Ramachandra Guha's Blog, page 12

A Green and Pleasant Land, The Telegraph

Some twenty years ago, my wife and I called on Nirad Chaudhuri at his home in Oxford. The great little writer was happy to see us, but less pleased with my wife’s apparel. ‘That [chooridar kurta] is an Islamic dress’, he barked, ‘in Bengal we [Hindu men] would never allow our women to wear it’.

I was reminded of that remark when, earlier this month, I made my first visit to Bangladesh. For the Muslim women I saw or spoke to mostly wore saris, whether writers and scholars in Dhaka, or peasant...

Why Gandhi Would Have Been Appalled By The “Gandhi-Mandela Trophy”, The Telegraph

India and South Africa have just concluded a five match one-day series for the ‘Gandhi-Mandela Trophy’. Next week, they will commence the first of four Tests for a trophy carrying the same name.

When, back in August, this new trophy was announced, a friend said it was a case of small men wishing to look less small by associating themselves with two great, iconic, leaders. The sarcasm was justified; for in terms of character and credibility the sporting administrators of India and South Afric...

A 19th Century Politics For a 21st Century State, Hindustan Times

Some years ago, I edited an anthology of Indian political thought, profiling nineteen individual thinkers. The usual suspects—Gokhale, Tilak, Phule, Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Lohia, JP, Periyar—featured, but also some less conventional choices. One of these was Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh between 1940 and 1973.

My inclusion of Golwalkar in an book on Indian thinkers angered among some intellectuals on the Left. I had omitted to include an India...

The Dark and Desperate State of Uttar Pradesh, Hindustan Times

A recent report in the Financial Times, caught my eye. Headlined ‘India advert for tea boys and guards attracts 2.3m applicants’, it spoke of the desperate desire for a government job among the young men of India’s largest state.

Earlier this year, the Uttar Pradesh Government had placed an advertisement for 368 Class IV posts of peons. A staggering 2.32 million applied for these jobs. As many of 255 of the applicans had Ph D’s, some in supposedly marketable subjects such as engineering. More...

The Enduring Charm Of Independent Bookstores, Hindustan Times

For many years now, I have spent much of my time, and most of my money, on books bought in stores owned by individuals rather than corporations. Within India, I had four favourite bookstores; Premier’s in Bangalore, Fact & Fiction in Delhi, Ram Advani in Lucknow, and Giggles in Chennai.

The store I knew best was Premier’s, run by T. S. Shanbhag off Church Street, in the heart of the city. Shanbhag was a book lover’s delight; he knew his customers and their tastes so well that one would be gen...

Why Canada May Be The World’s Most Underrated Country, Hindustan Times

The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. This is why every Presidential campaign attracts such wide attention, both the primaries of the two main parties and then the election itself.

The campaign for the 2016 election is in its early stages. A candidate who has made a striking impression is the Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is making surprising progress in the Democratic primary. Sanders is 74, and thus the oldest person in the race (on either side)....

Why Kashmiris Are Disenchanted With India, The Telegraph

On a notice board outside the library of the University of Kashmir, someone had posted a piece of paper with these words, set in bold and large type: WHY NOT AN IIT, IIM, OR AIIMS FOR KASHMIR TOO? Above this query was a line, written in hand, saying: ‘All we want is Azadi’. Below it was another handwritten comment, which read: ‘Because we are not part of India’.

Let me gloss these three comments. Among young Kashmiris especially, the sentiment of azadi, or independence, is strong, although th...

Why I’m Not Nostalgic For An Undivided India, Hindustan Times

Sixty-eight years is a fairly advanced age for an individual, but a small span of time in the life of a nation. This must be why, every so often, a book or article appears lamenting the Partition of India in 1947. These blame the Congress, the Muslim League, Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Patel—sometimes one, sometimes several, sometimes all of the above—for not doing enough to keep India together, or for actively aiding in its division. These books and articles then feed into what appears to be a wi...

An Opposition to Despair Of, The Telegraph

I spent the last week of July in New Delhi, my first extended trip to that city since the General Elections of 2014. It was a year and two months since the Modi Government had come to power, and signs of disenchantment had set in. Scholars, executives, restaurant waiters, and security personnel all made sarcastic remarks about the Prime Minister and his Government. Some flagged Modi’s love of foreign travel, others spoke of the gap between promises made and delivery on the ground. Even long-t...

The Only Lesson That History Can Teach Us, Hindustan Times

I am sometimes asked about the ‘lessons’ that history can teach us. The question presumes that the study of the past can help provide guidance for the present—and future. But is this presumption accurate? Can politicians exercise power more wisely if they are better informed about the past?

The brilliant, maverick, historian A.J.P. Taylor was sceptical that they could. He once said about a certain French Emperor that ‘he was what I often think is a dangerous thing for a statesman to be — a st...