Politics and Current Affairs – ::Welcome to Ramachandra Guha.in::

Lessons in Leadership from Satish Dhawan

The Telegraph

The late A. P. J. Abdul Kalam liked to tell stories with morals. A story he was particularly fond of related to the launch of a satellite by the Indian Space Research Organization in July 1979. Kalam was in charge of the project at ISRO; and when some members expressed reservations about its readiness he overruled [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-10-28T09:17:10+00:00September 26th, 2020|Categories: Politics and Current Affairs, Biography|Tags: Abdul Kalam, Aravamudan, IISc, ISRO, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Space Research Organisation, JRD Tata, Kamladevi Chattopadhyay, Nalini Nirodi, Roddam Narsimha, Satish Dhawan, Vikram Sarabhai|

5 Reasons Why Rahul Gandhi Cannot Take on Modi for PM

NDTV.com

Those who oppose Hindutva seek to recover the founding principles of the freedom struggle, such as religious and linguistic pluralism, gender and caste equality, a critical attitude to state power, and an open-ness to other cultures and civilizations: all principles which Hindutva threatens to abandon or overthrow. But the closer one gets to 2024, the battle [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-10-27T18:52:05+00:00August 18th, 2020|Categories: Politics and Current Affairs|

A Brief History of Cults of Personality

The Telegraph

The term ‘cult of personality’ is thought to have been first used with regard to the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Stalin died in 1953, after more than two decades in power; three years later, in a speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, his successor Nikita Khrushchev spoke of how [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-10-27T18:44:21+00:00August 1st, 2020|Categories: History, Politics and Current Affairs|Tags: BJP, Dictatorship, Indira Gandhi, Narendra Modi, democracy, emergency|

The Perilous State of Press Freedom in India Today

The Telegraph

In 1824, the Government of Bengal (which was then in the hands of the East India Company) issued an Ordinance placing strict curbs on the freedom of the press. This gave the government the powers to cancel a newspaper’s license without any explanation. The Ordinance provoked outrage among the intelligentsia of Kolkata, active in editing and [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-07-11T18:49:20+00:00June 20th, 2020|Categories: Politics and Current Affairs|Tags: Amartya Sen, Prime Minster Modi, Ram Mohan Roy, Ram Mohun Roy, authoritarianism, democracy, freedom of the press|

Why Modi has Failed India

NDTV.com

Last week, the respected US rating agency Moody’s downgraded India’s sovereign rating to Baa3, the lowest grade. It thereby joined Standard and Poor and Fitch, which had already relegated India to the bottom rung in this regard. Explaining their decision, Moody’s said: ‘While today’s action is taken in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, it was [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-07-11T18:36:52+00:00June 9th, 2020|Categories: Politics and Current Affairs|Tags: BJP, Indian economy, Prime Minister Modi, Sectarian, communalism, personality of cult|

Why our Classical Music may be the Best Antidote to our Chauvinism

The Telegraph

Most evenings, I knock off from work and listen to Indian classical music for an hour or so before dinner. In the past, I would play CDs or cassettes I had collected over the years; now, I forage through the capacious repository that is YouTube. Sometimes I select an artist or a particular raga; at other [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-07-11T18:37:48+00:00June 6th, 2020|Categories: Politics and Current Affairs, Culture|Tags: Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Hamsadhvani, Hindutva, Muslim, Shivarama Karanth, multi cultural democracy, pluralism, secularism|

The Folly and Vanity of The Project to Redesign New Delhi

The Wire

Six years ago, the then editor of the Hindustan Times invited me to write a fortnightly column. I agreed, on condition that there would be no censorship. While occasionally some changes to my text were made without my consent, there was no attempt to get me to rewrite my column or change its arguments. Until this [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-05-05T23:34:31+00:00April 19th, 2020|Categories: Politics and Current Affairs|Tags: Alpana Kishore, Central Vista Project, Covid 19, Narendra Modi, Newslaundry, accountability, authoritarian, banana republic, democracy, pandemic response, virus|

Get The Best Minds on Board

Hindustan Times

Years ago, working in the archives in New Delhi, I came across a brief, handwritten, letter from Jawaharlal Nehru to C. Rajagopalachari. It was dated 30th July 1947, and it read: ‘My dear Rajaji, This is to remind you that you have to approach Shanmukham Chetty—this must be done soon. I have seen Ambedkar and he [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-05-05T23:20:57+00:00April 5th, 2020|Categories: History, Politics and Current Affairs|Tags: B N Rau, B R Ambedkar, C H Bhabha, C Rajagopalachari, Covid 19, Jean Dréze, N Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Narendra Modi, Nehru, Reetika Khera, S P Mookerjee, Shanmukham Chetty, Sukumar Sen, Tarlok Singh, V P Menon, Virus pandemic, bipartisan|

Standing With Gandhi in Ahmedabad

Hindustan Times

On 30th January I was in Ahmedabad, a city that was central to Mahatma Gandhi’s life and work. It was here that he established the most celebrated of his ashrams, on the banks of the Sabarmati River; here that he revised and refined his moral and political philosophy; here that he conceived and planned the Rowlatt [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-03-25T21:44:14+00:00February 9th, 2020|Categories: Politics and Current Affairs, Culture|Tags: secularism|

The Fourth Crisis of The Republic

Hindustan Times

As I have written before, if India had been a start-up in August 1947 not even the most venturesome of venture capitalists would have invested in it. No new nation was born in more inhospitable circumstances. The Partition of the country had been awful enough, in the scale of its violence and the mass displacement of [...]

By Ramachandra Guha|2020-03-25T21:35:48+00:00January 26th, 2020|Categories: History, Politics and Current Affairs|Tags: Anis Kidwai, Constitution, Nehru, Sardar Patel, ambedkar|