Longer Essays – Page 2 – ::Welcome to Ramachandra Guha.in::

A PROPHET ANNOUNCES HIMSELF

Times Literary Supplement

In the third week of September 1909, The Illustrated London News published a withering attack on the idea of Indian nationalism. Its author was G. K. Chesterton, who was then writing a weekly column for the magazine. The Catholic novelist was not especially known for his interest in Britain’s colonies; indeed, this may have been his [...]

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

Caravan

Not long ago, I found myself in a panel discussion on television with three politicians. One was a Congress Member of Parliament, a second an MP from the Bharatiya Janata Party, the third the President of one of the smaller regional formations. In the course of the conversation I found reason to criticize the three netas [...]

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BILINGUAL INTELLECTUAL

Economic and Political Weekly

This essay is inspired by an argument between the scholar-libarian B. S. Kesavan and his son Mukul that I was once privy to. I forget what they were fighting about. But I recall that the father, then past ninety years of age, was giving as good as he got. At periodic intervals he would turn to [...]

ADIVASIS

NAXALITES

On 13th December 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly of India. This proclaimed that the soon-to-be-free nation would be an ‘Independent Sovereign Republic’. Its Constitution would guarantee citizens ‘justice, social, economic and political; equality of status; of opportunity, and before the law; freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship, vocation, association [...]

PLURALISM IN THE INDIAN UNIVERSITY

Economic and Political Weekly

Earlier this year, the National Archives mounted an exhibition on the founding of the first modern universities in India. A Kolkata newspaper gave its report on this exhibition the headline: ‘The Other Revolution of 1857’. This was apt, for the founding of these universities was indeed a revolution, and indeed also the ‘other’ to the better [...]

HOW MUCH SHOULD A PERSON CONSUME? University of California Press

Chapter IX

"The United States is presiding at a general reorganization of the ways of living throughout the world." André Siegfried, speaking in 1932 This chapter takes as its point of departure an old essay by John Kenneth Galbraith—an essay so ancient and obscure that it might very well have been forgotten even by its prolific author. The [...]

THE ONES WHO STAYED BEHIND

Economic and Political Weekly

This essay is inspired, or more accurately perhaps provoked, by an invitation to participate in a cross-cultural symposium on ‘New Trends in South Asian Studies’. The symposium’s organizers suggested that while ‘Europe has long developed research traditions and produced much scholarly work on Asia’, it was ‘only in the last two decades that an increased production [...]

THE ENVIRONMENTALIST OF THE POOR: ANIL AGARWAL

Economic and Political Weekly

The Berkeley Nobel Laureate George Akerlof once remarked of his fellow economists that if you showed them something that worked in practice, they would not be satisfied unless it was also seen to work in theory. This insight explains much about the dismal science, including why, as late as 1980, the M. I. T. economist Lester [...]