Book Review - "India After Gandhi" by Ramachandra Guha

I have been an admirer of Ramachandra Guha since some time. I have been a regular reader of his columns in the Hindu and also read his Cricket Anthology and his Wickets in the East/ Spin and other Turns. His "Corner of a Foreign Field" has also been critically received, though i never got round to read it.

India After Gandhi is Ram Guha's first history book, though he has written some other books in the niche of environmental history (available as a compendium in Oxford paperback).

The book covers Indian history from around the time of Independence till date. Most history we are taught in schools ends at around Independence which is a bit of travesty but we can't expect it to change soon as the post-independence history is too controversial to have a uniformly accepted version of the truth. The syllabus will have to keep changing whenever the Congress and BJP come to power after the other.

India After Gandhi is an impressive achievement offering the un-initiated a snapshot of Indian history over the past 60 years. It is nearly 800 pages long and 900 including the bibliography. So it is not a lie-down-in-bed read, unless you want to sprain your wrist (as Vikram Seth once famously put it). However, it is a surprisingly fast read, an easy read (did not have to reach for the dictionary even once) and quite compelling.

I use the word un-initiated above with discretion. At the risk of sounding immodest, I already knew most of what was written. That is where my problem with the book lies (actually the problem might be with me rather than the book). Any decently well read Indian might also feel the same. There are few instances in the book where I wanted to know what would happen in the following page. Apart from a few instances like the Naga conflict, resettlement of refugees post-independence, influence of PN Haksar on Indira Gandhi etc. i find it difficult to come up with things i am not aware of. To be fair, even Guha acknowledges it in his prologue that recent history will have people already aware and judgemental. But still, in an 800 pages book there are significant areas which could have been covered that had evaded the lay reader.

Another issue of mine is the treatment of the Nehru legacy. Ram Guha comes across as a Nehruvian. I have no issues with that, he is entitled to his view. I can forgive Nehru's economic policies (that was the mood of the times as Guha makes it a point to prove), his indecisive foreign policies (non-alignment, Chinese debacle), sticking with friends for too long (Krishna Menon) to the point of sidelining legends like Rajaji, Kripalani etc. What i can't forgive is his bringing Indira Gandhi into the party and actively promoting her. She was already General Secretary at the time of his death, so it is not like his Congress sycophants foisted her on to us after Nehru’s death. When so many able candidates were available like Morarji Desai, Jagjivan Ram, Kamaraj - Ram Guha never even discusses why Nehru had to promote Indira over others. What was Nehru's state of mind, what compelled him to do this could have been actively explored. This is the legacy that Nehru leaves - a dynastic cult which has never left us. To give credit where due, Nehru can be considered to the torchbearer for India's secularism which makes me proud every moment. I also admire his persistence in changing the Hindu civic code by amendments to the Marriage and Divorce Act and the Inheritance Act. But the family legacy that he started rankles.

Guha is also a bit flippant over one of the most important reasons for the Indian democratic decline - corruption. He doesn't even mention the Nagarwala scam under Indira Gandhi, the death of LN Mishra (who was supposed to have been the extortion agent cum revenue collector of Indira Gandhi) receives a brief comment. However what is surprising is how he almost swept the Bofors story under the carpet. It WAS the biggest story in the press in the 80s and for me personally, it was the almost like my first awakening of political consciousness. The anti-Sikh riots after Indira Gandhi's death do not get the opprobrium they deserve. I can't imagine the response of rights activists if the same actions were carried out by the saffron brigade. But here it was a liberal, secular party which did these things. This leaves writers perplexed.

In a nutshell this book is a celebration of democracy - just like we have many books and columns today that are a celebration of our economic strength. But just like these business books which ignore the dark side, India after Gandhi too does not delve much into the democratic rut. Some of the questions which are relevant here and needed some discussion:

· Why has debate frequently come around to a trade off between growth and democracy? To the un-initiated again, even Pakistan is growing at 7-8% per annum.

· Is democracy a rich man's need (who does not vote) but a luxury for the deprived (who actually vote)?

· Continuing with the earlier question, especially in the light of the success of other non democratic regimes like Singapore, China, is democracy as defined by Western political scientists and political philosophers a universal necessity or only an option?

· Freedom of speech is a crucial pillar of democracy - however countries like China (and even Iran) and Russia have created very successful pieces of architecture, movies, literature than countries like India? Don't get me started on Russian oligarchs, India beats them hands down.

· Was Nehru's marrying socialist economic thought with democratic politics a losing combination? Socialism economies, it is suggested, work better (if they do) where the lack of incentive for citizens (due to absence of property rights) is compensated by the whip hand of an autocratic leader. Did India choose the worst of both worlds?

· Why did liberal parties like the Swatantra party never reach the masses? Was it lack of charismatic leadership or is it because liberal polemic is always weaker than the left or the right, especially in a deprived nation?

I would have loved to read about these issues in the book and not just a chest-beating exercise on Indian democracy and secularism.

History is not only about facts, it is also about insights which is a bit lacking in the book. This is compounded in the book by the frequency with which Guha uses quotes from earlier books or manuscripts, though amply cited in the bibliography. Guha has a distinctive voice which is somehow lost within this profusion of quotes.

I might have been a bit harsh, probably some of the above points are better discussed in a political science book and not a history book. India after Gandhi, with its limitations, will continue to be a pioneering work in the field of post-Independence Indian history.