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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, [...]

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 [...]

Caring for the Earth, The Telegraph

The climate crisis has brought human ill-treatment of nature forcibly to our attention, though of course India’s environmental problems are by no means the product of global warming alone. The staggeringly high rates of air pollution in the cities of [...]

A Godson Remembers: Thammu Achaya and Indian Food History, The Telegraph

My first editor, Rukun Advani, once described himself as ‘a composite hybrid of the Indian and the Anglo-European’, who sought to reconcile ‘within himself those varying cultural influences which chauvinistic nationalists could only see as contradictions.’ This self-characterization I might [...]

Einstein: The Scientist as Moralist, The Telegraph

I saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer earlier this week. The main character in the film, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was a physicist whose family was Jewish, and who worked for many years at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton. In these [...]

After Sobers, Who? The Telegraph

In one of the first books I read, the writer had posed the question: ‘Who was the greatest all-rounder in the history of cricket?’, before providing this answer: ‘He was a left-arm bowler and a right-hand batsman, who was born [...]

About The Author

Ramachandra Guha is a historian and biographer based in Bangalore. He has taught at the universities of Yale and Stanford, held the Arné Naess Chair at the University of Oslo, and been the Indo-American Community Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
In the academic year 2011-2 he served as the Philippe Roman Professor of History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics.