It’s now 20 years: Reforms Vicenary: 1991-2011

It’s now 20 years—a generational epoch—since the 1991 economic reforms that have helped spur the fastest economic growth in our country’s history, and that have embedded us in an ever-more-complicated world. That 1991 also brought another pivot point, the fall of the Soviet Union, and seemed to signal a profound global switch: the victory of market capitalism and liberal democracy. But 20 years later, the meaning of 1991 looks more blurry.

Authoritarian China controls the world’s most dynamic economy, while the beacon of liberal democracy—the United States—finds its legitimacy chastened and its economic momentum checked, with no clear idea of how to renew that impetus. The neoliberal dream embodied in the ‘Washington Consensus’ has evaporated and, while China increasingly asserts itself as a powerful sovereign actor, the idea that there could emerge an attractive model that is styled around a ‘Beijing Consensus’ seems delusive.

Where, in this transformed, undecided world does India—itself changing profoundly, and ambivalent about its options and desires—stand? How is economic expansion altering our own society—and our place in the world? What is India’s post-liberalisation story, and how does it fit both with our own account of what we wish to be, and with a new global story?

We have now an entire post-1991 generation of adult Indians for whom the ambiguities of coalition politics, a volatile Hindu nationalism and intense caste politics are simply parts of the landscape—as are the market economy, dynamic growth rates, traffic hell and the electronic media. They have been reared in the age of economics. If in the 20th century India’s search was for political freedom, today most Indians are in search of wealth—and power.

Yet, in that search for wealth, it’s worth remembering that economic advantages are not always best achieved by economistic means. Achieving them requires a more complex view of human beings, and of the world, than the dismal science can ever allow. The greatest economists are not the whizkid ‘quants’ trying to model and predict the future in numerical terms. The greatest have been those—Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes—with insight into human psychology and how the nature of uncertainty itself shapes human actions. Keynes, in 1937, wrote: “We assume that the present is a much more serviceable guide to the future than a candid examination of past experience would show it to have been hitherto. In other words we largely ignore the prospect of future changes about the actual character of which we know nothing.”

As Indians seek now to expand and consolidate the opportunities opened by the reforms of 1991, we need more than ever to think systematically about such uncertainties. Republics that endure and prosper are those that balance optimism about the future with a sense of the threats that may spring.

In our exuberance, we forget we cannot stay insulated from a dysfunctional neighbourhood.

“India is firmly on the growth expressway,” Goldman Sachs declared a few years ago, but the future is seldom reached by a through-route, nor can we foresee it in an economist’s graph or forecast. And only in the rhetoric of politicians do we reach out to grasp the future—more often, it hits us in the face, from unnoticed angles and with unexpected force. “The paradigmatic moment of political awareness”, the political theorist John Dunn reminds us, is Julius Caesar’s greeting his least-expected assassin, “Et tu Brute?”

It is clear that structurally, the fundamentals are now aligned to sustain India’s economic expansion. The country’s demographics, its levels of savings and investment, and its entrepreneurial talents could indeed enable significant growth to continue for another generation and more.

But the world consists not just of structures and trends—it is made up also of agency, and of actors. And how we cope with our own actions and their unforeseen results, as well as the often unpredictable actions of others, will be decisive for whether India’s economic potential is realised or squandered.

Twenty years on, the most important legacy of 1991 is that it has given us real choices to make, for better or worse. In making those choices—political judgements—two facts are crucial. The first is that we now have a very limited window of opportunity during which to get things right with respect to our productive capacities and competitive abilities—five years at most, perhaps ten. The second is that the decisions we take will have long-term effects, and will set us on paths that will be hard to alter. In that sense, the real turning point in our economic prospects will lie just ahead—and not back in 1991.

One of the most striking transformations since 1991 has been in our psychological outlook. Changes in the material world produced by economic growth—directly or vicariously experienced—have sparked extraordinary optimism about the future. Whether measured by levels of the stockmarket, investment, policy forecasts, it’s an optimism that seems insulated against political uncertainties, terrorism and the corruption that marks so much of what passes for everyday life in India.

Similar optimism pervades popular views. In 2009, when the effects of the financial crisis were cascading across the world, the Pew Global Attitudes group surveyed opinion in G-20 countries and found Indians to be the most positive in their attitudes towards market capitalism. Ninety-one per cent of Indians could describe their economic situation as good; 96 per cent were positive about trade with other countries; and 81 per cent agreed that people were better off in a market economy despite the inequalities. Such survey figures often do demand a dose of salt—but still they indicate the enthusiasm of the new convert, for whom the tests of experience lie ahead.

It used to be said that Indians didn’t bother to pursue wealth because of their belief in karma, a fatalistic determinism that held back economic development. Now, as we hear repeatedly—whether it is from caste groups or from national leaders—that “our turn has come”, there’s equally the danger of an inverted complacency: a deterministic faith in our upward economic surge. There is no way of knowing how history works, but it certainly does not work like a game of musical chairs.

