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

My Debt to the American University

The Telegraph

Growing up in the India of the 1970s I had ambivalent feelings towards America. I admired some of their writers (Ernest Hemingway was a particular favourite) and adored the music of Bob Dylan and Mississippi John Hurt. On the other hand, I was just about old enough to remember—and never forget—how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger [...]

The Great Nicobar Planned Disaster

The Telegraph

No term in Indian public discourse is as egregiously misleading as ‘national media’. For the newspapers, magazines and TV channels that come under this rubric have a narrow, blinkered, view of the nation they claim to represent. They see India from the National Capital Region, and often from the NCR alone. Their geographical proximity to power [...]

Lahore Past and Present

The Telegraph

Many years ago, while working on a social history of sport, I came across some news reports of a Test match played in Lahore in 1955. The cricket itself was boring in the extreme. It was one of five draws in a five-match series between India and Pakistan, with runs scored at less than two an [...]

Constitution@75 Ambedkar’s Warnings

The Telegraph

Indeed, if I may say so, if things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is, that Man was vile. B. R. Ambedkar, speaking to the Constituent Assembly of India, November 1948 The Indian Constitution came into force on 26th [...]

Warts and All

The Telegraph

Shortly before he demitted office as Prime Minister in 2014, Manmohan Singh said that history would judge him more generously than the media was then doing. Now, reading the outpouring of adulatory tributes to Singh after his passing, this historian is led to wonder—are these eulogies altogether merited? Was he the wise, all-knowing, and apparently flawless [...]

Nehru’s Patel

The Telegraph

In about a week’s time we shall mark the sixtieth anniversary of the death of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. This column focuses on one key aspect of Nehru’s political career, his collaboration with Vallabhbhai Patel. These two men worked shoulder-to-shoulder during the freedom struggle and in the early years of Independence. They had their [...]

Among the Mizos

The Telegraph

Last month I spent several stimulating days in Mizoram. I had some knowledge of the state’s political history, met numerous Mizos in the course of my life, but never visited the state before. I flew first to Guwahati, where I caught up with some old friends, gloried in my sightings of the Brahmaputra, and spoke on [...]

A Secular Saint

The Telegraph

An Indian I greatly admire is the social worker and pioneer of the Chipko movement, Chandi Prasad Bhatt. My first meeting with him, when I was in my early twenties, had an transformative impact on my life. I have met him many times since; each encounter providing fresh insights into the moral, political and environmental challenges [...]

In Praise of Madhu Dandavate

The Telegraph

The Indian socialist tradition is now moribund, but there was a time when it had a profound and mostly salutary influence on politics and society. Yet few people now know of its past vigour and dynamism. The Congress, the Communists, the regional parties, the Ambedkarites, and (especially in recent years) the Jana Sangh and the BJP—all [...]

Hindutva as Pop Culture

The Telegraph

In recent years, a stream of books and articles have appeared seeking to analyse the theory and practice of Hindutva. They have sought to alternatively explain, critique, or justify the rising influence of the BJP and the RSS. Some have focused on organizational questions, on the building of social networks on the ground and how they [...]