Ramachandra Guha > Quotes

“What is now in the past was once in the future”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“So long as the Constitution is not amended beyond recognition, so long as elections are held regularly and fairly and the ethos of secularism broadly prevails, so long as citizens can speak and write in the language of their choosing, so long as there is an integrated market and a moderately efficient civil service and army, and — lest I forget — so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“It is in the nature of democracies, perhaps, that while visionaries are sometimes necessary to make them, once made they can be managed by mediocrities.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“In India, the sapling was planted by the nation’s founders, who lived long enough (and worked hard enough) to nurture it to adulthood. Those who came afterwards could disturb and degrade the tree of democracy but, try as they might, could not uproot or destroy it.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of a soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“Our treatment of Adivasi is a blot on Indian democracy. Only someone who cares sincerely for the future of this country will say that. Others will say that ‘Oh no no, they are doing fine, they live wonderfully… It is all hyperbole, exaggerated and manufactured dissent.’ If you are in a mode of self-denial, you will stay where you are- a flawed, intolerant and imperfect society. The main task of any nationalist is to be ashamed of crimes committed against his fellow citizens in the name of nationalism.”
― Ramachandra Guha

“In 1951 Dec 20th, Nehru, while campaigning for the first democratic elections in India, took a short break to address a UNESCO symposium in Delhi. Although he believed democracy was the best form of governance, while speaking at the symposium he wondered loud...
the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda....He[the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either a dictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din.
-Quoted from India After Gandhi, page 157.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“If Jawaharlal Nehru was the Maker of Modern India, then perhaps Potti Sriramulu should be named its Mercator.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“in the post-Gandhian war for power the first casualty is decency’.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“In India the choice could never be between chaos and stability, but between manageable and unmanageable chaos, between humane and inhuman anarchy, and between tolerable and intolerable disorder. ASHIS NANDY, sociologist, 1990.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“India is no longer a constitutional democracy but a populist one.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“the differences between the countries of Europe were much smaller than those between the ‘countries’ of India. ‘Scotland is more like Spain than Bengal is like the Punjab.’ In India the diversities of race, language and religion were far greater. Unlike in Europe, these ‘countries’ were not nations; they did not have a distinct political or social identity. This, Strachey told his Cambridge audience, ‘is the first and most essential thing to learn about India – that there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India possessing, according to any European ideas, any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious’. There was no Indian nation or country in the past; nor would there be one in the future.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“In his speeches on Azad Hind Radio, Subhas Bose referred to Gandhi as the ‘Father of the Nation’. This seems to be the first time Gandhi was called this. The usage soon became ubiquitous.”
― Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World

“British journalist Don Taylor. Writing in 1969, by which time India had stayed united for two decades and gone through four general elections, Taylor yet thought that the key question remains: can India remain in one piece – or will it fragment? . . . When one looks at this vast country and its 524 million people, the 15 major languages in use, the conflicting religions, the many races, it seems incredible that one nation could ever emerge. It is difficult to even encompass this country in the mind – the great Himalaya, the wide Indo-Gangetic plain burnt by the sun and savaged by the fierce monsoon rains, the green flooded delta of the east, the great cities like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. It does not, often, seem like one country. And yet there is a resilience about India which seems an assurance of survival. There is something which can only be described as an Indian spirit. I believe it no exaggeration to say that the fate of Asia hangs on its survival.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom,”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“என்னைக் கொல்வதன் மூலம் ஒரு தீயவனை ஒழித்துவிட்டதாக நினைப்பாரென்றால் அவர் உண்மையான காந்தியை அல்ல அவருக்குத் தீயவனாகத் தோன்றிய காந்தியைத்தான் கொன்றிருப்பார். என்னைக்”
― Ramachandra Guha, Naveena Indiavin Sirpigal

“a mere five years after the last maharaja had signed away his land, Indians had ‘come to take integrated India so much for granted that it requires amental effort today even to imagine that it could be different’.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“How much more does Sonia Gandhi’s son know about the past of the party of which he is now the vice president? Not very much. In Rahul Gandhi’s understanding of his party’s history, only five leaders have mattered: his mother, his father, his grandmother, his great-grandfather and Mahatma Gandhi, the only Indian politician whom he (and Sonia) have granted parity with their own family. Gokhale, Tilak, Rajaji, Azad, Kamaraj, even (or especially) Patel—these are merely names (and sometimes not even that) to the heir apparent. By”
― Ramachandra Guha, Democrats and Dissenters

“Thus, Rajaji wrote of the need to try and think fundamentally in the present crisis. Are we to yield to the fanatical emotions of our anti-Pakistan groups? Is there any hope for India or for Pakistan, if we go on hating each other, suspecting each other, borrowing and building up armaments against each other – building our two houses, both of us on the sands of continued foreign aid against a future Kurukshetra? We shall surely ruin ourselves for ever if we go on doing this . . . We shall be making all hopes of prosperity in the future a mere mirage if we continue this arms race based on an ancient grudge and the fears and suspicions flowing from it.27”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“I have no doubt that if British governments had been prepared to grant in 1900 what they refused in 1900 but granted in 1920; or to grant in 1920 what they refused in 1920 but granted in 1940; or to grant in 1940 what they refused in 1940 but granted in 1947 – then nine-tenths of the misery, hatred, and violence, the imprisonings and terrorism, the murders, flogging, shootings, assassinations, even the racial massacres would have been avoided; the transference of power might well have been accomplished peacefully, even possibly without Partition. LEONARD WOOLF, 1967”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“Ambedkar knew that while there were enough influential Hindus – such as Jawaharlal Nehru – who were behind progressive legislation, among the Muslims the liberal contingent was nowhere near as strong. The government, he said, could not be so ‘foolish’ as ‘not to realize the sentiments of different communities in this country’. That was why the code at present dealt only with the Hindus.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: A History