The new optimism that fills young India is undoubtedly a good thing. Economic growth, despite being uneven (in fact, precisely when uneven), does have the initial psychological effect of encouraging hope and optimism. This in turn shapes behaviour. People may become initially less risk-averse, more willing to borrow, to invest—and to believe in the future. But setbacks can have equally powerful reverse effects. Think of Japan: once the paragon of consumerism, today shops there implore people, not very successfully, to buy.

It would be a mistake to imagine our future on the basis of extrapolating economic trend numbers. The core problems we face—questions of social justice, of ecology and natural resources, social conflict, an insecure neighbourhood—are not merely external constraints on our search for wealth, matters to be addressed in due course. They will have to be tackled all at once, and this will often generate contradictory choices. But working to sustain multiple commitments, often in tension with one another, is a lesson our founders taught us.

Three tensions—domestic, international and global—are intrinsic to our economic possibilities and will frame the choices we make.

We should by now be well aware of the accumulating domestic strains accentuated by our post-1991 growth pattern—a pattern economic analysts like Michael Walton have called ‘disequalising’. It results in fantastic over-concentrations of wealth, ‘Antilian’ islands teetering above impoverished oceans. Walton notes that the private wealth of India’s billionaires has surged dramatically in recent years (from less than one per cent of GDP in 1997 to a peak of over 23 per cent in 2008), and as a share of GDP, it’s now close to that of Russia and Saudi Arabia, even while India’s level of per capita income is much lower than in those countries—and it is a democracy.

The rich, we have learned to recognise, are a necessary public good for every society. But there are also times one has to ask the question: What exactly is the social utility of such levels of wealth concentration?

Precisely because we are a democracy, there will be pressures for redistribution. Yet, unsurprisingly, these have been couched in terms that seek preferential treatment for groups defined by social identities—which, in many cases, do indeed correlate with deprivation. But the correlations are increasingly contentious, not least because identifying them calls for a fair number of discretionary judgements—and the disputes as well as the attempts to smooth them over (“Let’s extend quotas”) run the risk of jamming our economic progress. We need to move away from notions of social justice based on redistribution, and towards an Indian social democracy based on expanding participation and giving the citizenry universal access to the dynamic parts of the economy.

That can only be done by a steroidal enhancement of our human capital. Spreading education and improving skills have to be the one central task to which we commit, now, our accumulating wealth. Azim Premji’s judgement about where to invest his wealth is exactly right—and it will need many more to clamber off their Antilias and Anandams and follow his example, as well as more sensible government efforts, if we are going to scale up to the levels we need.

Twenty years on, it’s time to broaden attention from economic liberalisation, toward achieving knowledge and skill liberalisation—so that Indians can participate in the growth economy. Rapid experiment and innovation will be needed as we search for effective ways to educate and train millions of Indians in quick march. We are talking, in effect, about an educational revolution: revolutionary in methods, scope, speed—above all, in will.

We have so far relied on 19th century models of education. It cries out for radical change.

Government will have to open up space for new ideas and approaches to building India’s human capital. Until now, we have relied on models developed in the 19th century—elite institutions and universities, supposedly fed by schools and colleges lower down the food chain—and on the amazing autodidactic capacities of Indians. Given the magnitude of the problem—one million Indians entering the workforce every month for the next 20 years—neither self-help nor lumbering governmental institutions can offer a strategy to educate citizens and make them socially mobile.

Lines of tension also loom in the international domain, in both our regional neighbourhood and the international economy.

Since 1991, the paths and prospects of India and Pakistan have dramatically diverged: if it is optimism that prevails in India, in Pakistan the dominant sentiments are resentment, victimhood and despair. Pakistan’s problems are severe. The country’s population is rapidly expanding, and it will likely be the world’s third most populous country by 2050. It has dismal social and human indicators, and its rate of growth is declining. Combined with the predicament of Afghanistan and the brittle veneer of order in Burma, the dysfunctionalities of our immediate region will hold back India’s progress: distracting attention and resources, extracting opportunity costs and hindering the economic integration of the subcontinent. The crises of these societies are deep; we are in no position to intervene to try to resolve them. Yet, neither will we be able to keep out. It will need considerable political skill to manage our economic development in this geopolitical terrain.

Beginning in 1991, we embraced an economic model based on the liberal premise of benign global integration—which for many years the western economies pressed on India. Yet, in today’s world of structural imbalances, the developed economies grow ambivalent about the liberal premise. They sense a threat in Asian economic growth—yet, also for their own purposes, need the economies of China and India to grow. The western economies, struggling to cope with the effects of trade imbalances, are likely to meander between efforts to protect their acquired gains, to intervene in and seek to regulate markets, and to push for greater access to growing markets.

The leaders of western economies recognise that India can be one of the main drivers of global economic growth. But, the more India succeeds in integrating, the more it may face pushback, as its growth collides with a sense in western economies that this threatens their prosperity. Already among western electorates there is a popular reaction against open markets—and their governments will be compelled to be more politically active in the management of their economies.

