Democrats and Dissenters by Ramachandra Guha ; Published by Penguin Books ;Pages317;Price Rs.699/-

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 Ramachandra Guha is a celebrated writer who  has annexed several awards. To mention a few, his essay, "Prehistory of Community Forestry in India", was awarded the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society for Environmental History."A Corner of a Foreign Field" was awarded the Daily Telegraph  Cricket Society Book of the Year prize ; he bagged the R. K. Narayan Prize;  Ramnath Goenka Prize; Padma Bhushan and  Sahitya Akademi Award.

The book under review is the fourth in a series  exploring the creation and subsequent career of the Republic of India. The earlier volumes are “India after Gandhi”, “Makers of Modern India” and “Patriots and Partisans”. The  book  is divided into two parts: ”Politics and Society”, and “ Ideologies and Intellectuals”.

 Guha generally takes up one topic and explores it thoroughly enriching our knowledge and enlarging our reading pleasure. Since he is not “Committed” we get a rational picture. You may disagree with  him  but   he will succeed in provoking  you to think and partake in an interesting discussion. Undoubtedly his  is a voice of reason and sanity in contemporary India.

 As with his other books this one too   is the quintessence of outstanding scholarship but tremendously entertaining. Guha  covers a wide range of themes: from the varying national projects of India’s neighbours to political debates within India itself, from the responsibilities of writers to the complex relationship between democracy and violence. 

Guha swears by the Indian Constitution and calls himself a “constitutional democrat”. Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar constitute his Trinity. His canvas encompasses  the entire ambit of our  freedom movement.  Guha’s  temples of devotion are “Archives”. For a rare note, a handwritten letter, he has scoured institutions across the country and abroad—from the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library to the record rooms of Oxford University Press.This  ensures for the author unalloyed respect.

  According to Guha  during the threshold of freedom we  had the lucky leadership of true democrats but slowly it slipped Into reverting to the very instruments that held us in bondage. 

    Two pieces stand out: “Debating Democracy: Jayaprakash Narayan versus Jawaharlal Nehru”   Guha has excavated the  overlooked correspondence between Nehru and Narayan This is an object lesson in the tenets of  democracy as it prevailed in the nascent  years after Independence. The essay impresses the reader  “… such debates do not take place any more, at least not among full-time politicians. No politician now alive can think or write or speak in an original or even interesting fashion about the direction Indian society and politics is or should be taking. The discussion of what Narayan, in his letter to Nehru, had called ‘dispassionate political principles’ has now been left to the scholars.”

The most trenchant chapter is “Tribal Tragedies in Independent India”. Adivasis who have never been able to make themselves heard unlike Muslims and Dalits. They face a British-style “civilizing” mission from fellow Indians—- Maoist , Hindu and Christian groups, who treat them  as “cannon fodder”. Elected representatives supposedly  representing  Adivasis do not  have an understanding or knowledge of those they ought  to protect. They  do not  ensure these citizens are able to exercise the rights and freedoms guaranteed to them by law

 The Second part of the book “Ideologies and Intellectuals” deals with commanding persons. Guha offers  remarkable  insights into outstanding personalities  —Benedict Anderson , Dharmanand Kosambi, U.R. Ananthamurthy and Andre Beteille. Towering over all is the lone lady  among Guha’s pantheon Dharma Kumar.

Guha’s chapter “The Brilliance and Dogmatism of Eric Hobsbawm”  reveals the latent conflict in this   Marxist historian.  Benedict Anderson  acquired fame with his pioneering work , “Imagined Communities “ and Guha with his painstaking research reveals to us the thesis  of  Anderson as to  how nations emerged at a particular historical period, among the Europeans who conquered the New World, in Europe itself, and in the countries colonised by the Europeans. Anderson was sympathetic towards  nationalism .Deeply moving is the piece “The Life and Death of a Gandhian Buddhist” about a rare scholar whose personal story is awesome-- Dharmanand Kosambi, the father of well-known historian D.D. Kosambi. The piece on Andre Beteille, titled ‘The Wisest Man in India’ also commands our attention.

Dharma Kumar was India's leading economic historian and editor of the influential  “Indian Economic and Social History Review’ . She  edited the second volume of the Cambridge Economic History of India with essays by twenty two scholars. She was  a scholar, teacher and editor. She worked for ten years in the Reserve Bank of India. She worked  in the Delhi School of Economics until her retirement. I recall the wonderful tribute by the estimable A.G.Chandavarkar to Dharma Kumar in an article in E P W --entitled " The Dharma I knew". ( 8/12/2001)

 A fascinating  essay in the book is  titled “Arguments with Sen, Arguments about India. It is a critique of Amartya Sen’s book  “The Argumentative Indian”. Sen responded a year later in a long article proving the case for the ‘Argumentative Indian’!

The last piece in the book — ‘Where are the Conservative Intellectuals in India?’ — reviews  the intellectual terrain  of India as it has been since Independence. According to Guha : “Hindu conservatism tends to be revivalist, harking back to a pure past uncontaminated by foreign influences or alien faiths. Meanwhile, Hindu nationalism tends to be triumphalist, seeking to make other nations and other cultures in its own image. Both tendencies are inimical to reflection and self-criticism, those two crucial, even indispensable, elements of the intellectual’s craft”.

Guha has a role model in mind for any aspiring Indian conservative intellectual: C. Rajagopalachari — “a devout Hindu, albeit one who could see beyond the pieties and prejudices of his own caste and faith.

Guha peppers his historical accounts with personal anecdotes to an extent that even distant events that preceded him give a semblance of being personally lived. Guha is a historian of hope, a chronicler of compassion.

“Time Magazine” called Guha  “Indian Democracy’s pre-eminent chronicler”. Savour the work of this rare intellectual.

P.P.Ramachandran

20 / 08 / 2017