume were always part of the Indian social contract. But to delve into those would be to summarise the book on the whole, a task I’d be better placed to do once I’m done with it. 

Until then, if you want to read the book, as I believe anyone interested in this country’s history should, here’s where to find it.