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The Enemies of the Idea of India
In sixty and more years as a free nation, the Republic of India has faced three major threats, writes Ramachandra Guha. These are right-wing Hindu fundamentalism, leftwing Maoist extremism, and seccessionist movements
seeking up the break-up of India. In recent years, to those three longstanding threats have been added three inequality, corruption, and environmental degradation.
Guha analyses each of these six threats in turn, explaining their origins and course, and suggesting ways in which they may be tamed or overcome.
seeking up the break-up of India. In recent years, to those three longstanding threats have been added three inequality, corruption, and environmental degradation.
Guha analyses each of these six threats in turn, explaining their origins and course, and suggesting ways in which they may be tamed or overcome.
23 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 15, 2011
23 people are currently reading
407 people want to read
About the author
Ramachandra Guha
111 books1,610 followersRamachandra Guha was born in Dehradun in 1958, and educated in Delhi and Calcutta. He has taught at the University of Oslo, Stanford, and Yale, and at the Indian Institute of Science. He has been a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and also served as the Indo-American Community Chair Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
After a peripatetic academic career, with five jobs in ten years on three continents, Guha settled down to become a full-time writer based in Bangalore. His books cover a wide range of themes, including a global history of environmentalism, a biography of an anthropologist-activist, a social history of Indian cricket, and a social history of Himalayan peasants.
Guha’s books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The prizes they have won include the U.K. Cricket Society’s Literary Award and the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History.
After a peripatetic academic career, with five jobs in ten years on three continents, Guha settled down to become a full-time writer based in Bangalore. His books cover a wide range of themes, including a global history of environmentalism, a biography of an anthropologist-activist, a social history of Indian cricket, and a social history of Himalayan peasants.
Guha’s books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The prizes they have won include the U.K. Cricket Society’s Literary Award and the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 7, 2016
The author attempts to play safe, a la television channels in US giving equal time to both sides, which has been attempted not so successfully in television in India - for example in a case of rape and murder the anchor might give equal time to both sides, and this can be made to look like the victim's side is being vindictive while the criminal being forgiven is the only way for you to be not papally disapproved and be set on par with the rapist and murderer, unless of course you can be set below for not having felt guilty of everything and begged for mercy - which no one demands from the murderer and rapist a convincing demonstration of, especially if he is being tried, or was convicted for a couple of years.
Guha thus holds people and parties guilty of seriously injuring interests of nation and responsible for massacres on par or not quite as guilty as those that would hold that majority of India is not slave and beneath respect for eternity, having committed the crime of being ruled rather than convert en masse or be massacred as per demand by the rulers from other cultures for over a millennium.
As usual with people who label or accept labels without thought, he too identifies Hindu with traders and right wing, never mind majority is poor or desperately poor, and more. This label has a very convoluted sort of reasoning - leftists of India had gone over a to set up across to the separated part of India set up then as the nation for those intolerant of living with people of other faiths, thus identifying leftists with muslims, and anyone whom muslims would not live with as therefore right wing. This further is used in labeling or identifying all those as not only right wing but also as business or more disparagingly as trading community. That the so labelled communities whether Hindu or Jewish or western in general have also intellectuals, great thinkers and philosophers, inventors and scientists and writers and music maestros and artists of all sorts, is ignored, since the only criteria is whether you are a killer and marauding looter or merely a trader. Values are thus set topsy turvy in all thought and discourses from those that hold terrorism as a superior creed.
Guha holds, like all good kids so labelled by their education oriented to west rather than within the nation, that India is an idea, and without saying so explicitly seems to drive the reader to conclude that it was an invention of those not of India but looking from anywhere else, and that those of India have no choice in that matter - thus negating the reality of the nation he does not exactly deny belonging to but deprecated at all levels.