“Srinagar, there was a grave of a Christian soldier from Travancore, which had the Vedic swastika and a verse from the Quran inscribed on it. There could be ‘no more poignant and touching symbolof the essential oneness and unity of India’.61”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“One day, the physicist Sir C.V. Raman came up from Bangalore to see Gandhi. Raman’s conceit was legendary. In the summer of 1930, he booked a passage for his wife and himself on a boat leaving for Europe in October, so confident was he of winning the Nobel Prize for physics that year (which he did). Now, meeting an Indian even more celebrated than himself, Raman told him: ‘Mahatmaji, religions cannot unite. Science offers the best opportunity for a complete fellowship. All men of science are brothers.’ ‘What about the converse?’ responded Gandhi. ‘All who are not men of science are not brothers?’ Raman had the last word, noting that ‘all can become men of science’.

Raman had come with a Swiss biologist who wished to have a darshan of the Indian leader. Introducing his colleague, Raman said he had discovered an insect that could live without food and water for as long as twelve years. ‘When you discover the secret at the back of it,’ joked Gandhi to the Swiss scientist, ‘please pass it on to me.”
― Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi 1915-1948: The Years That Changed the World

“The Indian commitment to the semantics of socialism is at least as deep as ours to the semantics of free enterprise . . . Even the most intransigent Indian capitalist may observe on occasion that he is really a socialist at heart. J. K. GALBRAITH, economist, 1958”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“வன்முறைப் போராட்டத்தைவிட அஹிம்சைப் போராட்டத்துக்கு அதிகமான வீரம் தேவை என்றார் காந்தி. ‘யார் உண்மையான போராளி’ என்று கேட்டார். ‘மரணத்தைத் தன் நண்பனாகத் தன்னுடனே வைத்துக்கொண்டிருப்பவனா, மற்றவர்களின் மரணத்தைக் கட்டுப்படுத்துபவனா?’.”
― Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India

“லண்டனில் காந்தியின் முதலாம் ஆண்டில், அவரது மாத செலவுகள் 12 பவுண்டுகள். இரண்டாம் ஆண்டில் அதை அவர் 4 பவுண்டுகளாகக் குறைத்துக்கொண்டார். சட்டைகளுக்குக் கஞ்சி போடுவதை விட்டுவிட்டார். இதற்கு உந்துதலாக இருந்தது ‘இங்கிலாந்தில் இருந்த சில மரபுக்கு மாறான மனிதர்கள்; நவநாகரிகத்தை கடவுள்போலத் தொழுவதை விட்டுவிட்டவர்கள்’. கோடைகாலத்தில் டிராயர்கள் அணிவதை நிறுத்தினார். இது சலவைக்காரருக்கான செலவைக் குறைத்தது. பொதுப் போக்குவரத்தைப் பயன்படுத்துவதற்குப் பதிலாக எல்லா இடங்களுக்கும் நடந்தே போய்வரலானார். தபால்தலை செலவைக் குறைப்பதற்காக அவர் வீட்டுக்கு எழுதும் கடிதங்களை உறையில் இட்டு அனுப்புவதற்குப் பதிலாக அஞ்சலட்டைகளைப் பயன்படுத்த ஆரம்பித்தார். முடி வெட்டுபவரிடம் செல்வதற்குப் பதிலாகத் தானே சவரம் செய்துகொள்ள ஆரம்பித்தார். செய்தித்தாள்களைத் தானே வாங்குவதற்குப் பதிலாகப் பொது நூலகங்களில் படிக்க ஆரம்பித்தார்.”
― Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India

“My own view – speaking as a historian rather than citizen – is that as long as Pakistan exists there will be Hindu fundamentalists in India. In times of stability, or when the political leadership is firm, they will be marginal or on the defensive. In times of change, or when the political leadership is irresolute, they will be influential and assertive.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“Then, in January 1961, a religious riot broke out in the central Indian city of Jabalpur. A Hindu girl had committed suicide; it was alleged that she took her life because she had been assaulted by two Muslim men. The claim was given lurid publicity by a local Jana Sangh newspaper, whereupon Hindu students went on a rampage through the town, attacking Muslim homes and burning shops. In retaliation a Muslim group torched a Hindu neighbourhood. The rioting continued for days, spreading also to the countryside. It was the most serious such incident since Partition, its main sufferers being poor Muslims, mostly weavers and bidi (cigarette) workers.52”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“Both Arun Shourie and Arundhati Roy see history in terms of heroes and villains. Neither seeks to place the choices made by Gandhi and Ambedkar in context, seeking only to elevate one by disparaging the other. Roy has all of Ambedkar’s polemical zeal but none of his scholarship or sociological insight. Shourie, meanwhile, perhaps loves India as much as Gandhi did, but he loves it in the abstract, without empathy for those Indians who suffer discrimination at the hands of their compatriots. Both seek—by the technique of suppressio veri, suggestio falsi so beloved of ideologues down the ages—to prove a verdict they have arrived at beforehand: that Gandhi was the Enemy of the Dalits, for Roy; that Ambedkar was the Enemy of the Nation, for Shourie.”
― Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World

“The changes which the destruction of forests, the clearing of plants and the cultivation of indigo have produced within half a century in the quantity of water flowing in on the one hand, and on the other the evaporation of the soil and the dryness of the atmosphere, present causes sufficiently powerful to explain the successive diminution of the lake of Valencia . . . By felling the trees that cover the tops and sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at once two calamities for future generations, the want of fuel and the scarcity of water.”
― Ramachandra Guha, Environmentalism: A Global History