India, for its part, needs to be careful and shrewdly strategic as it deals both with global markets and competitor states. The fact that India appears frequently now on the business pages of the New York Times and in the Financial Times is driven by western self-interest in India’s growth. This is perfectly reasonable. India’s likely demands for consumer goods, for major infrastructure projects and for defence wares—makes it the last great economic frontier. Given India’s scale, if it maintains its current growth rates and profile, that will be sufficient to keep western economies in business. The latter only really need the revenue-rich Indian state—the buyer of armaments, and of major infrastructure— and a relatively small part of India’s society, the part that can hang out at DLF Emporio in Delhi or the Palladium in Lower Parel, Mumbai, to provide the necessary markets.

NREGA is fine, but when will we address the problems that made it necessary in the first place?

But is that the sort of growth we should be interested in? The standard leftist response, of course, is to abhor with full moral fervour any growth linked to the global economy—while remaining unable to offer a viable account of how to improve the lives of the majority of Indians. A more intelligent response, though one requiring greater political skill, is to figure how to leverage the current western interest in Indian growth to the advantage of those parts of the society that really need to benefit.

The third paradox is a truly global one—one that escapes and encompasses state boundaries. India’s post-1991 globalisation has not only increasingly connected it to international flows of goods, services, capital and ideas, it has also inserted India into a universal history of nature, a history in which all humans, whatever state they happen to live in, have a stake. It’s a history that is making humans, even as they have imagined themselves nature’s master, become its ever more abject supplicant.

For Indians, this has a particularly sharp edge, because, just when they feel that they are gaining some control over their material conditions, those material conditions are proving unsustainable in ecological terms. The growth pattern we’ve fallen into essentially replicates the high natural resource and energy use that the earlier growth economies followed. But for latecomers, it’s unlikely to be a repeatable ploy—especially not for an economy of India’s scale. What should India do? The answers remain in dispute. Alter growth models; trust in the market; or place hope in technical solutions. Frugality, price, science—individually, none seems adequate, but perhaps there is a winning combination.

Crisis prompted the economic reforms of 1991. It’s ironic, then, that the most recent global economic crisis has produced virtually no further reforms or policy ambition—at a time when much remains to be done. The one significant initiative in social and economic policy in recent years, NREGA, is an attempt to mitigate the failures of the Indian agrarian economy. The real question to ask is not whether NREGA is working or not, but: When are we going to address the causes which made NREGA necessary in the first place? There will be more crises and surprises ahead—and we’ll need to make better use of them, as we did in 1991.

{ Sunil Khilnani in Outlook | Magazine | Jan 10, 2011}

The Wall of Modern India: Ramchandra Guha

In Makers of Modern India, the historian Ramachandra Guha presents excerpts from the speeches and writings of 19 men and women – beginning with Raja Rammohan Roy – whose ideas influenced the formation of the Indian republic. Sharing space with iconic figures like Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar are lesser-known thinkers such as the 19th century feminist Tarabai Shinde.

The author of a powerful tract comparing the situations of men and women, and the liberal Muslim writer Hamid Dalwai, who encouraged social reform and modernism within his community. A conversation with Guha:

Q. How, for the purposes of this book, did you define "modern India"? What criteria did you use while selecting these thinkers? 
A. "Modernity" here is defined in terms of the challenge posed to the culture and civilisation of the subcontinent by a more technologically dynamic and aggressive civilisation – which is what happened when the East India Company came in. These challenges provided a wake-up call, which was accepted by Raja Rammohan Roy. I call him "The First Liberal" because he confronted head-on this encounter with another civilisation.

There were several criteria for choosing these thinkers: the originality of their ideas, the quality of their writing, and whether their ideas travelled across the centuries. Some people – such as Aurobindo or Vivekanand – are excluded partly because of the archaic nature of their prose, which hasn't travelled well. But when Roy talks in the 1820s about the freedom of the press, you can still see the relevance of what he's saying.

Also, they had to be thinkers AND doers. I didn't take pure intellectuals and I didn't take pure practising politicians. Indira Gandhi, for example, didn't write much, unlike her father.

Q. The disagreements between these thinkers make for fascinating reading – there are differences of opinion that range from the respectful arguments between Tagore and Gandhi to the outright hostility that Ambedkar shows towards Gandhi, to the complex relationship between Nehru and Rajagopalachari. What conflict do you find most illuminating in terms of how it pits one idea of India against another? 
A. I wouldn't want to pick just one. I think there are a series of very interesting conflicts, starting with Bal Gangadhar Tilak (who I designate "the militant nationalist") vs Gopal Krishna Gokhale ("the liberal reformer"). The book is constructed as a series of arguments and debates, which are part of any political tradition. These are debates about principles, and sometimes they can have a sharp edge. For example, Ambedkar is quite bitter about Gandhi personally. But the substance is about the origins of the caste system, the structural inequalities and how one can remove them. Gandhi's perspective was that the upper-caste Hindus should purify themselves, while Ambedkar said no, the lower castes should assert their self-respect. These are two different routes to the emancipation of the Dalits, and that's what makes it so interesting.

In a sense, this is a multi-vocal book, about multiple legacies. It's not a prescriptive book at all. One can sympathise with Gandhi, or with Ambedkar. There's a brilliant polemic by Rammanohar Lohia against the English language, while there's an equally vigorous argument by Rajagopalachari in its favour.

Q. In Part III ("Nurturing the Nation"), you have a selection of Gandhi's writings on various subjects, followed by the views of his adversaries like Jinnah and Ambedkar. Then in the final chapter you return to Gandhi, who revisits or clarifies his position while answering his critics. Why this unusual structure? 
A. Gandhi was the fulcrum around which these debates arose, and though he's developed a reputation for rigidity, what's always struck me is his open-mindedness – his ability and willingness to revisit certain positions he took, to modify them. When I was doing this section, I thought this would be a nice way of showing that side of the man.

Having said that, he was certainly not above a bit of sarcasm or point-scoring in certain situations. At one point, when he mentions Ambedkar publishing a speech at his own expense, he says, "Dr Ambedkar has priced the pamphlet at 1 rupee. It would be better if he had priced it at 8 annas – then it would have reached a wider public." A completely gratuitous piece of advice!

Q. The excerpt from Tarabai Shinde's book about the suppression of women in Maharashtra is such a raw, angry, sarcastic piece of writing – truly remarkable for its time. Why is she not better known?
A. I was fortunate that Shinde has been very skilfully translated, by Rosalind O'Hanlon. The whole pamphlet was a goldmine for scholars, but the bits I excerpted were the ones that would appeal to a reader who isn't an expert on Maharashtra but is interested in the history of India or in literary craftsmanship more generally. One shouldn't get the impression from my book that everything these thinkers wrote was brilliant or incisive; often there was bombast and meandering. These excerpts might give a slightly exaggerated picture of the quality of their writing. I had to cull out the irrelevant stuff.

Q. You've also included excerpts from Nehru's more obscure writings – his letters to chief ministers. Are efforts underway to make his less-known, post-Independence writings more accessible? 
A. For Nehru, it would require a detached eye – it can't be done by an official historian or a paid-up devotee of the Gandhi-Nehru family. The writings would have to show some of the ways in which he was wrong, and locate him in his time. Unfortunately, it's only darbari, courtly historians who are allowed access to Nehru.

But Nehru aside, I hope some young scholar does a good one-volume anthology of Rajagopalachari's political writings. Or Lohia's political writings. In this book they are represented in only 30-40 pages.

Q. You include the RSS leader M.S. Golwalkar, who stridently called for a "Hindu Rashtra". What legacy justifies his inclusion in a book full of nuanced thinkers?  
A. Golwalkar presented a very influential philosophy in very direct and clear terms. I had to have someone who expressed the Hindu political philosophy – the point of view that Hindu ideas and thought are the bedrock of Indian civilisation and should continue to be so. Veer Savarkar may have been more intellectually sophisticated, but Golwalkar had a much bigger impact, in terms of the RSS and the BJP: Advani, Vajpayee and others were trained by him. His ideology, his ideas about statecraft, our attitude towards the West, and the relationship between religions, had a profound impact on one of India's major political movements. So even if I personally didn't like him, he had to be there – he had helped shape modern India.

Q. You end the book with a very intriguing figure, the Muslim liberal Hamid Dalwai, who is relatively obscure even though he lived recently. What makes him so significant?  
A. I discovered Dalwai in the mid-1990s. I bought his book Muslim Politics in Secular India, became fascinated by it, and talked about him with his friend and translator Dilip Chitre. I quoted from his work in a newspaper article around 10 years ago, and that got my Muslim friends very angry because they couldn't stomach his radicalism. As you know, these things become very black and white. A Hindu can't say Muslims must reform themselves, even if he's already been telling Hindus to be less bigoted – someone like me, for instance, whose views on Hindutva are well known (chuckles).

But Dalwai's real significance struck me in the post-9/11 global world, and given the crisis Islam is facing now. He speaks to that issue. He and Rammohan Roy are complementary figures, because both were fighting the prevalent orthodoxy of their time – Rammohan Roy was as much of a heretical Hindu for his time as Dalwai was a heretical Muslim in his. But Roy lived into his 60s and became well-know, whereas Dalwai died in his early 40s.

Q. If you had to pick one person to make this a round number – 20 – who would it be? 
A. It's interesting you ask this, because just this morning it struck me that there was one person I should have included. He represented a very influential and important point of view, and he was very eloquent: I'm talking about the engineer M. Visvesvaraya, a technological modernist who wrote a famous book Industrialise or Perish. He was an outward-looking, rational person who was famous for building a steel dam in Karnataka, much before Nehru. He anticipated the model we have now, with technology transforming society, and he also anticipates Nehru, J.R.D. Tata, Narayana Murthy in different ways. He would have made a fitting twentieth.

{By- Jai Arjun Singh, 7th Nov 2010, The Sunday Guardian.}

Indian experiment of making nation: Ramachandra Guha

New Delhi: The well-regarded and influential writer and historian Ramachandra Guha is not the author of his newest book, Makers of Modern India. Instead, he has selected and compiled the writings of 19 Indians who he feels played a formative and pivotal role in the shaping of modern India over the last two centuries. In an interview Guha explains his choices.

Edited excerpts:

Some names in your list are very familiar while others are virtually unknown. What selection criteria did you follow?

I chose people who were active in politics and social reform, but at the same time left behind a significant corpus of writing. That is to say, those who were both thinkers and doers. Which is why, for example, Sardar Patel is not in the list—he didn’t leave behind books or essays of any substance or depth. Nor did I want pure writers. So, they had to bridge the barrier between thought and action. Then, they had to speak to their time as well as ours. Even among the famous figures, I have highlighted their less-known works. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote three celebrated books before Independence, but since I was interested in Nehru the state maker, I focused on his fortnightly letters to chief ministers, which deal with minority rights, foreign policy, economic planning, etc. Similarly, we are familiar with the writings of B.R. Ambedkar on the caste system, but not with his profound meditations on democracy and constitutionalism.

Is it fair to say that Gandhi is the most influential person in this list?

It is for the reader to decide which of these 19 individuals is the most compelling. This is a book of conversation and argument. The two core sections of the book, sections III and IV, have Gandhi and Nehru as their central figures, respectively. In section III, the debates revolve around Gandhi and his work. In section IV, Nehru plays the same role. Thus Nehru’s writings are followed by the writings of his critics to the right, such as Golwalkar, and to the left, such as Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan (JP). A forgotten figure this book rehabilitates is the Muslim liberal, Hamid Dalwai, who spoke of the need for modernizing Islam. In the 1960s he wrote that unless an avant garde liberal elite Muslim developed in India, there would be a revival of Hindu conservatism. Dalwai is relevant not just to present-day India but to a post-9/11 world. Gandhi once reportedly referred to Rammohan Roy as a pygmy. Can one sum up their different philosophies in a few lines? You can’t. My hope is for this book—which is the first serious compendium of modern Indian political thought— to act as a spark for other books.

There are only three Muslim names. Are there any common threads in their ideas?

Syed Ahmed Khan and Hamid Dalwai might have some aspects in common. I would like the readers to draw these out. The place of Indian Muslims is very important and unique because they are a large minority. In other countries, Muslims are either an insignificant minority or the ruling majority. Indian Muslims thus face peculiar dilemmas. The theme of inter-religious relations in a multi-religious state runs through the book—it is articulated in different ways by Dalwai, Syed Ahmad Khan and Jinnah on the Muslim side and Gandhi, Golwalkar and Nehru on the Hindu side.

Mohammad Iqbal is missing.

Iqbal was an interesting and original poet and thinker, but he is not among the makers of modern India. A more real complaint would be the absence of Subhas Bose, Patel and Indira Gandhi.

Would you call any individual a negative influence on India?

In my epilogue I have written that 16 of them are still relevant. The three I excluded are Golwalkar, Jinnah and Tilak. Tilak is a representative of militant nationalism. He saw people like Gokhale as being too accommodating of the British. Now that we are a free nation that debate is no longer relevant. Jinnah is not relevant either because he wanted a Muslim nation and obtained it. Golwalkar’s ideas shaped our society but the fate of Pakistan and other theocratic countries is a warning for us not to follow him. These three are important for historical and antiquarian reason, while the other 16 still speak to us—Tarabai Shinde and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya on gender, JP on the rights of the Nagas and Kashmiris, C. Rajagopalachari on economic freedom and election reforms to curb the influence of money and business, and so on.

Who besides Gandhi in this list can be called a thinker of global significance?

Gandhi does have a global reach, but others are relevant too. India is a large, diverse and very complex country. Nation building here was a massive project. Given the scale of this enterprise and the quality of thinkers it has produced, the Indian experiment is relevant to the emerging multiculturalism in Europe, and to African transitions from dictatorship to democracy.

And there are three Bengalis in this list.

Only two. Bengalis dominate the humanities in India—and Bengali historians tend to exaggerate the importance of their compatriots. I didn’t start out with the idea of debunking the Bengalis, but the Maharashtrian social reformers played a much more important and fundamental role in shaping modern India. Amartya Sen, for example, never talks about Shinde, Phule and Ambedkar, while he has plenty of time for Tagore. In this he is representative. Our leading historians and social scientists tend to be Bengalis; this is to the detriment of the recognition of the substantial and enduring contributions of other regions.

{Interviewed by Himanshu Bhagat, published in 'Mint' on Monday, Oct. 25 2010}

Interview: Ramachandra Guha – Modern India’s Historian

In an exclusive interview with Flipkart, Ramachandra Guha talks about his latest book “Makers of Modern India”, his criteria for choosing the personalities in “Makers of Modern India”, his childhood ambition of becoming a cricketer, advice to young writers on earning success, why he refuses to write fiction and much more!

Introduction

Who is Ramachandra Guha and what makes him tick?
I do a job like anyone else. Just as a software engineer writes code, a doctor examines patients, a lawyer takes briefs, a teacher lectures students – I’m a scholar who does research and writes books. Mine is a vocation like any other; more in the public eye but probably of less public consequence than the vocation of a doctor, teacher, lawyer, or entrepreneur.

Would you say your childhood was integral in shaping you as a writer?
Not really. I became a writer by accident. I had a very happy childhood and grew up in a very beautiful part of India and studied in a well-wooded campus.

I became a writer much later in life. Nothing prepared me for this. In fact my childhood ambition was to play cricket for India. I played for my school and college elevens, but in my early twenties I realized that I wasn’t good enough even to play for a Ranji Trophy team. So I took the scholarly route and did a PhD. Unlike many other writers, it was quite late in my life I realized this would be my calling.

Who and what were your inspirations to become a writer?
Well, I did a PhD, which meant I had to train to do rigorous, deep and thorough research. My thesis took me four and a half years and was on the social history of the relations between peasants and forests in the Himalaya, from the 19th century right up to the Chipko movement. I enjoyed the rigour of research. I enjoyed battling with complex ideas and studying patterns of social change in all their variety and diversity.

Slowly I realized that the kinds of things I was working on needed to be communicated to a wider audience, so I started writing more accessible prose, and also began contributing to newspapers. Becoming a full-time writer was a gradual process. It wasn’t a eureka moment where I read a wonderful book and said, “I’ve read this book by George Orwell, I must also become a writer!” It happened slowly, over a period of time.

What is it about history that fascinates you?
Well, I think it’s this country that fascinates me, the modern history of this country. I argue in “Makers of Modern India” and also my last book “India After Gandhi”, that we’re living in an extraordinary, interesting time in Indian history. This is a country, which is very large, very diverse, very divided, and undergoing these five simultaneous revolutions: the national, democratic, urban, industrial and social. This churning has produced social conflict, social emancipation, great leaders, corrupt leaders. Some parts of India are marked by peace, prosperity, and tranquility, while other parts of India are marked by poverty, disparity, and violence.

At no other time in human history have social conflicts been so richly articulated and expressed. So for anyone dealing with words or images it is a privilege to be in India. Why are Indian films so robust and diverse? Why is Indian fiction so vigorous and creative? India is a difficult country to be a citizen, but if you’re a historian, a playwright, a novelist, a filmmaker, a journalist, then India is the place to be.

On Makers of Modern India

“Makers of Modern India” is different to “India After Gandhi”, could you describe the format of the book?
It’s an anthology. I’ve done other anthologies in the past, of writings on cricket and the environment, but this one is more important. It’s an orchestra of 19 brilliant individuals and I’m the conductor; putting their thoughts in a particular order, setting one idea or thinker against another, exploring their tensions and arguments.

This book evolved over a period of time. It could not have been done by a younger person. I’ve been reading people like Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore and Ambedkar for 15-20 years. As I worked on “India after Gandhi” and various other projects, I realized there was a very rich and robust tradition of political debate and argument in modern India, starting with Rammohan Roy and continuing on with the Marathi social reformers, through Gandhi and Nehru and their critics right up to the 1970s. I first thought I’d write a book about it in my own words, selectively quoting from these people, as a sort of history of debates on democracy.

Yet, as I started working on the project, I realized the writings themselves were so powerful, so vivid, so evocative, that they should be presented in their own words, with this kind of orchestration placing them in some sort of context for the reader. Especially younger readers, who might not know some of these individuals, so they get a sense of who they were, where they were coming from, what they were trying to say, what they were trying to do, and hence this book emerged.

What kind of research went behind this book and how long did you take to complete it?
It may have been about five years ago when I decided to edit, introduce and compile this book. In 2005-6 I had a debate with Amartya Sen on intellectual traditions in India and this book is in a sense an outcome of that debate. But as I said, somewhere subconsciously it’s been evolving in me for a very long time. Had I not been grappling with these thinkers and their legacies for so long, I could not have done this.

What are the common traits of the personalities featured in the book, was there a specific criteria you employed when you were choosing who to profile?
The criteria I employed were, the people who featured in this book had to be both thinkers and activists. Not pure intellectuals. Radhakrishnan, for example, was a very important figure in the middle decades of the 20th century, but he was an academic philosopher, not a political activist. Of course he was later President of India but that was more a symbolic, ceremonial role.

So they had to be thinkers and activists. On the other hand where you have intellectuals like Radhakrishnan who are not actors, you have actors like Subhas Chandra Bose, Indira Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, who are very important in shaping the history of our nation – but they did not leave behind a corpus of written work. They were out and out doers, they were not thinker-activists in the way in which Gandhi and Ambedkar and the others in this book were.

The second criteria was that their writing had to be of a certain quality and relevance. They had to be speaking of important social and political issues. Not inward, psychological, spiritual writings, but reflections on caste and gender inequality, on religion and politics, on India’s attitude to the world.

The third criteria for inclusion was that the prose had to travel across the generations. You read Rammohan Roy writing in 1820 and he’s still fresh and alive today! Whereas some other thinkers, who I won’t name, wrote a very stiff, formal and archaic prose. There are some 19th century political activists whose prose is incomprehensible to the younger reader.

These were the three defining criteria. They had to be thinkers and activists. They had to be writing about important social and political issues. And their writings had to be clear, accessible and timeless with the ability to communicate across generations.

Can you comment on the timelessness of the ideas presented in the book?
This book reflects the sheer size, diversity and unique nature of the Indian political experiment. We’re trying to create a united country out of so many diverse parts that we’re trying to run democratically. This social churning has thrown up some very interesting and original thinkers.

These writers speak about freedom of the press, the plight of the farmers, the position of women, about the need for Hindu-Muslim harmony. However, this book is not a manifesto or work of advocacy. I’m not telling the reader what to make of its contents. I’m presenting this extraordinary richness and diversity of our political tradition through 19 representative figures. I’m telling the reader of today that if you’ll acquaint yourself with the history of India of the last 150 years through reading this book, you’ll get a sense of the sophistication of thought, of argument, of the real personality of these people. Now what is fresh about them, what is relevant about them, I’ll leave for each reader to decide.

It seems peculiar that you’ve included Jinnah as a “Maker of Modern India”.
Jinnah is a controversial inclusion, but I had to include him because he shaped the history of our country – for good or for bad. Through the two-nation theory, the politics of the 20s and 30s evolved in a particular direction. Because Pakistan was created the politics of the 50s and 60s evolved in a certain way. You could say he is a negative influence but he is an influence all the same.

Nehru would not have so vigorously promoted Hindu-Muslim harmony had it not been for Jinnah. He certainly shaped the history of our country in a very profound way and his writings are very eloquent and direct. The case of Pakistan is made with such clarity and force; you have to contend with it. Including Jinnah (or even Golwalkar), doesn’t mean I endorse what they did or what they stand for. It’s simply that as a historian I’ve recognized the profound impact they had on the history of our country.

On contemporary politicians versus The Makers of Modern India We should not expect contemporary politicians to be thinkers because there are very few original thinkers amongst politicians anywhere in the world. Sarkozy is not a well read or articulate man. David Cameron gets someone else to write his speeches for him. The only thinking politician of today is probably Obama.

What we should be worried about is that politicians of today are so ignorant of the legacies they claim to represent. Mayawati hasn’t read Ambedkar’s speeches to the Constituent Assembly, Rahul Gandhi does not appear to know about Nehru’s letters to Chief Ministers. That’s what we should be worried about. Even someone like George W Bush, who is as anti-intellectual as any President can get, would know the legacy of the founders of his country – he would know what Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln stood for. You don’t expect Rahul Gandhi to have the original ideas of a Nehru, but he should be more aware of his tradition and legacy.

Politicians who are also original thinkers are not common in any country or time period. A Nehru comes once in a generation, an Ambedkar comes once in a century, a Gandhi appears perhaps once in millennia – we were just fortunate they came together in 20th century India.

General (Miscellaneous)

As an avid cricket fan who has written a few books on the subject, what are your predictions for the upcoming World Cup?
I don’t normally predict and I should also say I’ve more or less stopped writing on cricket after Twenty20. I’m not a fan of Twenty20 at all. It’s a vulgar debasement of the game. ODIs are slightly better but Test cricket is the real cricket for me. Two months ago when India played Australia in a Test match in Bangalore, I was there for all five days. In that sense, I’m a purist, a romantic, an old-fashioned guy who likes Test cricket.

The other thing about me which is slightly peculiar, is that I’m not a cricketing jingoist. I like good cricket, I’m not really desperate for India to win. I appreciate good cricketers and I grew up admiring the West Indians. I’ve admired the Australians, the Pakistanis – Wasim Akram is one of my all time favourite cricketers. I want to see good cricket. Of course, I’d like India to win, but it’s not a top priority for me, it’s not something I’m obsessed about.

You’ve been a teacher who has taught all over the world, what has the experience been like?
I enjoy teaching. I enjoy working with young people. Teaching is very important. For someone like me it’s a constant source of nourishment and creativity to be in contact with young people. It’s hugely enjoyable.

A historian who thrives on and embraces archives of information on politics, what are your views on the WikiLeaks saga?
I have not thought it through seriously. Obviously at one level there are some shocking revelations that were uncovered. Yet on another level, diplomacy can only succeed if it’s done in private. I don’t think diplomacy can be conducted against the full glare of public opinion. You’ve had a tradition in most governments where only after 30 years are the documents of the period made open to the public and to scholars.

I don’t think you should be leaking all this and damaging relationships between countries. These are private communications. At a suitable time, say after 30 years, when the present controversies have died out, historians should have access to them so that they can assess why the issues arose in the first place. On balance I don’t think it’s a good idea to encourage this kind of rampant leaking of diplomatic information. At the same time I think the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder is unfortunate.

