Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Permanent Black
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 267
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8178240017
Description
This classiest collection of essays have been revised, expanded and updated for this book. A good part of it is taken up with Gandhians and pseudo-Gandhians, Marxists and anti-Marxists, and of individuals the author has known or studied, admired or disliked.
‘Inside every thinking Indian there is a Gandhian and a Marxist struggling for supremacy’, says Ramachandra Guha in the opening sentence of this wonderfully readable book of ideas, opinions and reflections. A substantial portion of the book expands on this salvo: it analyses Gandhians and pseudo-Gandhians, Marxists and anti-Marxists, Nehruvians and anti-secularists, democrats and Stalinists, scientists and historians, environmentalists and cricketers — in short all those who comprise the intellectual life of thinking Indians today.
Reviews :
Reading Ram Guha is like listening to a thrilling broadcast by Alistair Cooke …No fiction by Amitav Ghosh or Amit Chaudhuri has evoked with such brevity and wit the soul of a real place, real people …these are pictures in the round, affectionate, malicious, but always thought about and felt … Guha’s faceted little gem shows that light is beginning to glint on Indian non-fiction.’
—Outlook
A book to read and savor. Elegant, passionate, compelling. What a refreshing style, what joie de vivre, what literary facility and what an iconoclastic (not destructive) mind…
—The Asian Age
The classiest collection of essays I have seen in a long time… underpinned with Guha’s meticulous research and garnished with his inimitable verve. This is the kind of collection that gives intellectuals a good name.
—Man’s World
Like a consummate magician, Guha pulls out many rabbits from his hat … Described variously as a sociologist, historian biographer, cricket writer, this book (by Guha) is wonderful showcase for his interests.
—The Indian Express
Contents
Introduction
COMRADES AND COMPANIONS
An Anthropologist Among the Marxists
Andhra Naxalite, Indian Democrat: C.V. Subbarao
Rooted Cosmopolitan: D. R. Nagaraj
The Last Civilian: C.S. Venkatachar
The Buddha of Parade’s: P.K. Srinivasan
THE USE AND ABUSE OF GANDHI
Gandhi’s Editor: K. Swaminathan
Gandhi’s German: Herbert Fischer
The Green Gandhian: J.D. Kumarappa
The ‘Bhadralok’s’ Gandhi
Gandhi’s Ambedkar
What Gandhi Was Not: Vinoba Bhave
The Gandhi Who Loved the West
INTERNATIONALISTS
Memories of D.P. Thompson
The Other Side of the Raj: Mira, Spratt, Elwin and Haldane
Exiles in Their English Peace: Karl Marx and Nirad Chaudhuri
PATRIOTS
Ecological Patriot: M.Krishnan
Redeeming the Bharat Ratna: M.S. Subbulakshmi and Others
Our Once But Note Future King: Jawaharlal Nehru
The Dictator’s Defence: Indira Gandhi and the Indian ‘Emergency’
The Editor and the Son: Khushwant Singh and Sanjay Gandhi
Stalinist and Indian: E.M.S. Namboodiripad
Jai Vigyan, Jai Vinash: Bombast, Bomb-blasts, and Certain Indian Scientists
PLAYERS
The First Great Indian Cricketer: C.K. Nayudu
India’s All-Star Cricket Eleven
Raj Karega Khalsa: Bishan Bedi and Company
The Road to Vijay Hazare
Sunil Gavaskar: India’s Cricketer of the Twentieth Century
The Socialism of Soccer