So it is almost a small corollary that invasions, massacres and looting by invaders, forced conversions at knife or sword points held to throats, and enforced slavery in all but name, et al - suffered by those indigenous that would not convert - is all a non sequitur pretty much as wages of slave labour denied to slaves and their descendents in US are held non sequitur in all but explicit statement; Guha goes with labeling all those invasions, looting and massacres under the seemingly non invasive, almost friendly term of "cultural impact", as if those invading and marauding and massacring and more were no more than stones set hurtling down by an avalanche, without any will or thought or guilt, no more to blame than an el nino or el nina. He denies humanity to them in the process, perhaps unaware of this, as a consequence of holding them not guilty of their actions as full adults but ascribing to them an innocence one might ascribe to the landslide or earthquake.
He, like another author from his region, surprisingly is halfway ignorant of his heritage and nation to a degree and context very unexpected - he mentions Krishna as one from Gujarat, never mind India steeped for millennia in stories and songs about Krishna, in literature and music and homes - favourites among tales told children by parents and grandparents - and completely saturated with the lore of origins and childhood, even young adulthood, of Krishna being of ancient city of Mathura and its immediate neighbourhood, while the coastal city of Dwaarakaa in Gujarat (and its ancient version discovered submerged in ocean off coast) are credited to Krishna as having created for his kingdom, after he migrated with his people to avoid a civil war that would kill thousands of innocents - which was ultimately forced anyway, on the good people willing to live in peace, by those intent on swallowing the whole, pretty much as WWII was forced despite all sorts of concessions by all attempting to placate a central power intent on swallowing Europe and the world, both times aims being to end civilisation.
Guha wrote this as an essay in a weekly that is not unknown for such disparaging writing about India and her own, but this fact is only given at the end, rather than in the information about the book - which isn't really a book at that, merely a piece of propaganda that fails in facts.
One major failure is unexpected of someone officially a scholar of history, namely, his assertion about someone being Indian, while facts of legality are otherwise. He can simply brand those pointing at facts as being communal, intolerant et al, but fact is he is either a shoddy scholar or is lying, as are those making this particular assertion.
But in this case, while one can easily understand someone - anyone - trying to hold on to a citizenship of a seemingly safer part of the world, especially when not related to India except by marriage, falsifying it by claiming that marriage amounts to citizenship whether accepted or not by the person is simply rubbish. Which is not discordant with the essay parading as a book, either - it is garbage mixed with some not so much garbage and covered in sauce so mix is concealed decoratively.
Guha thus holds people and parties guilty of seriously injuring interests of nation and responsible for massacres on par or not quite as guilty as those that would hold that majority of India is not slave and beneath respect for eternity, having committed the crime of being ruled rather than convert en masse or be massacred as per demand by the rulers from other cultures for over a millennium.
As usual with people who label or accept labels without thought, he too identifies Hindu with traders and right wing, never mind majority is poor or desperately poor, and more. This label has a very convoluted sort of reasoning - leftists of India had gone over a to set up across to the separated part of India set up then as the nation for those intolerant of living with people of other faiths, thus identifying leftists with muslims, and anyone whom muslims would not live with as therefore right wing. This further is used in labeling or identifying all those as not only right wing but also as business or more disparagingly as trading community. That the so labelled communities whether Hindu or Jewish or western in general have also intellectuals, great thinkers and philosophers, inventors and scientists and writers and music maestros and artists of all sorts, is ignored, since the only criteria is whether you are a killer and marauding looter or merely a trader. Values are thus set topsy turvy in all thought and discourses from those that hold terrorism as a superior creed.
Guha holds, like all good kids so labelled by their education oriented to west rather than within the nation, that India is an idea, and without saying so explicitly seems to drive the reader to conclude that it was an invention of those not of India but looking from anywhere else, and that those of India have no choice in that matter - thus negating the reality of the nation he does not exactly deny belonging to but deprecated at all levels.
