2 Books by Ramachandra Guha
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Overview: Ramachandra Guha was born in Dehradun in 1958, and educated in Delhi and Calcutta. He has taught at the University of Oslo, Stanford, and Yale, and at the Indian Institute of Science. He has been a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and also served as the Indo-American Community Chair Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
After a peripatetic academic career, with five jobs in ten years on three continents, Guha settled down to become a full-time writer based in Bangalore. His books cover a wide range of themes, including a global history of environmentalism, a biography of an anthropologist-activist, a social history of Indian cricket, and a social history of Himalayan peasants.
Guha’s books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The prizes they have won include the U.K. Cricket Society’s Literary Award and the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History.
Genre: Non-Fiction l History
Patriots and Partisans: ‘I am a person of moderate views,’ writes Ramachandra Guha, ‘these sometimes expressed in extreme fashion.’ In this wide-ranging and wonderfully readable collection of essays, Guha defends the liberal centre against the dogmas of left and right, and does so with style, depth, and polemical verve. The book begins with a brilliant overview of the major threats to the Indian republic. Other essays turn a critical eye on Hindutva, the Communist left, and the dynasty-obsessed Congress party. Guha then explores the contemporary relevance of Gandhi’s religious pluralism and analyses the fall in Jawaharlal Nehru’s reputation after his death. The essays in Part II of this book focus on writers and scholars. Guha explains why bilingual intellectuals, once so dominant in India, are now thin on the ground. He presents sensitive portraits of a magazine editor, a bookshop owner, a great publishing house, and a famous historical archive. Whether writing about politics or culture, whether profiling individuals or analysing social trends, Ramachandra Guha displays a masterly touch, confirming his standing as India’s most admired historian and public intellectual.
Makers of Modern Asia: Hardly more than a decade old, the twenty-first century has already been dubbed the Asian Century in recognition of China and India’s increasing importance in world affairs. Yet discussions of Asia seem fixated on economic indicators—gross national product, per capita income, share of global trade. Makers of Modern Asia reorients our understanding of contemporary Asia by highlighting the political leaders, not billionaire businessmen, who helped launch the Asian Century.
The nationalists who crafted modern Asia were as much thinkers as activists, men and women who theorized and organized anticolonial movements, strategized and directed military campaigns, and designed and implemented political systems. The eleven thinker-politicians whose portraits are presented here were a mix of communists, capitalists, liberals, authoritarians, and proto-theocrats—a group as diverse as the countries they represent.
From China, the world’s most populous country, come four: Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Revolution; Zhou Enlai, his close confidant; Deng Xiaoping, purged by Mao but rehabilitated to play a critical role in Chinese politics in later years; and Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang party formed the basis of modern Taiwan. From India, the world’s largest democracy, come three: Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi, all of whom played crucial roles in guiding India toward independence and prosperity. Other exemplary nationalists include Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, and Pakistan’s Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. With contributions from leading scholars, Makers of Modern Asia illuminates the intellectual and ideological foundations of Asia’s spectacular rise to global prominence.
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