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

By Ramachandra Guha

Born against a background of privation and civil war, divided along lines of caste, class, language and religion, independent India emerged, somehow, as a united and democratic country. Ramachandra Guha’s hugely acclaimed book tells the full story – the pain and the struggle, the humiliations and the glories – of the world’s largest and least likely democracy.

While India is sometimes the most exasperating country in the world, it is also the most interesting. Ramachandra Guha writes compellingly of the myriad protests and conflicts that have peppered the history of free India. Moving between history and biography, the story of modern India is peopled with extraordinary characters. Guha gives fresh insights into the lives and public careers of those long-serving Prime Ministers, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. But the book also writes with feeling and sensitivity about lesser-known (though not necessarily less important) Indians – peasants, tribals, women, workers and musicians.

Massively researched and elegantly written, India After Gandhi is a remarkable account of India’s rebirth, and a work already hailed as a masterpiece of single volume history. This tenth anniversary edition, published to coincide with seventy years of India’s independence, is revised and expanded to bring the narrative up to the present.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Feb 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9780330540209

Ramachandra Guha

Born in Dehradun in 1958, and educated in Delhi and Calcutta, Ramachandra Guha pursued an academic career for ten years before becoming a full-time writer and regular on the global lecture circuit. He is also an internationally-renowned cricket journalist, editor of The Picador Book of Cricket and author of the prize-winning A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport. He lives in Bangalore.

Reviews for India After Gandhi

[bookish85 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

truly this is a magisterial work . guha starts with partition, a scar which will ever remain in the face of this nation to the integration of princely states , the great stewardship of leaders like nehru , patel , ambedkar , emergence of dynasty and caste politics,mandal and masjid politics ,strengthening of fundamentalists(both Hindu and Muslim) and the recent positioning of India as a growing economic and multi ethnic democracy in the world . development of science and technology,state of health and education , judicial activism, environmentalism deserves separate chapters devoted to them. for those people who think that history of India means Indus valley civilization, kings and their eccentricities and its fight against colonialism this book is a must read.

[arosoff-513117 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As a wide ranging history of post-Independence India, even at 900 pages Guha can't do full justice to the scope. However, he does as much as could possibly do in covering the scope, and it's well written and absorbing.

[mostlyharmless_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An Indian historian, from what I could understand, submitted theses on esoteric topics,worked in the backwaters of a humanities department , and took time off in the evenings for the real job; currying favor with whatever political outfit (s)he had decided to make the backbone of a professional existence.Thought processes that suggested diversion from these agendas were unaffordable luxuries. History was part of the spoils of repeating political battles; it was to be laid claim upon, even created, but never discovered.By those standards, Ramachandra Guha is hardly a historian, let alone an eminent one. This book is engaging, provocative, and even affectionate in its pursuit of its subject. So much so that it seems like the crystallization of years of accumulated academic curiosity, the author getting up one morning and discovering that a book could actually be compiled out of all the meandering coffee breaks he sneaked out of a demanding day-job.

[trotsky731 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Extremely informative

[rajivc_18 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The history of India has been confusing, and he does a marvellous job of covering the events during the tumultuous years since we became an independent country.The tragedy of having the Nehru-Gandhi at the helm comes through clearly, even though he does not castigate them.I would love to see an updated edition

[timjones_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a superb book. In clear, measured prose, Indian polymath Ramachandra Guha (author of other excellent books on topics as diverse as cricket and environmentalism) outlines and explains the complicated political, economic, diplomatic, environmental, military and cultural factors which have transformed the India of 1947, newly independent and riven by Partition, into the India of today. The book is particularly strong on the ways in which democracy has taken root in India. It's long - my edition ran to 771 pages, plus copious notes - but so clearly written that it is not a chore to read. If you are at all interested in India, or in modern history, I highly recommend this book.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a massive work, covering the immensity of India between 1947 and 2015 or 16. When I realized how much territory Dr. Guha had to cover, I was dubious, but this history of India since just before independence manages to elucidate i broad strokes what happened, how it happened and sometimes, why it happened. For example, I understand much better than before the evolution of the impasse over Kashmir, the reasons for India's turn from essentially a centrally planned economy to a more mainstream capitalist one, and how and why Congress lost its hold on power and the BJP came to succeed Congress. Guha carefully explains how the situation of the Congress in 1950, say, differs from that of the BJP in 2015 and indeed, today in the wake of its most recent electoral victory. I have visited India several times and am fascinated by its diversity and history but my understanding of the country has been improved by reading this history.

[rrhowell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Not everyone can write history that is also excellent reading. This is a well written book that helps you to understand the basics of modern Indian history. There also are not a lot of other books around that can help with this.

[dilip1kumar-572329 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A massive work, well deserving of the "magisterial" tag given by the Financial Times review. The great blessing is that it doesn't try to be cryptic, doesn't use over-long sentences with multiple negatives, and deals with each incident or milestone in a few, elegantly phrased, paragraphs. Thus, you never lose hope that you will be able to read through to the end, as you are guided by a series of easy stages. A bonus is the penultimate chapter on the arts and sports. The treatment is even-handed and objective throughout, and you have the assurance that all the evidence has been weighed and a sober overall assessment made. Best of all, the author ends on an optimistic note, which sounds all the more reassuring because of the wide range and depth of the information accessed.