India After Gandhi -:The history of the world's largest democracy -Ramchandra Guha.
The author does not need description and it is my first so I will just start with the review.
If you are me who can call himself a reader after Harry Potter series and Chetan Bhagat short masalas , you will doubt if the 771 pages text would ever be completed. The HP series had magic... but history! oh, that may be boring. This was the first reaction. But it turned out books can be magical without a wand. You actually feel you are living in the history. As you go ahead you realize how less you knew your country.(If you really did not know before:P ) The book is filled with information with quotes from political leaders and leading newspapers of the time. The politics so very different from the present time and yet looking familiar. As you move along pages you know you will be missing the book if it gets completed.
It starts with Poorna swaraj declared at Lahore session and jumps to August 15,1947. The date was selected by Lord Mountbatten as it was the second anniversary of the Japanese surrender to the Allied forces in the WWII. The astrologers had decreed it to be an inauspicious day when India was born and hence the celebration at Constituent Assembly started on 14th itself! Well there was actually not much to be celebrated as recalled by the then newly appointed Governor in Lahore who threw a party and "the current had failed ..the only light which we had was from the flames of the burning city of Lahore half a mile away". The lines crossed villages , lawns, temple , mosques and everything which could come in between. It was a ramzan month and monsoon was 'unconscionably late in coming in 1947'. The scholars estimated the toll of partition at 2 million dead. One more casualty was the Mahatma himself, after whom the book is titled. He was declared by the killer as the father of Pakistan, favoring muslims and on the other side the actual father of Pakistan called the death "a hindu-loss".With this background the book starts and takes oneself to a journey of Indian political history of next five decades.
Every account is detailed magnificently. The integration of states and the expertise of Sardar , making of Union of India' to the first elections where cows campaigned, people embarked on weeks of journey to cast a vote, electoral lists rejected for names like "Chunnu ki maa", or "Ompal ki bahu".. , how it was celebrated like a festival all across with the enigma that was named Nehru. From there to the debacle against China; the death of the leader and then to the death of his ideas in another few years with the rise of only woman prime-minister. Her strong decisions of partitioning Pakistan to her operation Bluestar the book details the politics and the changing nature of society. The author details so many accounts how India became Indira! The degrading morals in public life are seen clearly in the transition of India from father to the daughter. The communal carnage that followed her assassination is detailed explicitly. One gets the tension of communal violence when you read that the President of India was unable to enter New Delhi from his foreign tour because he was a Sikh! The rise of Rajiv and his sudden death; the Ayodha, Mumbai deaths and the sudden rise of BJP, Guha leaves nothing. And somehow keeps a focus, sometimes which seems too much, on the issue of kashmir all the way in the book in these 50 years. It narrates the international, domestic politics of J&K quite beautifully. The book also gives a special space to Bollywood at the end.
Our schools close history for the students with 1947 and what we learn from all around is of last 10 years or so. The society and the country around us does not look like the same as we read in schools history. This book is filling up that void and it does it remarkably. The author succeeds on every account and does not let its young readers lose their focus. Maybe the school texts shall be written by him but then 700 pages book would throw the students away from schools itself !
The author does not need description and it is my first so I will just start with the review.
If you are me who can call himself a reader after Harry Potter series and Chetan Bhagat short masalas , you will doubt if the 771 pages text would ever be completed. The HP series had magic... but history! oh, that may be boring. This was the first reaction. But it turned out books can be magical without a wand. You actually feel you are living in the history. As you go ahead you realize how less you knew your country.(If you really did not know before:P ) The book is filled with information with quotes from political leaders and leading newspapers of the time. The politics so very different from the present time and yet looking familiar. As you move along pages you know you will be missing the book if it gets completed.
It starts with Poorna swaraj declared at Lahore session and jumps to August 15,1947. The date was selected by Lord Mountbatten as it was the second anniversary of the Japanese surrender to the Allied forces in the WWII. The astrologers had decreed it to be an inauspicious day when India was born and hence the celebration at Constituent Assembly started on 14th itself! Well there was actually not much to be celebrated as recalled by the then newly appointed Governor in Lahore who threw a party and "the current had failed ..the only light which we had was from the flames of the burning city of Lahore half a mile away". The lines crossed villages , lawns, temple , mosques and everything which could come in between. It was a ramzan month and monsoon was 'unconscionably late in coming in 1947'. The scholars estimated the toll of partition at 2 million dead. One more casualty was the Mahatma himself, after whom the book is titled. He was declared by the killer as the father of Pakistan, favoring muslims and on the other side the actual father of Pakistan called the death "a hindu-loss".With this background the book starts and takes oneself to a journey of Indian political history of next five decades.
Every account is detailed magnificently. The integration of states and the expertise of Sardar , making of Union of India' to the first elections where cows campaigned, people embarked on weeks of journey to cast a vote, electoral lists rejected for names like "Chunnu ki maa", or "Ompal ki bahu".. , how it was celebrated like a festival all across with the enigma that was named Nehru. From there to the debacle against China; the death of the leader and then to the death of his ideas in another few years with the rise of only woman prime-minister. Her strong decisions of partitioning Pakistan to her operation Bluestar the book details the politics and the changing nature of society. The author details so many accounts how India became Indira! The degrading morals in public life are seen clearly in the transition of India from father to the daughter. The communal carnage that followed her assassination is detailed explicitly. One gets the tension of communal violence when you read that the President of India was unable to enter New Delhi from his foreign tour because he was a Sikh! The rise of Rajiv and his sudden death; the Ayodha, Mumbai deaths and the sudden rise of BJP, Guha leaves nothing. And somehow keeps a focus, sometimes which seems too much, on the issue of kashmir all the way in the book in these 50 years. It narrates the international, domestic politics of J&K quite beautifully. The book also gives a special space to Bollywood at the end.
Our schools close history for the students with 1947 and what we learn from all around is of last 10 years or so. The society and the country around us does not look like the same as we read in schools history. This book is filling up that void and it does it remarkably. The author succeeds on every account and does not let its young readers lose their focus. Maybe the school texts shall be written by him but then 700 pages book would throw the students away from schools itself !
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