£25.00

India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

Ramachandra Guha

But for all his skill with portraiture, it is a relief when the social scientist periodically re-emerges to tell us of the planning process and its pitfalls, or of the abiding problems of poverty and caste in a ‘globalised’ India, or even when he invokes Durkheim to discuss the issue of farmers’ suicides. This is, in many ways, a dazzling book. Its prose is always attractive, and it has a sure chronological organisation. The different regions get a fair and balanced treatment, which is not always the case in such histories. Besides memoirs, monographs, essays and contemporary newspapers, Guha has also examined important archival collections, such as the papers of Indira Gandhi’s right-hand man in the early 1970s, P.N. Haksar.

(LRB 20 September 2007)

Macmillan | hardback 900 pp. |ISBN: 9780230016545