Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Picador India
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 898
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9780330505543
Description
This is magisterial account of the pains, the humiliations, and the glories of the world’s largest and last likely democracy.
Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi is a reviting chronicle of the often brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation, and of the extraordinary individuals and institutions who have held it together. It is an epic history, peopled by larger–than-life characters, deeply researched and elegantly written, the work of a major scholar at the height of his powers.
COMMENTS:
“A magisterial work.”
--- Financial Times
“Finally, here is a history of democratic India that is every bit as sweeping as the country itself. A magisterial work.”
--- Financial Times
“Guha has given democratic India the rich, well-paced history it deserves.”
--- Washington Post
“An insightful, spirited and elegantly crafted account of India since 1947.”
--- Times Literary Supplement
“India after Gandhi is a magnificently told history of the world’s largest democracy. It is a riveting story with unforgettable characters and towering challenges, immense greatness and extraordinary venality, soaring hopes and profound disappointment.”
--- India Today
“It is a formidable undertaking to write in a single volume a history of this vast country…. Keeping in proportion the separate elements of so huge and sprawling a history calls for the finest judgement…. Guha rises nobly to the challenges: his history is as comprehensive, balanced and elegantly crafted as any reasonable reader could expect.”
--- The Spectator
Contents
Prologue: Unnatural Nation
Part One: PICKING UP THE PIECES
1. Freedom and Parricide
2. The Logic of Division
3. Apples in the Basket
4. A Valley Bloody and Beautiful
5. Refuges and the Republic
6. Ideas of India
Part Two: NEHRU’S INDIA
7. The Biggest Gamble in History
8. Home and the World
9. Redrawing the Map
10. The Conquest of Nature
11. The Low the Prophets
12. Securing Kashmir
13. Tribal Trouble
Part Three: SHAKING THE CENTRE
14. The Southern Challenge
15. The Experience of Defeat
16. Peace in Our Time
17. Minding the Minorities
Part Four: THE RISE OF POPULISM
18. War and Succession
19. Leftward Turns
20. The Elixir of Victory
21. The Rivals
22. Autumn of the Matriarch
23. Life without the Congress
24. Democracy in Disarray
25. This Son also Rises
Part Five: A HISTORY OF EVENTS
26. Rights
27. Riots
28. Rulers
29. Riches
30. A People’s Entertainments
Epilogue: Why India survives
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index