The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : It's a `phipty-phipty' success story: Guha

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Wednesday, May 09, 2007
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It's a `phipty-phipty' success story: Guha

Special Correspondent

HISTORY DOCUMENTED: CEO of Infosys Nandan Nilekani releasing the book `India After Gandhi' written by historian Ramachandra Guha (left) in Bangalore on Tuesday. — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

Bangalore: The greatest strength of historian Ramachandra Guha's latest book "India after Gandhi" — an analysis on how the world's largest democracy has survived defying the predictions of so many prophets of doom — is that it is "non-ideological." What's more, it is "enormously readable, almost like a suspense novel."

These compliments came from "dear friend of Ram" and CEO of Infosys Nandan Nilekani at the Bangalore launch of the book at a packed hall at Windsor Manor. The gathering included Governor T.N. Chaturvedi and some of Bangalore's best-known bureaucrats, theatre persons, artists and industrialists.

The book, said Mr. Nilekani, had made him see that problems of India, built on a solid democratic foundation, are only "issues of transient nature." The country was becoming an "open access society" thanks to intense competition in the area of business and politics, he said.

Mr. Guha may not entirely agree with Mr. Nilekani's "rosy-eyed view" (by his own confession) of contemporary India, whose success the author rates at "phipty-phipty," borrowing a phrase from comedy actor Johny Walker. The country now has more to offer "outside the political class," including philanthropic industrialists, feels Mr. Guha.

But that his reading of history is "non-ideological" and "non-partisan" was something he emphasised during his talk on the book. "I write as a historian and not as a ideologue," he said.

In his presentation, Mr. Guha talked of his journey from days when his single obsession was to play cricket for India to becoming the author of the first-ever book of history of post-Independence India.

Mr. Guha called the book "the most challenging book" he would ever perhaps write and hoped some of the ideas "hinted at here" would be carried forward by young researcher. Taking the audience through Indian history after 1947 in a sweep, he said his book told the story of the "unnatural nation" and "unlikely democracy" through an analysis of conflicts it faced and by portraying the lives of key individuals in the making of history.

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