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N.S. Rajaram reviews "India After Gandhi" by Ramachandra Guha
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<b>A BIASED HISTORY</b>

<i>N.S. Rajaram</i>

India After Gandhi: The history of the world’s largest
democracy by Ramachandra Guha. (2007). Picador India:
900 + xxvi pages. Price Rs 695 (HB).

India After Gandhi is an ambitious work with a no less
ambitious claim to be “the full story — the pain and
the struggles, the humiliations and the glories — of
the world’s largest and the most unlikely democracy.”
The period covered is from independence in 1947 to the
present.

Considering that the events and personalities are
quite recent, with many key actors still around it is
too much to expect it to be entirely objective. The
author admits as much when he says: “… the historian
is here writing about times that are close to him as
well as his readers. He, and they, often have strong
opinions about the politicians and the policies of the
day. In the chapters that follow I have tried to keep
my own biases out of the narrative, but my success in
this respect may be limited — or at least more limited
than in other parts of the book.”

Reasonable enough, but what one finds in the book is a
better account of recent events than the history of
the early years of India as a free nation. There are
large gaps in its treatment of events surrounding the
transfer of power and Nehru’s foreign policy failures.
The sections on the India-China- Tibet triangle leading
up to the debacle of 1962 war is particularly weak.
The author seems ignorant of important recent work on
the subject by the French scholar Claude Arpi (Fate of
Tibet) who has used records from the period that have
been kept away from scholars by the Nehru-Gandhi
family. (This is true even of the National Archives.)

The author’s relative success with recent history
contrasted with his weak coverage of the earlier
period may be due to his approach— of a social
anthropologist rather than a research historian. There
is also a pervasive Nehruvian bias that on occasion
glosses over his failures. There is no mention of
Nehru’s obsession with the Korean War while neglecting
the much more momentous Chinese invasion of Tibet,
both of which took place in 1950. The author fails to
note — he is probably ignorant of the fact — that
there was international support for India recognizing
Tibet as a free country and create a buffer. Nehru’s
real failure was neglecting the neighboring Tibet in
search of international glory in Korea.

It is a similar story when we get to Independence and
the Kashmir problem. He claims that most Indians blame
Mountbatten for taking the dispute to the UN thereby
absolving Nehru. He also fails to mention that Nehru
became prime minister only because Gandhi anointed
him, putting pressure on Sardar Patel to withdraw.
Also there is no mention of the INA trials and the
naval mutiny that followed. This, according to the
British Prime Minister Attlee was what convinced the
British to leave and leave in a hurry.

In Atlee’s words the most important reason was: “The
activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose which
weakened the very foundation of the attachment of the
Indian land and naval forces to the British
government.” Astonishingly, there is no mention of
Subhas Bose in the entire book, though he rather than
Jawaharlal Nehru was the most popular hero when the
war ended.

The best part of the book is the second half covering
the period following Nehru’s death (1964). Part five
devoted to the rise of the backward castes and the
politics of empowerment makes valuable reading. It
draws heavily on the ideas of India’s greatest
sociologist the late M.N. Srinivas. But here too there
are gaps. There is no mention of the Justice Party,
the forerunner of the Dravidian parties or of the
ideas of language and race of pseudo scholars like
Bishop Robert Caldwell that led to their ideology.

Here too there are biases, but they are less
disturbing than in the earlier part of the book,
perhaps because we are close to the events and are
used to them. At the same time, there is no blanket
condemnation of the BJP as a fascist party. He
rubbishes such comparisons for trivializing the
horrors inflicted by the real fascists of Europe like
Hitler. He also points out that the BJP peacefully
handed over power once defeated, hardly a fascist
trait. He might have added that it has been the
Congress that has bared its fascist teeth, in imposing
the Emergency and in dismissing elected state
governments.

The book’s main thesis seems to be that Indian
democracy must remain true to the Nehruvial ideal. But
the author offers no insights on how it is to be
achieved when Nehru created neither the institutions
nor a cadre of workers to keep the ideal alive. What
represents Nehru’s legacy today? His descendants, who
lost no time in snuffing out democracy in his own
party, and seem to see elections only as a tool for
gaining power? Can we expect them to nurture democracy
in India? The book has no answers.

India After Gandhi is a useful but by a no means
definitive account of the first six decades of India
as a free nation. For all its errors of omission and
commission, it is a laudable effort by a scholar
willing to take on a formidable challenge. One hopes
that there will be more books on the subject leading
to a healthy debate.
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