Ramachandra Guha's Blog, page 18

No Game for Good Men, The Telegraph

I detest wearing a tie, and do so only when forced. One such occasion was a formal dinner at All Souls College, Oxford, where opposite me was an Israeli scholar who had just got a job at the University, and was extremely anxious to show how well he knew its ways and mores. He dropped some names, and spoke of his familiarity with the manuscripts collection at ‘Bodley’ (the Bodleian Library). In between his boasts he kept scrutinizing my tie. Then, when he could contain his curiosity no more, h...

The Continuing Tragedy of the Adivasis, The Hindu

In the summer of 2006, I had a long conversation with Mahendra Karma, the Chhattisgarh Congress leader who was killed in a terror attack by the Naxalites last week. I was not alone—with me were five other members of a citizens’ group studying the tragic fallout of the civil war in the state’s Dantewada district. This war pitted the Naxalites on the one side against a vigilante army promoted by Mr Karma on the other. In a strange, not to say bizarre, example of bipartisan co-operation, the vig...

The Continuing Tragedy of the Adivasi’s, The Hindu

In the summer of 2006, I had a long conversation with Mahendra Karma, the Chhattisgarh Congress leader who was killed in a terror attack by the Naxalites last week. I was not alone—with me were five other members of a citizens’ group studying the tragic fallout of the civil war in the state’s Dantewada district. This war pitted the Naxalites on the one side against a vigilante army promoted by Mr Karma on the other. In a strange, not to say bizarre, example of bipartisan co-operation, the vig...

Democracy and Violence: in India and Beyond, Economic and Political Weekly

In about a year’s time, the citizens of India will vote in their sixteenth General Elections. The last such exercise, held in May 2009, showcased a bewildering variety of parties and politicians. Some 700 million adults were eligible to vote; about 400 million actually voted, to choose five hundred and forty-three members of the national Parliament. The Republic of India also has twenty-eight states, in which elections are likewise held on a five-year cycle. Altogether, many more Indians have...

The Miracles of Mao, The Telegraph

Marxism claims to offer a materialist approach to history, where class relations and the forces of technology are given more importance than the doings of individuals. In practice, however, political regimes based on professedly Marxist principles have indulged in an unprecedented worship of their leaders. Communist parties the world over brook no criticism of the Holy Trinity of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. No Prime Minister or President of a bourgeois democracy has ever experienced the slavish...

Patriarchy & Prejudice, The Telegraph

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

Joseph Conrad

India’s two main religions, Hinduism and Islam, are both deeply patriarchal. Their scriptures and their historical practice have relegated women to an inferior status. Women were not allowed to assume positions of power and authority. Women were denied the right to follow the profession of their choice. Men could choose to have several wives at once, but women had to be content with a si...

The Man Who Would Rule India, The Hindu

A journalist who recently interviewed Narendra Modi reported their conversation as follows: ‘Gujarat, he told me, merely has a seafront. It has no raw materials—no iron ore for steel, no coal for power and no diamond mines. Yet it has made huge strides in these fields. Imagine, he added, if we had the natural resources of an Assam, a Jharkhand and a West Bengal: “I would have changed the face of India.”‘(see The Telegraph, 18th January 2013).

This conversation (and that claim) underlines much...

The Nervous Soldier, The Telegraph

Rahul Gandhi’s elevation to the Vice-Presidentship of the Congress, and the possibility that he might become Prime Minister were his party to form a government after the next General Elections, prompts a careful look at his record in politics. Consider these facts:

1. Mr Gandhi has been a Member of the Lok Sabha for almost nine years now. In that time, of every ten days Parliament has been in session he has attended only four. In almost two full terms as M. P., he has asked four or five questi...

A Tendulkar Trophy, The Telegraph

Following the well-attended (and incident-free) one-day series between India and Pakistan—the first since the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008—the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Zaka Ashraf, suggested that the two countries play each other regularly, for what might be called the ‘Jinnah-Gandhi’ Trophy. Reading this, I remembered a similar proposal being made, decades ago, in the pages of the Dawn newspaper. I dug out my notes, and this is what I found:

In 1955, an Indian team le...

Parliament and Patriarchy, The Hindu

The Hindu ends its moving front-page editorial on Sunday with this pointed and very pertinent plea: ‘The Congress and the Opposition should forget about playing to the gallery. If they are serious about the rights of women, they should quickly pass the Women’s Reservation Bill. Let the presence of at least 181 female MPs in the next Lok Sabha—and the political mobilisation of women this will slowly catalyze—be Parliament’s way of honouring the death of this Unknown Citizen’.

Although widely us...