Makers of modern India Edited by Ramachandra Guha, Viking, Rs 799

Ramachandra Guha is a professional intellectual. He wanders from one topic to another as fancy strikes him, turns out one fascinating book after another and has much fun by the way. He started with Verrier Elwin and the Himalayas; after that he suddenly changed direction and wrote a book about cricket. Then age caught up with him and he started getting serious. He wrote a weighty but racy history of India after Independence. To write it he had to do considerable reading. This is probably a by-product. Its title suggests something to do with our nationalist leaders. But that is only partly correct. Most of his chosen subjects are such, but important leaders such as Dadabhai Naoroji and Mahadev Govind Ranade have been left out. He has also included some whom many Indians would consider rather marginal characters, such as Golwalkar and Jinnah. He has excluded all Marxists as wholesale importers of thinking from abroad. His selection of writings does not aim at thematic unity. It is their unpredictability that makes this book so readable.

Before the writings of each India-maker, Guha gives a potted biography which contains some interesting snippets. For example, the lawyer who defended Bal Gangadhar Tilak in two major cases was none other than Mohammed Ali Jinnah; he lost one case and won another. Rammohun Roy went to England as a lobbyist for the Mughal emperor, who wanted the British government to raise his salary. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (Guha abjures all titles, British as well as nationalist) was grandson of a prime minister of the Mughals. He took fright at the speed with which Hindus, and especially Bengalis, took to education in English and began to appropriate government jobs; he founded Aligarh Muslim University to give a chance to north Indian Muslims. Ram Manohar Lohia wrote a PhD thesis in German on the economics of salt. E.V. Ramaswamy, founder of Dravida Kazhagam, the predecessor of Tamil Nadu’s ruling party, was himself a Kannada speaker.

Another striking feature about the early leaders was that many of them approved of British rule. They were born in a society deeply divided by caste and religion, and looked to the British for protection as well as correction of traditional inequities. This was true not only of Mohammedan leaders like Sir Syed and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, but also of Jyotirao Phule. If independence had depended on a process of consultation and consensus amongst important interest groups, it would never have come. It came only because the most important interest group, the Muslims, was bought off with the offer of Pakistan, and because the British were too exhausted to continue to rule India.

Amongst the surprise inclusions in this volume are three Maharashtrians. The vegetable market in Pune is called Jyotiba Phule market. I often wondered who he was; now I know. He came from a family of gardeners who supplied flowers to the Peshwas; he himself got rich by trading and contracting. But then he turned to education, especially for lower-caste children. Tarabai Shinde was a self-educated feminist a century before her time. I was also surprised and fascinated by the inclusion of Hamid Dalwai, a modernizer of Muslims who died young in the 1970s.

Guha briefly characterizes everyone he has included; thus, Rabindranath Tagore is the rooted cosmopolitan, Bhimrao Ambedkar is the wise democrat and C. Rajagopalachari is the Gandhian liberal. Only two escape his classification. Nehru had multiple agendas. Gandhi too had, and Guha distinguishes two phases of his long life — the early phase when he was developing his agenda, and the late phase when he addressed criticisms and refined his positions. Still, Guha’s coverage of these two people would seem inadequate. The 19th-century people spoke and wrote less, and less of it has come to us, so it is easier to select a small number of themes from them. Twentieth-century people like Gandhi and Nehru encompassed so many issues in so many words that it is impossible to summarize their views in a few pages.

Gandhi and Nehru loom so large in our recent history that it would be idiosyncratic to leave them out. Still, Guha’s technique of locating unusual contributions of unusual people is more effective when applied to people we do not know so well; and none is better qualified to apply it than Guha with his extensive and idiosyncratic writing. This is a highly readable volume. But Guha could compile an even more riveting volume if he concentrated on less well-known characters. He himself recognizes that he has left out many distinguished people. Whilst he has included some undistinguished people, there are many more of them out there that we know next to nothing about; and none would be better to bring them to life than Guha.

In the meanwhile, this book, though voluminous, is light and discontinuous enough to constitute a perfect bedside book— a book from which one can read for a quarter of an hour and go to sleep. It is lucky for his readers that Guha is a fallen historian who eschews review of literature, minimizes footnotes and puts readability ahead of satiation. As long as he raises his brow no higher, he will continue to have his fans.