So it is almost a small corollary that invasions, massacres and looting by invaders, forced conversions at knife or sword points held to throats, and enforced slavery in all but name, et al - suffered by those indigenous that would not convert - is all a non sequitur pretty much as wages of slave labour denied to slaves and their descendents in US are held non sequitur in all but explicit statement; Guha goes with labeling all those invasions, looting and massacres under the seemingly non invasive, almost friendly term of "cultural impact", as if those invading and marauding and massacring and more were no more than stones set hurtling down by an avalanche, without any will or thought or guilt, no more to blame than an el nino or el nina. He denies humanity to them in the process, perhaps unaware of this, as a consequence of holding them not guilty of their actions as full adults but ascribing to them an innocence one might ascribe to the landslide or earthquake.
He, like another author from his region, surprisingly is halfway ignorant of his heritage and nation to a degree and context very unexpected - he mentions Krishna as one from Gujarat, never mind India steeped for millennia in stories and songs about Krishna, in literature and music and homes - favourites among tales told children by parents and grandparents - and completely saturated with the lore of origins and childhood, even young adulthood, of Krishna being of ancient city of Mathura and its immediate neighbourhood, while the coastal city of Dwaarakaa in Gujarat (and its ancient version discovered submerged in ocean off coast) are credited to Krishna as having created for his kingdom, after he migrated with his people to avoid a civil war that would kill thousands of innocents - which was ultimately forced anyway, on the good people willing to live in peace, by those intent on swallowing the whole, pretty much as WWII was forced despite all sorts of concessions by all attempting to placate a central power intent on swallowing Europe and the world, both times aims being to end civilisation.
Guha wrote this as an essay in a weekly that is not unknown for such disparaging writing about India and her own, but this fact is only given at the end, rather than in the information about the book - which isn't really a book at that, merely a piece of propaganda that fails in facts.
One major failure is unexpected of someone officially a scholar of history, namely, his assertion about someone being Indian, while facts of legality are otherwise. He can simply brand those pointing at facts as being communal, intolerant et al, but fact is he is either a shoddy scholar or is lying, as are those making this particular assertion.
But in this case, while one can easily understand someone - anyone - trying to hold on to a citizenship of a seemingly safer part of the world, especially when not related to India except by marriage, falsifying it by claiming that marriage amounts to citizenship whether accepted or not by the person is simply rubbish. Which is not discordant with the essay parading as a book, either - it is garbage mixed with some not so much garbage and covered in sauce so mix is concealed decoratively.
June 17, 2016
As an Indian who resides in the West, my origins from a pluralistic Indian Union means a great deal of personal pride. As Ramachandra Guha aptly mentioned "the idea of India contains within its capacious borders more social diversity than any other nation. It privileges no particular religion, doesn't enforce a common language, and doesn't promote patriotism by identifying or demonising a common external (or internal) enemy".
However, India has always battled divisive ideologies both from the left and right, from its very inception, which finds its causes in a multitude of factors and bear its roots in the same pluralistic origins of this Union that shaped our map today. Ramachandra Guha has for the most part, identified and explored the major factors that do threaten the idea of India. As I went through the essay I could identify many more that could necessarily invoke uncomfortable yet necessary discussions in this decade. This essay was published before the 2014 General Elections that led to Narendra Modi's landslide victory, and hence offers a hint of a retrospective regarding the transformations India has gone through as a result.
This is definitely a good and a quick read. Given the phase India is going through right now, searching for its modern identity and a place in the 21st Century, this essay leaves a striking reminder in our minds of how we came about to our position today.
However, India has always battled divisive ideologies both from the left and right, from its very inception, which finds its causes in a multitude of factors and bear its roots in the same pluralistic origins of this Union that shaped our map today. Ramachandra Guha has for the most part, identified and explored the major factors that do threaten the idea of India. As I went through the essay I could identify many more that could necessarily invoke uncomfortable yet necessary discussions in this decade. This essay was published before the 2014 General Elections that led to Narendra Modi's landslide victory, and hence offers a hint of a retrospective regarding the transformations India has gone through as a result.
