Sunday, October 11, 2015

India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy (2008) - Ramachandra Guha

Ramachandra Guha has described the events from 1947 - 2008 in remarkable details. Of course the book has described in period chronologically but also has established a succinct theme to what actually happened in the period. Describing India's problems and what happened to address those. For example, the whole constitution establishment chapter is very informative and gives a great treatise to what contributed to making the constitution written the way it was. Nehru, Patel and Indira Gandhi have got good coverage in the book. One can get a fair understanding of what really drove India during these formative years of India's democracy. I guess there are parts towards the end. Particularly, post 90s where it's a little hard to keep interest on the events. First, because it's too recent to distinguish history from journalism. Second, everyone has an opinion in these periods. One feels like one has lived through the changes so they do not seem very interesting. I will consider this a book worth reading and I am sure some day these will be talked about in the text books in schools. It makes you feel the real Indian history starts after 1947.

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