Ramachandra Guha – Brown Pundits

For Gandhiji

Indosaurus — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 22:05:16 +0000

I never thought I would be writing in defence of Gandhi. For a long time in college I viewed him as Indiana Jones in The Raiders of the Lost Ark – we were shown a great story and he was the main character, but the end result would have been exactly the same without him. India would have gained independence as the Empire divested itself.

Except of course, he decided who was in charge, set the tone for independent India, inspired various other freedom/rights struggles and maybe the British would not have released the rest of the empire without India going first. They didn’t let go of Malaysia till 57, Rhodesia till 64, HK until the lease was up, and they still cling on to the Falkland islands. Not forgetting the resulting apartheid regimes in Zimbabwe & SA.

The Hindu right wing has always been upset with Gandhi, this is unsurprising and the political drift has worsened over time with the Congress squatting squarely on Gandhi’s legacy. Yet, happily, no harsh moves have been made over the BJP decade to degrade his stature, or any public space erasure.

Instead what is new, is the attacks from the liberal left. Cancel culture loves skewering cultural heroes out of time and context. They are constantly rewarded on social media for it.

I came across this article on substack – Gandhi was a creep. It is time we stop pretending otherwise and saw all the cheering, the love, the clapping by so many liberal leaning Indians. The Guardian does it too quoting from Ramachandra Guha.

Except they both lack context. And so I clipped on my keyboard and rode out to defend the strangest and hard to defend thing Gandhi did. I do feel it deserves some discussion though, not merely one sided cheering (or defence). Let the readers of BP hold court.

https://indosaurus.substack.com/p/in-defence-of-gandhis-creepiness

India After Gandhi: $1.99 Kindle Deal

Razib Khan — Sun, 21 Jul 2019 09:21:00 +0000

I know many people are critical of Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (e.g., my friend Reihan Salam is not a big fan), but Amazon is running a Kindle Deal on it (at least in the USA). So it’s $1.99 currently.

The original book was published in the 2000s, but this is a “revised and updated” version. So I assume it has a bit more on the last 20 years. Whatever you think about it, it is probably worth reading at some point.

What to read if you don’t want to read Guha

Razib Khan — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 04:17:39 +0000

In the podcast with Kushal Mehra he made an offhand comment that it was strange that conservative American intellectual Ben Shapiro was reading India After Gandhi to understand his country. Mehra’s confusion is simply that Shapiro is on the Right, but he is reading from the perspective of Indian Left to understand India. Though probably hyperbolic, perhaps it would be like a Hindu nationalist reading Howard Zinn’s A Peoples History of the United States to understand America.

I know there are issues India After Gandhi. My friend Reihan Salam thought that Amardeep Singh was entirely too uncritical when he blogged the book many years ago. Since I have no read the book I will not hazard to offer an opinion.

But, the question then remains: what books on Indian history should an American read to offer up some balance? This is a live issue, as an American conservative friend was himself considering reading India After Gandhi before being taken aback by Mehra’s comment about Shapiro and his reading habits.

Please leave book recommendations!

Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition

Razib Khan — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 07:21:30 +0000

I recently read John Keay’s Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition. Like his earlier books on the history of India and China, this is a work written by a journalist, not an area specialist (though Keay seems to take a particular interest in South Asia judging by his oeuvre).

To be frank I’m not sure if I learned that much…and I don’t know much about South Asian history after 1945. But, it reaffirmed my intuitions that some of the ideologues who bandy extremely high casualty rates are doing a disservice to the real tragedies that have marred the subcontinent over the past century.

In any case, I do recommend this book to the 50% of the readers of this weblog who are not South Asian.

Note: I don’t have the time or interest to read Guha’s India After Gandhi. Also, my friend Reihan Salam has indicated to me it’s a more tendentious work than most are willing to admit.

