Ramachandra Guha's Blog, page 21

VARIETIES of CENSORSHIP, The Telegraph

In about the year 1985, I was having dinner with two friends in Chungwa Restaurant, off Chittaranjan Avenue in central Kolkata. We had been undergraduates together in Delhi in the 1970s; now, a decade later, we were in our first jobs, I as an academic, the other two as journalists. We spoke, among other things, of our current projects. One of the journalists said he was working on a story about chemical pollution, caused by a plant owned by a large industrial house outside the city. The other...

Ecology and Democracy, The Hindu

The Western Ghats are as important to the ecological and cultural life of the nation as the Himalaya. Running from Maharashtra right down to Kerala, they are a staggeringly rich reservoir of biodiversity. They give rise to many important rivers and are home to many significant places of pilgrimage. Their forests, fields and rivers sustain tens of millions of farmers, herders, fisherfolk, pastoralists, and artisans.

Over the past few decades, however, the ecological integrity of the Western Gha...

ECOLOGY and DEMOCRACY, The Hindu

The Western Ghats are as important to the ecological and cultural life of the nation as the Himalaya. Running from Maharashtra right down to Kerala, they are a staggeringly rich reservoir of biodiversity. They give rise to many important rivers and are home to many significant places of pilgrimage. Their forests, fields and rivers sustain tens of millions of farmers, herders, fisherfolk, pastoralists, and artisans.

Over the past few decades, however, the ecological integrity of the Western Gha...

Dravid The Man, The Telegraph

A year ago, while recovering from an asthmatic attack, I found some profound consolation in the morning's newspaper, whose front page carried a photo of a tall, slim, handsome young man in conversation with a short, plump, middle-aged man of undistinguished appearance. The asymmetry, striking at first glance, was complicated, if not overthrown, by a closer scrutiny of the photograph. For the expression on the young man's face combined respect with reverence, affection with adoration. In...

Dravid The Man, The Telegraph

A year ago, while recovering from an asthmatic attack, I found some profound consolation in the morning’s newspaper, whose front page carried a photo of a tall, slim, handsome young man in conversation with a short, plump, middle-aged man of undistinguished appearance. The asymmetry, striking at first glance, was complicated, if not overthrown, by a closer scrutiny of the photograph. For the expression on the young man’s face combined respect with reverence, affection with adoration. In mater...

Letting Azad Win, Hindustan Times

In the third week of March 1940, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad delivered the Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the Indian National Congress, held that year in Ramgarh in Bihar. Azad here spoke of secularism as India's 'historic destiny', proof of which was in 'our languages, our poetry, our literature, our culture , our dress, our manners and our customs', all of which bore the 'stamp of our joint endeavour' (as Hindus and as Muslims). Azad insisted that 'whether we like it or not, we h...

States of the Nation, The Telegraph

General Elections are all-India affairs, with citizens in twenty-eight states taking part to elect a new Parliament. On the other hand, elections to Legislative Assemblies have a particular resonance for the citizens of the state, or states, going to the polls. Some state elections, however, are of national significance. The first such was the Kerala elections of 1957, when the ruling Congress Party was defeated by the Communist Party of India (CPI). Earlier in the same decade, the...

Moodbidri Tales, Hindustan Times

Although I am not especially religious, I enjoy visiting old temples, for the beauty of their construction and the tranquillity of their surroundings . I live in Bangalore, a city whose colonial architecture is sparse and whose modern buildings are horrendously ugly. When friends come visiting, I take them on a day-trip either to Somanathapura, an exquisite Hoysala temple off the road to Mysore, or Lepakshi, just across the border into Andhra Pradesh, whose stone cobra is one of the jewels...

Three Epiphanies, The Telegraph

Although I live in Bangalore, I am the most technologically challenged person on earth. I can—just about—change a light bulb, but I cannot operate an oven or microwave without burning or blowing up something. For my ineptitude I am a continuous source of merriment to my (in this respect) more talented wife and children. Fortunately, they are also indulgent—coming to my aid when, for example, a file containing a manuscript has to be transferred from hard disc onto CD.

Among the artifacts of...

A Partisan History of the Oxford University Press, Caravan Magazine

In the 1990s, I spent many weeks in what must, or at any rate should be, every Indian's favourite city—Bombay, a city whose depth of history and richly lived (and intensely felt) cosmopolitanism is in such stark contrast to the even-tempered blandness of my own home town, Bangalore. I would go there twice a year, in February and November, and book myself into a room in the Cricket Club of India. Every morning, I would walk across the Oval, dodging joggers and the odd flying cricket ball, and ...