No subject

Sumit Sarkar wrote a review of Guha=92s India after Gandhi for New Left
Review (56, March-April 2009), which he ends with an interesting
comment:
=93Welcome as India after Gandhi is for its initiation of a new field of
contemporary historiography, one is left half-yearning for the book
Guha did not write=94.

I think Sarkar has sufficiently shown, despite his non-polemic
sympathetic tone for a fellow historian, that Guha can never write
=93the book=94. Sarkar does appreciate this =93clear and comprehensive
account of the course of events=94. But =93Guha offers no overall theses
as to how the India of 1947 became that of today. Instead he embarks
on a narration of political events, deftly interwoven with
socio-cultural and economic developments. Along the way he provides a
set of individual political profiles, often interesting and amusingly
drawn. One occasionally feels that he overuses this strategy,
especially since, barring a few individuals=97Nehru, Patel, Sheikh
Abdullah, Indira Gandhi or Jayprakash Narayan=97many were not as
significant as the character-driven plot structure, weighted towards
party leaders, makes them out to be. Other social forces and
structures are inevitably downplayed=94.

The narrative is =93uncritical=94 based on =93journalistic sources=94.

=93More broadly, what is missing in terms of Guha=92s framing questions is
any analysis of the tensions between national unity and democracy, and
the ways in which the concerns of the former=97military security,
internal sovereignty=97have not infrequently hollowed out the content of
the latter=94.

Sarkar finds many =93large questions, which Guha does not address=94. But w=
hy?

=93This is not an incidental drawback, but flows from the
liberal-Nehruvian nationalism that is the book=92s chief ideological
marker=94.

HENCE, Ramachandra Guha=92s book is more an exercise in story-telling -
=93a thoughtful survey of the period in fluent, lucid prose=94.

--=20
"In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from
time immemorial ... the present year of course always excepted."
-- A German refugee, circa 1867 --

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