The neo-Marxist historians of India

Brown Pundits Archive — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 19:46:00 +0000

…..my first academic
job at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata…..a friend sent me a petition on the plight of Tamils….he hoped
some of my colleagues would sign……a senior
historian said: “As Marxists, the question
you and I should be asking is whether taking up ethnic issues would
deviate attention from the ongoing class struggle in Sri Lanka”….
…..
The times they are a changing. Yes, top scholars such as Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Tirthankar Roy hail from a (mostly) Marxist (also super-caste) background. But as Ramchandra Guha explains, their scholarship is rigorous and their viewpoint is post-ideological. Most importantly, they make history reading enjoyable.

What is of great interest is Guha’s reflections on the social science studies community (and its evolution) in India. The pre-eminence of Marxists (liberal muslims amongst them) was due to political patronage from the Congress. Now that the Saffron Parivar plans to get in the history (re-)writing business, our suggestion (plea) will be to encourage strong scholarship (even if the lens used is a different one). Weak ideologues will end up embarrassing the ideology. What then?
……
In October 1984, I got my first academic
job at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Kolkata (then
Calcutta). A week after I joined, a friend from Chennai (then Madras)
sent me a petition on the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, which he hoped
some of my colleagues would sign. The first person I asked was a senior
historian of Northeast India, whose work I knew but with whom I had not
yet spoken. He read the petition, and said: “As Marxists, the question
you and I should be asking is whether taking up ethnic issues would
deviate attention from the ongoing class struggle in Sri Lanka.”

My colleague
was known to be a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Yet
I was struck by the way in which he took it for granted that I must be a
party man too. Although this was our first meeting, he immediately
assumed that any new entrant to the Centre must, like him and almost all
the other members of the faculty, be a Marxist as well.

In the
1980s, Marxism occupied a dominant place in the best institutes of
historical research in India. There were three reasons for this. One was
intellectual, the fact that Marxism had challenged the conventional
emphasis on kings, empires and wars by writing well-researched histories
of peasants and workers instead. Indian history-writing was shaped by
British exemplars, among them such great names as E.P. Thompson and Eric
Hobsbawm, Marxist pioneers of what was known as ‘history from below’.

The second
reason for Marxism’s pre-eminence was ideological. In the 1960s and
1970s, anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa were led by Communist
parties. Figures such as Ho Chi Minh and Samora Machel were icons in
India (as in much of the Third World). These fighters for national
freedom were supported by Soviet Russia and Communist China, but opposed
by the United States of America and the capitalist world more
generally. To be a Marxist while the Cold War raged, therefore, was to
be seen as identifying with poor and oppressed people everywhere.

The third
reason why there were so many Marxist historians in India was that they
had access to State patronage. In 1969, the Congress split, and was
reduced to a minority in the Lok Sabha. To continue in office, Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi sought, and got, the support of MPs of the
Communist Party of India. At the same time, several former Communists
joined the Congress and were rewarded with cabinet positions. Now the
ruling party began leaning strongly to the left in economic policy — as
in the nationalization of banks, mines and oil companies —and in foreign
policy, as in India’s ‘Treaty of Friendship’ with the Soviet Union.

In 1969,
before the Congress and Mrs Gandhi had turned so sharply to the left,
the government of India had established the Indian Council of Social
Science Research. The ICSSR was meant to promote research on the
profound social and economic transformations taking place in the
country. The Council funded some first-rate institutions, such as the
Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, the Gokhale Institute of Politics
and Economics in Pune, and the Centre for Development Studies in
Trivandrum.

History is
both a social science and a branch of literature. In theory, historical
research should also have been within the ICSSR’s brief. However, in
1972, the government established an Indian Council of Historical
Research instead. The education minister at the time, Nurul Hasan, was
himself a historian. Those who promoted and ran the ICHR were, in
personal terms, close to Professor Hasan. In ideological terms, they
were Marxists or fellow-travellers.

The two men
responsible for establishing the ICSSR were the economist, D.R. Gadgil,
and the educationist, J.P. Naik. Both were outstanding scholars, but
neither was a Marxist. They were true liberals who promoted high-quality
research regardless of ideology or personal connections. The ICHR, on
the other hand, was from the beginning dominated by left-wing historians
who favoured themselves and their friends in the distribution of funds
for research, travel, and translation.

The control
of Marxists over the ICHR weakened slightly in the 1980s, but was then
re-established when Arjun Singh became education minister in 1991. He
was persuaded that the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign could best be opposed by
the State sponsoring ‘secular’ and ‘scientific’ history. Marxist
historians flocked to his call, accepting projects and appointments
within the minister’s favour.

In 1998, the
Bharatiya Janata Party came to power. The new education minister, Murli
Manohar Joshi, was an ideologist of the right rather than left. Under
him, the ICHR was handed over to academics charged with, among other
things, diminishing the contributions of socialists to the freedom
movement and discovering the origins of the river Saraswati.

In courting Marxist historians, Arjun Singh took inspiration from Nurul Hasan. In promoting Hindutva
scholars, the current HRD minister is following in the tracks of M.M.
Joshi. Hence the recent appointment of Y. Sudershan Rao as chairman of
the ICHR.

I had never heard of Professor Rao before, and, nor, it
appears, have most other historians. Since he belongs to Andhra Pradesh,
I asked some historians in that state what they knew. They described
Professor Rao as a “non-descript scholar who does not have any academic
or intellectual pretensions”, but was known to be close to the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh. They added that despite his ideological bias and
lack of scholarly distinction, he was an amiable and friendly man.

His personal
charm notwithstanding, Professor Rao has not published a major book,
nor a single scholarly essay in a professional journal. However, he has
made known his belief in the essential goodness of the caste system, and
the essential historicity of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat. These may be among the reasons why he has been appointed chairman of the ICHR.

The Marxists
who once ran the ICHR were partisan and nepotistic, but also
professionally competent. The thought of Karl Marx — as distinct from
the practice of Communist parties — provides a distinct analytical
framework for understanding how human societies change and evolve. This
privileges the role of technology and of social conflict between
economic classes. Marxist historiography is a legitimate model of
intellectual enquiry, albeit one which — with its insistence on
materialist explanations — is of limited use when examining the role of
culture and ideas, the influence of nature and natural processes, and
the exercise of power and authority.

A
sophisticated intellectual culture should have room for able right-wing
scholars too. In the US, conservative historians such as Niall Ferguson
are both credible and prominent. Their work celebrates the stabilizing
role of family and community, and argues that technological dynamism and
respect for individual rights are not evenly distributed across
cultures. And where Marxist historians chastise capitalists for
exploiting workers, right-wing historians celebrate them for creating
jobs and generating wealth.

Why are there no Indian equivalents of Niall Ferguson? This is because the right-wing here is identified with Hindutva,
a belief system which privileges myth and dogma over research and
analysis. And no serious historian can be expected to assume a priori
that Ram was a real character, that Hindus are the true and original
inhabitants of India, that Muslims and Christians are foreigners, and
that all that the British did in India was necessarily evil.

Contrary to
what is sometimes claimed in the press, there are many fine historians
in India. From my own generation of scholars, I can strongly recommend —
to student and lay reader alike — the work of Upinder Singh on ancient
India, of Nayanjot Lahiri on the history of archaeology, of Vijaya
Ramaswamy on the bhakti movement, of Sanjay Subrahmanyam on the
early history of European expansion, of Chetan Singh on the decline of
the Mughal State, of Sumit Guha on the social history of Western India,
of Seema Alavi on the social history of medicine, of Niraja Gopal Jayal
on the history of citizenship, of Tirthankar Roy on the economic
consequences of colonialism, of Mahesh Rangarajan on the history of
forests and wildlife, and of A.R. Venkatachalapathy on South Indian
cultural history.

The scholars
named in the preceding paragraph have all written excellent books, on
different themes and periods, in different stylistic registers.They have
all read Karl Marx and digested his ideas. At the same time, they are
not limited or constrained by his approach.They have been inspired by
other thinkers, other models, in their reconstructions of human life and
social behaviour.

Like their
counterparts outside India, these scholars bring to the writing of
history both primary research and the analytical insights of cognate
disciplines such as anthropology, political theory, and linguistics.
Their personal or political ideology is secondary (if not irrelevant) to
their work, whose robustness rests rather on depth of research and
subtlety of argument.

In the 42
years since the ICHR was founded, the historical profession has moved
on. The economic and technological determinism of Marxism, once so
appealing, has been found wanting in pushing the frontiers of research.
If the HRD minister wanted a professional, non-partisan (and
non-Marxist) scholar to head the ICHR, she had a wide field to choose
from. But it appears that the minister wanted not a capable or respected
historian, but a captive ideologue. And she has got one.

……

Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/

…..

regards

“experiment of developing India ….has failed”

Brown Pundits Archive — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 19:52:00 +0000

Deeply enchanted with Mao and completely disenchanted with Nehru (and his successors), Neville Maxwell made the following predictions.

Ramchandra Guha looks at how well the verdicts have held up over time.

IN the first weeks of 1967, the Times of London carried a series
of articles on “India’s Disintegrating Democracy”. Written by their
Delhi correspondent, Neville Maxwell, these assessed the upcoming
General Elections, the fourth held since Independence, and the first
since Jawaharlal Nehru’s death.

…

The articles were deeply pessimistic
about the prospect for democracy in India. As Maxwell wrote, “famine is
threatening, the administration is strained and universally believed to
be corrupt, the government and the governing party have lost public
confidence and belief in themselves as well”. These various crises had
created an “emotional readiness for the rejection of Parliamentary
democracy”. The “politically sophisticated Indians” whom Maxwell spoke
to expressed “a deep sense of defeat, an alarmed awareness that the
future is not only dark but profoundly uncertain”.

Maxwell’s own view was that “the crisis is upon India — he could spy
`the already fraying fabric of the nation itself”, with the states
“already beginning to act like sub-nations”. His conclusion was
unequivocal: that while Indians would soon vote in “the fourth — and
surely last — general election”, “the great experiment of developing
India within a democratic framework has failed”.

The imminent collapse of democracy in India, thought Maxwell, would
provoke a frantic search for “an alternative antidote for the society’s
troubles”.

Three options presented themselves.

The first was represented
by the Jan Sangh (forerunner of today’s Bharatiya Janata Party). This
would play the Hindu card but fail, since it was as corrupt and
faction-ridden as the other parties, and because the South would reject
its over-zealous promotion of the Hindi language.

The second possibility
was an army coup, but this too “seems out of the question in India”
because of the complex federal system. To succeed, there would have to
be 17 simultaneous coups in the States, as well as one in the centre.

While a straightforward coup was unlikely, Maxwell thought that the army
would nonetheless come to rule India through indirect means. As he
predicted, “in India, as present trends continue, within the
ever-closing vice of food and population, maintenance of an ordered
structure of society is going to slip out of reach of an ordered
structure of civil government and the army will be the only alternative source of authority and order. That it will be drawn into a civil role seems inevitable, the only doubt is how?”

Maxwell answered his query by suggesting that “a mounting tide of public
disorder, fed perhaps by pockets of famine”, would lead to calls for a
strengthening of the office of the President. The Rashtrapathi would be
asked to literally act as the Father of the Nation, “to assert a
stabilizing authority over the centre and the country”. Backing him
would be the army, which would come to exercise “more and more civil
authority”. In this scenario, the President would become “either the
actual source of political authority, or a figure-head for a group
composed possibly of army officers and a few politicians … “.

Forty years down the road, we can perhaps say that Maxwell’s predictions
have been fulfilled in part, modest part. The BJP has been shown to be
as corrupt and faction-ridden as (say) the Congress, the army has been
called in more often to quell civil disorder, and the President is no
longer a complete figure-head. Yet his (Maxwell’s) extreme scepticism
about parliamentary democracy, his announcement of its imminent demise,
has turned out to be very mistaken indeed.

Rather than use the benefit of hindsight, let us contrast to Maxwell’s
gloominess a more upbeat contemporary estimate. This was provided by an
anonymous correspondent of another British journal, The Guardian. His assessment of that election campaign of 1967 began by mentioning
how “the Delhi correspondent of a British newspaper whose thundering
misjudgments in foreign affairs have become a byword has expressed the
view that Indian democracy is disintegrating”.

Then he added: “My own view after three weeks traveling round the country and talking to all and sundry, is that Indian democracy is now for the first time coming fully alive”.

regards