This is definitely a good and a quick read. Given the phase India is going through right now, searching for its modern identity and a place in the 21st Century, this essay leaves a striking reminder in our minds of how we came about to our position today.
October 17, 2020
In this essay, Ramachandra Guha proves what is wrong with the so-called liberals/centrists in India. The essay, which was written in 2011, reeks of the caste-based prejudices that upper caste liberals possess. He analyses the three enemies of the idea of his India and lists them as 1. The Hindutva Brigade 2. The Maoists and the tribal insurgents 3. The historical separatists. Then, he goes on to talk about inequalities, corruption and nepotism - the usual bread and butter for liberals.
To us, the people of the anticaste movement in South India, it is the idea of India that perpetuates the institution of caste. And it is the caste system that lies at the root of all problems that are uniquely Indian. The idea of India was envisioned, dreamed and coerced into reality by the Brahmins and the upper castes. The working classes/castes of this country never had any say in nation-building. This is precisely why the imaginary construct of India serves the interests of the upper castes. To know more about this, read about the thoughts of Periyar and Anna on Indian nationalism.
The primary problem with the liberals is their refusal to acknowledge Brahminism as the root of all social problems in India. This is evidenced by the minimal focus that Guha gives to the issue of caste. This attempt to divorce caste from the major issues of this land is the reason why caste continues to reign high. Caste is not just another form of inequality; it is the mother of injustice and all forms of discrimination, prejudice and inequalities in the Indian subcontinent. Any narrative that avoids focusing on the annihilation of caste can only be dishonest and self-serving.
To us, the people of the anticaste movement in South India, it is the idea of India that perpetuates the institution of caste. And it is the caste system that lies at the root of all problems that are uniquely Indian. The idea of India was envisioned, dreamed and coerced into reality by the Brahmins and the upper castes. The working classes/castes of this country never had any say in nation-building. This is precisely why the imaginary construct of India serves the interests of the upper castes. To know more about this, read about the thoughts of Periyar and Anna on Indian nationalism.
The primary problem with the liberals is their refusal to acknowledge Brahminism as the root of all social problems in India. This is evidenced by the minimal focus that Guha gives to the issue of caste. This attempt to divorce caste from the major issues of this land is the reason why caste continues to reign high. Caste is not just another form of inequality; it is the mother of injustice and all forms of discrimination, prejudice and inequalities in the Indian subcontinent. Any narrative that avoids focusing on the annihilation of caste can only be dishonest and self-serving.
August 29, 2018
A balanced simplistic account of a complex multifaceted issue. Would have loved even more if references to more articles and books were given to dive into more details.
June 23, 2016
A brilliant, well-researched and in-depth analysis of the major problems which have been faced by India in the recent years. Article is well articulated, with many examples given to corroborate the author's views. The conclusion especially is brilliant as it portrays a picture of hope and optimism that the idea of India will be able to survive the attacks of these in-built enemies and our country will emerge stronger than ever before.
April 26, 2015
Guha has very well summarized the key issues that are drilling massive holes in the progress of the nation. Dynasty politics, reservations, insurgency, hindutva ideology etc.
Nothing new that Indians are not aware. After reading other works of the author, expected some critical treatment of issues. this book is more of an addendum.
Still a quick and good read
Nothing new that Indians are not aware. After reading other works of the author, expected some critical treatment of issues. this book is more of an addendum.
Still a quick and good read
August 19, 2013
This article completely defends its title. Gives you an idea of where it went wrong, and how it continues to go wrong. It gives you a good idea of problems India has faced for 60 years post independence.
May 8, 2015
The enemies of the idea of India since its formation to contemporary challenges in changed circumstances are well described in the book. The short essay is quick to read. However, those who have read Guha's earlier books might find the concepts repetitive. Overall, interesting read.
October 26, 2015
Serves its purpose of painting a quick picture of post independence India and major developments in the past few decades
July 1, 2016
Not that I entirely agree with the author this is close what I think.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews