Would you believe it? As a nation, we are over 63 years old! Who would have thought that India, with all its complexities and its myriad contradictions, would not only survive but even flourish to become today the world’s largest democracy? To see in perspective the enormous difficulties we went through and the manner in which they were tackled, you have only to read Ramchandra Guha’s “India after Gandhi”.
As two of the blurbs say, it makes for “racy reading” and is one of those few books which, in spite of being 775 pages, leaves you wishing for more.
How commmunalism was faced, how the decision that India should be a secular state (and not one based on religion) was persisted with, the enormous refugee problem which followed partition, how these refugees were re-settled, how the idea of the constitution and the clauses of the constitution were hotly debated in Parliament and arrived at, how the Hindu Code Bill was fought over before finally being passed ( “60 million Hindu women came under its purview”), how adult franchise was decided upon when many all over the world predicted that it would never work, how the first and subsequent elections were held – all make for exciting reading.
Practically half of the book covers the prime ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru, this most remarkable man we had at the helm of affairs for the first seventeen years. Even before independence, he had organized the Asian Relations Conference although it is only now that it is becoming fashionable to say that Asia is beginning to count in world affairs.
At a time when the Russians were being treated as untouchables, he arranged for Krushchev and Bulganin to visit India over three to four long weeks! How he slipped up and made the biggest mistake of his multi-faceted career -the China debacle of 1962 – is also recounted in detail.
The Bandung conference, the concept of Fabian Socialism, the rise of the South East Asian tigers, the Bangladesh War, the Babri Masjid vs Ram Janmabhoomi controversy, the coming, finally, of liberalisation and reform are also all covered well.
–Agencies