Lucid assimilation

LEAD REVIEW

This valuable compendium of Indian thought represents thinkers with distinctive ideologies, who explore and analyse “all that is significant and important in the human condition.” Prof Guha has selected excerpts from the prolific writings of 19 remarkable Indians from the past two centuries to highlight their impact on the world they saw, shaped and described with eloquence and authority. Prof Guha’s lucid introductory notes will interest not only historians and scholars, but also lay readers. 

The book also includes writings of these leaders on ways in which India can best engage with the wider and increasingly interconnected world community. Prof Guha notes that the substantial and growing worldwide body of serious political writing “largely ignores India.” He hopes that this book “may yet help make the country somewhat less marginal to global debates on the political system(s) most appropriate to the 21st century.”

Rammohan Roy, the “first liberal” and major social reformer, who facilitated India’s transition into modernity, is the perfect opener for this book. Excerpts from Rammohan’s writings show how he promoted religious understanding, the rights of Hindu women, and modern Western knowledge on science among Indians. Rammohan’s powerful denunciation of the evil practice as neither sanctioned nor supported by religious scriptures, provided invaluable support and impetus for the legal abolition of sati. 

Prof Guha next introduces us to reformers and radicals; the Muslim modernist Syed Ahmed Khan, the agrarian radical Jotirao Phule, the liberal reformer Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the militant nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak and the subaltern feminist Tarabai Shinde. In this second section of the book, Guha focuses upon Marathi reformers who, he feels, have not been given their rightful prominence by historians, though they are focused, prescient and relevant to modern day issues. 

Gandhiji’s writings on the power of non-violence, non-cooperation with colonial rulers, untouchability, Hindu-Muslim unity and inter-faith dialogue, village renewal and the position of women, understandably find a prominent place in the book.

Other renowned personalities represented here are Rabindranath Tagore, B R Ambedkar, Jinnah, Nehru, E V Ramaswami, C Rajagopalachari and Jayaprakash Narayan. Prof Guha also highlights lesser known aspects from the writings of each thinker. Tagore’s essays on India and the West, the excesses of nationalism and the problem with non-cooperation, are included here to prove that this consummate literary artist was also an astute and far-sighted political thinker.

Similarly, Ambedkar is celebrated as a great critic of Brahminism and the caste system. Prof Guha also focuses upon his lesser known but equally brilliant advocacy of democracy. Ambedkar holds that devotion and hero worship play the greatest role in Indian politics as compared to any other country in the world. “Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.” Such ideas, Prof Guha feels, are of enduring relevance in today’s India.

Lesser known personalities such as Hamid Dalwai and Verrier Elwin also find a place in this book. Elwin was a remarkable Englishman-turned-Indian, an Oxford scholar and clergyman who became the foremost spokesman for India’s tribals. Elwin’s intelligent and humanely reasoned arguments are of intrinsic worth and contemporary relevance, because some of India’s tribal areas are now the epicentre of a Maoist rebellion, while the north-east is home to apparently intractable insurgencies. Hamid Dalwai, a born and raised Muslim, “was a moderniser from within the community.”

In the post 9/11 world, his writings are of universal relevance wherever followers of different faiths strive to co-exist peacefully. This book has striking omissions, which may raise many hackles. Indian Marxists are excluded because “their work has been mostly derivative,” Prof Guha contends. They have strived to merely replicate a system closely modelled on the Russian or Chinese experience. There have been no novel contributions by Indian thinkers, “no expanding or deepening of the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao.”

Prof Guha justifies omitting Subhash Chandra Bose and Sardar Patel, two iconic leaders of the Indian national movement.  “Both were out-and-out ‘doers’, whose writings were either insubstantial or humdrum” and lacking originality. Spiritualists such as Swami Vivekananda and Dayanand Saraswati represented “a muscular brand of Hinduism that sought to meet the challenge of the West by breaking down caste barriers and consolidating the community as one.” According to Prof Guha, while they were influential in their own day, their influence has passed. These arguments will find many detractors.
“The revolutionary-turned-spiritualist Aurobindo Ghose and the philosopher-turned-public figure Dr S Radhakrishnan” are also omitted because their “influence never really extended beyond the middle class; nor did it last much beyond their death.” Prominent social reformer, author and activist Dadabhai Naoroji is another omission as his writings and “themes are somewhat dated in this post-colonial age.” Prof Guha’s justifications, however well-reasoned, may not satisfy everyone.

Prof Guha succeeds in his stated aim of offering readers “a fuller understanding of how this unnatural nation and unlikely democracy was argued into existence.” Sadly, today’s Indians are generally ignorant of this glorious heritage of unique, illustrious and farsighted thinkers who addressed every aspect of life. Prof Guha has waded through 100s of volumes of the writings of our great leaders, to offer readers lucid and forcefully exemplified overviews in easy to assimilate extracts.

Makers of Modern India
Edited by
Ramachandra Guha
Penguin
2010, pp 524
Rs 799