Ramachandra Guha's Blog, page 3

In Praise of Desmond Tutu, The Telegraph

I have been thinking a great deal about South Africa these past few weeks, in part because of the Test series being played there, but mostly because of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with whose passing the last of the great stalwarts of the anti-apartheid struggle has left the stage. Although best known for the work he did in South Africa, he commanded respect even when he spoke about injustice and oppression in countries that were not his own. He perhaps came closer to being the world’s conscience th...

The Mahatma’s Words, The Telegraph

One of the most remarkable individuals I have known was K. Swaminathan, a professor of literature from Madras who went on to become Chief Editor of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. Swaminathan was born in the town of Pudukkotai on 3rd December 1896. When his centenary was observed in 1996, I wrote a biographical profile of him in The Hindu (published in expanded form in my book An Anthropologist among the Marxists and Other Essays). Now, a quarter-of-a-century later, I shall use the occas...

For a Free Press: The Legacy of B G Horniman, The Telegraph

When, in 1995, Bombay was renamed Mumbai, it led to a spurt of such renamings of buildings, streets, parks, and railway stations in the city. However, a few dead foreigners were spared the fate of being consigned to the dustbin of history. Among them were Annie Besant, after whom a major thoroughfare in central Mumbai is still named; and B. G. Horniman, whose name yet adorns a charming tree-laden park surrounded by grand old buildings in the south of the city.

I suspect that, in Mumbai as well a...

The Sardar of the Kisans, The Telegraph

In 1931, the annual meeting of the Indian National Congress was held in the port city of Karachi. Vallabhbhai Patel was elected President. Early in his address, Patel remarked: ‘You have called a simple farmer to the highest office to which any Indian can aspire. I am conscious that your choice of me as first servant is not so much for what little I might have done, but it is the recognition of the amazing sacrifice made by Gujarat. Out of your generosity you have singled out Gujarat for that ho...

The Exemplary Indian, The Telegraph

Perhaps because my own life has largely been devoted to the pursuit of personal success, I have always felt a guilty veneration for those who live for others. The public servant I most admired died on Sunday the 5th of September, aged sixty-six. In these times this may seem too early to go (particularly as he was not a victim of Covid-19), and he had contributions to make to society and scholarship yet. But given all that he did, and the manner of its doing, I wish not to mourn his premature pas...

Memories of 1971, The Telegraph

The city outside India I know best is London, and the place in London I know best is the British Library, where, for thirty years and counting, I have scoured the capacious collections pertaining to the history of colonial India. I must have worked there for at least a thousand days all told, always following the same routine, which is to deposit my belongings in a locker in the basement before showing my membership card and proceeding to the reading room four floors above, to consult the record...

The Greatest Gandhian, The Telegraph

Like all other Indians, I grew up thinking of 15th August as the day when, back in 1947, the first Government of independent India was sworn into office. However, in recent years the day has acquired for me another meaning, not unrelated to the first. In my consciousness, 15th August 1947 has been joined by 15th August 1942, which is the day that Mahadev Desai died in prison. Without his contributions, India might never have become free of British rule at all, and yet this great patriot and free...

Taking the South Seriously, The Telegraph

I have recently been revisiting Walter Crocker’s 1966 book, Nehru: A Contemporary’s Estimate. This book remains the best single-volume study of the life and legacy of India’s first prime minister, and it says many interesting things about Nehru’s country too. Consider these remarks about the part of India I myself live in: “South India has counted for too little in the Indian Republic. This is a waste for India as well as an unfairness to south India, because the south has a superiority in certa...

The Bookseller of Bangalore, Scroll.in

Shortly before T. S. Shanbhag shuttered his Premier Bookshop in 2009, Asha Ghosh and Kathleen Dargis made a short film about him (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLxYu...). The film was dedicated to the photographer Raghav Shreyas, who died tragically young, and was a habitué of the store. It features, among other things, a lovely cameo of the owner of Premier Bookshop meeting the owner of Koshy’s Parade Café, which lay just a hundred yards away, and where Shanbhag often had a coffee before o...

The Opening and Closing of the Hindu Mind, The Telegraph

“What am I? Asiatic, European, or American? I feel a curious medley of personalities in me.”
— Swami Vivekananda

In 1873, the social reformer, Jyotirao Phule, published a searing critique of the caste system. Entitled Gulamgiri, the book was written in Marathi, yet it carried a dedication in English. This expressed the author’s admiration for “the good people of the United States” for their “sublime, disinterested and self-sacrificing devotion” to the abolition of slavery. Phule hoped that the p...