Book review: India After Gandhi

Just finished reading “India After Gandhi: The history of the world’s largest democracy” by Ramachandra Guha. It clocks in at 919 pages, although only 783 pages are text, the rest being the acknowledgements and endnotes. The book covers the period between 1938 and 2016.

India was born in 1947. It’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, steered the new nation through the consolidation of what had been over 500 states and principalities, convincing their rulers to give up power to the center. In a new nation with over 20 different languages and six major religions, the magnitude of his accomplishments are hard to overstate. When I was growing up, Nehru was regarded with deep suspicion in the US because in the bi-polar world of the time, Nehru insisted on remaining non-aligned. Thus, the US became allied with the military dictatorship in Pakistan, pushing India towards alliance with the USSR.

This is not to say that the history of India after Gandhi was untroubled—far from it. Violence, much of it grounded in religious and linguistic tribalism, has tormented India from the beginning. The chronic conflicts in Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, and the Punjab have been some of the most dangerous and bloody flashpoints. Yet, here we are in the third decade of the 21st century and, against decades of dire predictions of pundits in the west, India remains a democracy.

Churchill famously remarked that the Balkans generate more history than they can consume. The comment was meant for consumption by western audiences (see, e.g., the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo that sparked the outbreak of World War I). But for the fact that it isn’t in Europe (and didn’t touch off a world war), India could also be said to have overflowed with important history.

I was drawn to this book because of the histories I’ve read of Yugoslavia and the USSR, two large nations founded upon diverse cultures. Both were born as dictatorships, and when the dictatorships failed, the nations dissolved. The dissolution of Yugoslavia was convulsed in violence, while the dissolution of the Soviet Union was relatively peaceful. None of this is to say that India won’t eventually fission, but at 75 years, it has outlasted both Yugoslavia and the USSR.

I found this book to be well-written and engrossing. As a westerner, trying to follow the names of the actors, their political parties, and the state and place names was challenging for me. There was quite a bit of repetition, which helped me consolidate some of the details. Guhu is both an historian and a journalist, which helps avoid the turgid prose I often encounter in histories of this length. I learned a lot reading this book, not just about Indian history but world history and the challenges of civilization. I’m glad I read it and I recommend it.