Advice to young writers who would like to start pursuing it as a career?
It’s very hard work. The first piece of advice is, reject the idea that you have to be inspired to write – that today I’m not in a mood to write but then tomorrow suddenly the creative juices flow! That’s rubbish. Writing is hard work. It’s like a factory worker at his lathe from 10-6. You have to go to your desk and write. If you are a historian or biographer, you have to go to the archives and look at dozens of files a day to find new or relevant material. If you’re a traveler or someone who bases his writing on real life experience – then go out into the countryside, go to different parts of India, talk to people from different backgrounds, if need be live in difficult circumstances. Consistency and hard work are most important. Creativity and imagination are secondary. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is you must read very widely. Don’t get stereotyped, don’t just read one kind of writer. Don’t read only one political tendency. If you’re a left-wing kind of person, read as much right-wing literature as possible. You must know what the other side thinks. In fact read more right-wing literature than left-wing literature, because then you can hone and refine your arguments and ideas.

Don’t be dogmatic in your approach, travel widely and work very hard. For the writer, there are no weekdays or weekends. Sachin Tendulkar is so good not just because of his natural gifts. At 37 he practices as hard in the nets as when he was 18. Hard work, discipline and rigour are the most important qualities.

Unless you are willing to be in it for the long haul and be patient, you can never really be a good writer.

Is there a particular reason you avoid writing fiction?
I have so much diversity in what I do; I write history, biographies, political commentary, cricket, different kinds of books, that confront different kinds of challenges. I’ve never had the desire to write fiction. Fiction has to come from within you.

Recently, at my book release in Bangalore, someone asked me, “You’ve written this big tome on history, but why don’t you now give us some saucy fiction?” I answered, with complete sincerity, “One of the reasons I don’t write fiction, is that there are various writers I’ve admired in the past, the British historian EP Thompson, the American cultural critic Lewis Mumford who wrote on ecology and town planning, the Caribbean writer CLR James who wrote the finest book on cricket, “Beyond a Boundary”, the Indian naturalist M. Krishnan, and I think, and what is common to these people? If I look at these people whom I admire, what’s common to them is that each of them wrote one novel and it was a bad novel.” So it’s a caution to me to never write a novel. I’m a historian, biographer and political commentator, that’s my calling.

Books that have changed your life?
That’s a complex question, but there are a few. Not changed my life, but the way I look at the world, there were books that changed my worldview. One book is George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia”, which I had bought in a pavement in Dehradun. I was in my early 20s and very attracted by Marxism. While reading this book, which is a wonderful and moving account of how the communist party destroyed the Spanish democratic movement in the 1930s, I realized how callous, instrumental and brutal the communist ideology would be in practice. In theory it was all about equality and liberty for all, but in reality it was totalitarian, anti-human and barbaric.

Another book that changed the way I looked at the world was a wonderful book published by a Gandhian publisher in Ahmedabad. It was called “Truth Called Them Differently”. It’s a reproduction of the letters between Tagore and Gandhi over a period of time. It’s about many things: India’s place in the world, the role of the English language, whether Indians should live simply or live as they choose – the debate is very rich and very productive. It also shows you the quality of the men as they argue with each other and are willing to change their position. You learn a lot about the Indian national movement, Indian culture and political traditions, but you also learn about the ability to adapt and change, when circumstances compel you to change.

There were other books too for example, a work by the great French historian Marc Bloch entitled “French Rural History”. This is a combination of environmental, social, economic and political history – a total history as the French call it. I read this book when I was starting my career as a historian and it impressed me greatly.

What are you currently reading?
It’s normally a mix. I might have a novel, a book on Indian history, a book about some other part of the world.

I just finished Ian McEwan’s “Solar”, which is a novel about a once brilliant scientist gone to seed. It’s not McEwan’s best work, still, it’s an acute psychological portrait of intellectual and moral corruption.

I’m now reading a wonderful book on the history of Paris called “Parisians” by Graham Robb, who is a very distinguished British writer on French affairs. It’s slices of the history of Paris through individuals. He starts with Napoleon’s first visit to Paris as a 19-year-old lieutenant. It goes on to follow various people who lived in Paris, the great novelist Zola’s wife for example. Then Robb writes of Hitler’s only visit to Paris during the war. It’s a marvelous book.

I’m also reading a memoir of a Sindhi woman writer, who grew up in Karachi and Hyderabad before partition and then had to flee into India. The book is very revealing about the impact of Partition on Sindhi Hindus.

What’s next for Ramachandra Guha?
For the long term, I have been working on (for several years) a multi-volume project on Gandhi. Each book will be self contained; a book on Gandhi’s years in South Africa, a book on Gandhi’s years in India, a book on the global impact of Gandhi – there will be at least three volumes and possibly a fourth, a kind of multi-volume series on Gandhi, with standalone books that are part of a larger series. Before that, I might come out with a collection of my political essays.

{ Interview By- Sailen,  Published: December 28, 2010 on Flipkart Blog.}