History a la journalism-- lithe, synthesised, free of clutter, a few scoops too
Guha has now added to his impressive collection. His one-volume political, economic and social history of India from 1947-1989 deserves all accolades. There have been other books looking at politics, economics and society separately in India since Independence but there has hardly been anything like Guha’s new offering which brings it all together in one continuous narrative. It is a gamble that he took eight years ago. Clearly, it has paid off and even though the terrain is overwhelmingly political, Guha is able to present a synthesis. This is a timely gift as the nation approaches the 60th anniversary of its Independence. Guha’s book is a tour de force on at least four counts.
First, the sources that he uses are new and could well be considered "scoops". He has mined various archives (particularly the Nehru Memorial Library), memoirs and private papers of principal players. The result is that he is able to add significantly to our understanding of recent history. He has, for example, used the collection of P.N. Haksar, Indira Gandhi’s key aide during 1969-1972. In addition to now-forgotten journals and magazines, he has also taken the trouble to locate the recollections of key civil servants like Penderel Moon, C.D. Deshmukh, Yezdi Gundevia and B. Sivaraman, and use them in the fascinating story he weaves on the achievements and accomplishments, the trials and the tribulations of the world’s most populous and diverse democracy. It is a story of India from an Indian perspective—thus American, Russian and Chinese sources are missing. Rod McFarquahar’s location of the India-China war in domestic Chinese politics finds no mention. But this is only a quibble.
Second, the style he adopts is easy-flowing, conversational. Clearly, Guha is aiming to appeal to the widest possible audience and is not writing just for his peers. His writing is always marked by clarity and is remarkably free from obfuscation. Most of our academics—historians, economists, sociologists and political scientists—seem to think that profundity of thought is best reflected by prolixity of expression. Guha, like the man he admires most in academics, Andre Beteille, is an exception, and this book is testimony to that. The framework of a scholar never disappears even as Guha conveys what he has to say lucidly and in prose that has great verve and vivacity.
Third, the scope of what he has taken up could have deterred anybody but Guha is able to pull it off. The only other book I can recall with a similar ambition is India After Independence by Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee that was published by Viking in 1999 and that still has great value, stronger than Guha’s on economics particularly but lacking his animated style. Earlier there had been Francine Frankel’s India: A Political Economy 1947-1977. Guha has new sources, writes more engagingly and evocatively, while the production values of the publisher Macmillan are far superior. A book should not just be a pleasure to read but also to see and touch. There are more scholarly, individual political, economic and social histories of India since 1947 but the integration of all three is Guha’s achievement. What is particularly noteworthy is that in his endeavour to provide a "national" history, Guha is sensitive to numerous "regional" histories that have shaped contemporary India. Thus, charismatic personalities like Phizo and Annadurai more than get their due, denied to them so far.
Fourth, the substance of what he has to say has great relevance. Guha has always been an unabashed Nehru-phile, and for good reason. But unlike most others of that ilk, he is also a great admirer of others of that generation, notably Patel, Rajaji and, most of all, Dr Ambedkar. Not blind to the "mistakes" and missed opportunities during 1947-1964, Guha revisits Nehru’s era and places his achievements in today’s context. The Haksar papers shed new light on India’s support to Bangladesh. Guha has also had the courage of changing opinions that have informed his previous writings. For instance, he does not make Indira Gandhi’s Emergency out to be a black-and-white case and is willing to lay blame at JP’s door as well. Guha has a wide conception of history and does not confine himself to "big" history—the stuff of politics and personalities. He writes brilliantly on "small" history as well—the history of people reflected in sports, in films and music, and in numerous popular protests and agitations.
Guha’s book throws up the larger issue of official records and their availability to scholars. We must learn from the US in this regard, even while accepting that many things in our government get done orally and are not committed to paper—the Nehru period being an exception, and that entirely because of Nehru himself. Robert Dallek has been able to produce masterpieces of political history on Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon because he was fortunate enough to live in a country where bureaucratic memoranda and reports were made available. Institutional and individual archives must be thrown open to interested scholars and academics if more works as compellingly enlightening and enriching as Guha’s are to be written on India’s post-Independence history for the benefit of the younger generation especially. A dispensation that has given the country a landmark Right to Information Act should see this opening up as an essential element of transparent governance. Guha’s magnum opus should also encourage a newer generation of Indian historians to devote their time and energies to researching and publishing on contemporary India, instead of working only on the colonial or pre-colonial era.
(Jairam Ramesh is the minister of state for commerce. )