[Assam] Book review : India After Gandhi- Bengal democracy

Tue Sep 25 23:52:39 CDT 2007

Rajen-da

Good example of India-Shining rhetoric. 
But just becos there is peace (despite armed militancy in 25% of India's districts- NE, Kashmir, Bihar, Central India, LTTE South India etc etc) and not many are dying of starvation and voting not by reading election manifestos but by recognizing cartoons (election symbols) of political parties . 

Even democratically elected communist govt (an anamoly) of West Bengal is allegedly  in power for past 25 years non-stop since  a  nexus  prevents  anyone  from voting against the "party"  or   else face ex-communication a-la erstwhile Pope's rule in Europe in medieval times -as per a Bengali researcher .

But ofcourse noone can deny that despite is shortcomings the India that is Bharat is growing  - despite spoofs like Hollywood's "Borat" movie (Bharat ??) from Kazakhstan (Rajasthan???)

Umesh

Rajen & Ajanta Barua <barua25 at hotmail.com> wrote:       Following may be added from another review about the book:

 India is the country that was never expected to ever be  a country. In the late 19th century, Sir John Strachey, a senior British  official, grandly opined that the territory's diverse states simply could not  possess any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious. Strachey,  clearly, was wrong: India today is a unified entity and a rising global power.  Even so, it continues to defy explanation. India's existence, says Guha, an  internationally known scholar (Environmentalism: A Global History), has  also been an anomaly for academic political science, according to whose axioms  cultural heterogeneity and poverty do not make a nation, still less a democratic  one. Yet India continues to exist. Guha's aim in this startlingly ambitious  political, cultural and social survey is to explain why and how. He cheerfully  concludes that India's continuing existence results from its unique diversity  and its refusal to be pigeonholed into such conventional political
 models as  Anglo-American liberalism, French republicanism, atheistic communism or Islamist  theocracy. India is proudly sui generis, and with August 15, 2007, being the  60th anniversary of Indian independence, Guha's magisterial history of India  since that day comes not a moment too soon. 32 pages of b&w illus., 8  maps.  
    ----- Original Message ----- 
   From:    Rajen &    Ajanta Barua 
   To: assam at assamnet.org 
   Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 10:42    PM
   Subject: [Assam] Book review : India    After Gandhi

         Good review of a grand 900    page book on India recently published:

   India    After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy by    Ramachandra Guha  

>From The Washington Post's Book    World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by George    Perkovich
         A toast to India on its 60th birthday: No country has more heroically    pursued the promise of democracy. Against the odds of staggering poverty,    conflicting religious passions, linguistic pluralism, regional separatism,    caste injustice and natural resource scarcity, Indians have lifted themselves    largely by their own sandal straps to become a stalwart democracy and emerging    global power. India has risen with epic drama -- a nonviolent struggle for    independence followed by mass mayhem and bloodletting, dynastic succession and    assassination, military victory and defeat, starvation succeeded by green    revolution, political leaders as saints, sinners and sexual ascetics. And yet,    the Indian story rarely has been told and is practically unknown to    Americans.
   India After Gandhi masterfully fills the void. India needs a wise and    judicious narrator to convey its scale, diversity and chaos -- to describe the    whirlwind without getting lost in it. It needs a biographer neither besotted    by love nor enraged by disappointment. Ramachandra Guha, a historian who has    taught at Stanford and Yale and now lives in Bangalore, has given democratic    India the rich, well-paced history it deserves.
   Much will be new to American readers.    Large-scale conflicts in India's northeast between tribal groups and    the center have been as enduring, and in some ways as important, as the more    familiar violence in Kashmir. The framing of India's constitution    from 1946 through 1949 should induce awe, especially in light of Iraq's    post-Saddam experience.
   In the midst of Hindu-Muslim bloodshed, a flood of 8 million refugees,    starvation, and other profound conflicts, Indian representatives worked out    constitutional provisions to protect minorities, keep religion out of state    power, correct thousands of years of caste discrimination and redistribute    power and wealth accumulated by still-regnant princely states. This was done    with no external guidance or pressure. The drafting committee was chaired by    an "untouchable," B.R. Ambedkar -- analogies are inexact, but imagine if James    Madison at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention had been a freed    slave.
   Specialists will quicken over insights from the private papers of Indira    Gandhi's confidant, P.N. Haksar, who gave his papers to Guha. These documents    reveal, among other things, that it was the Soviet Union that proposed the    1971 treaty of cooperation and friendship between the two countries, and that    suspicion of China motivated both nations more than was appreciated at the    time.
   Miniature biographies of grassroots leaders and movements also enliven    Guha's storytelling. Jay Aprakash Narayan -- "JP" -- plays a leading role. A    onetime friend of Nehru who became the bête noir of his daughter, Indira    Gandhi, JP led a massive movement for radical governmental reform in 1974-75,    which moved Indira Gandhi to declare a national emergency and suspend    democracy.
   Some themes go under-explored: For example, why has the Indian Army    abstained from interfering in politics, unlike the military in many other    developing countries? And why has India given short shrift to primary    education, even as it has developed technological institutes that rival    M.I.T?
   Many chapters begin or end with India's future in doubt. "India is almost    infinitely depressing," Aldous Huxley wrote in 1961, "for there seems to be no    solution to its problems in any way that any of us [in the West] regard as    acceptable." He predicted that "when Nehru goes, the government will become a    military dictatorship." Guha records that "ever since the country was formed    there have also been many Indians who have seen the survival of India as being    on the line, some (the patriots) speaking or writing in fear, others (the    secessionists or revolutionaries) with anticipation."
   Yet, marvelously, India's survival as a democracy seems more assured than    ever. Less clear is the nature of its relationship with America. Since 2005,    the U.S. and Indian governments have moved toward nuclear cooperation,    reversing 30 years of U.S. policy against nuclear assistance to countries that    refuse to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
   Washington clearly views India as a counterbalance to China's strategic    power. But Guha records an important historical parallel.
   In 1962, China crossed disputed boundaries in the northwest and northeast    of India. A shocked Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru abandoned nonalignment and    pleaded for emergency U.S. military assistance. Ambassador John Kenneth    Galbraith wrote to President Kennedy: "The only Asian country which really    stands in [China's] way is India and pari passu the only Western country that    is assuming responsibility is the United States. . . . We should expect to    make use of India's political position, geographical position, political power    and manpower or anyhow ask."
   Four decades later, another Harvard professor-cum-American ambassador to    India, Robert Blackwill, championed the proposed nuclear deal with similar    reasoning. As different as the presidents they served, Blackwill and Galbraith    were tempted by strategic abstraction and a desire to raise "their" country --    India -- in American priorities. Yet supplying arms to India in 1962 did not    make India any more deferential to U.S. foreign policy. Washington will delude    itself again if it thinks that nuclear India will be a pliant instrument in    its geostrategy. As long as India is a democracy, it will go its own way.
   To comprehend India's achievement, imagine if Mexico became the 51st of the    United States, followed by Brazil, Argentina and the rest of Central and South    America. Add Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to give this union the Sunni-Shia    mix of India. The population then represented in Congress would still be    smaller and less diverse linguistically, religiously, culturally and    economically than India's. If such a state could democratically manage the    interests and conflicts swirling within it, and not threaten its neighbors,    the world should ask little else from it. If we were such a state, we would    feel that our humane progress contributes so much to global well-being that    smaller, richer, easier-to-manage states should not presume to tell us what to    do.
   Sixty years after Gandhi, India has earned greater appreciation than we    give it.

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Umesh Sharma

Washington D.C. 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

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