Book: Democrats and Dissenters
Author: Ramachandra Guha
Language: English
This is going to be a big review I guess.
While reading this book I was constantly reminded of how India deeply lacks more people like Guha these days. While strongly critical of the right-wing politics and politicians, he has been very vocal about his stance on left and the Congress wherever they deserved it. This attitude of calling spade a spade, traveling a thin line of an unbiased commentary is becoming rare if not absent altogether.
The book is divided into two parts: 1. Politics and Society 2.Ideologies and Intellectuals. The first part deals with varied issues like Freedom of expression and its threats in India, discussions of Chinese policy towards minorities, Pakistan and Indian tie (not the government, but a common folk perspective), the present dismal status of Indian National Congress etc.
In the middle, we have a chapter on exchanges between Nehru and Jayaprakash Narayan (called j.p by many) on the road forward for Indian polity, on non-lapping, separate roles of prime minister and president of the ruling party. Reading it, one is reminded of the current day politics, when not between politicians, but even in grave urgent matters affecting the livelihood of people, we have our leaders being mute rather than responding like our forefathers.
The one chapter which drew my interest more was on tribals’ status in India. One can only feel a deep pity for those from tribes. Guha categorically puts the blame on the government for not keeping up with its word on the tribal welfare.
I see many readers have had an issue with the second part. Their reasoning is as follows: The place for discussing the topmost ( or let’s say credible as well favored by Guha ) intellects and Ideologues in a book pertaining to Democrats and dissenters is uncalled for. I agree with them, but for me personally, the second part was equally if not more enriching. If not for this book I wouldn’t have known about Andre Beteille (important sociologist from the country).
Take these quotes from the book on Beteille :
Thus, in an essay published in the Economic and Political Weekly in July 2011, he wrote, with detachment but also some despair, of the decline of Parliament as an institution for debate, discussion and policy formation. Noting the resort to abuse instead of argument, the frequent walkouts and boycotts, this scholar and citizen observed that ‘the long-term effect of continuous discord and disorder within Parliament is an erosion of public trust in the institution itself’. The only real beneficiaries are the media, as ‘the television channels seize their opportunity for breaking news, and lure members of Parliament into their studios where the debates reproduce the disorder of the debates in Parliament’.
In another place :
This society had ‘made a terrible mistake in the past in believing that merit was an attribute not of individuals but groups, that being born a Brahmin was in itself a mark of merit. We shall make the same kind of mistake if we act on the belief that need too is always, and not just in special cases, an attribute of groups rather than of individuals.’
He was also critical about the right-wing, there are more of it in the book, but this small sentence captures essentially the exact philosophy of Hindutva ( which I should add as a very un-Indian or dare say an un-Hindu temperament) :
A civilization that cannot accommodate a variety of traditions, seeking to maintain a jealous hold on only one single tradition, can hardly be called a civilization.
I was also surprised to find that the father of the Marxist historian (a polymath, mathematician) D.D Kosambi was himself a great intellect of a rare kind. The title itself is interesting- The life and death of a Gandhian Buddhist.
Reading about Acharya Dharmananda Damodar Kosambi (not much difference between the father and son’s name), I was reaffirmed of my feeling of our generation’s complicity when it comes to knowledge. We live in a world of excess data, easy accessibilty of resources brought about by technological boom. Even while we sense the bane of excess, speculative information flows we still couldn’t escape the cushion the technology provides thereby disregarding the knowledge we take for granted. For instance, read this :
Dharmanand Kosambi felt the urge to learn Sanskrit; finding this urge irresistible, he left his wife and small children in Goa to go to Puné, and study with R.G. Bhandarkar. His studies with this great Sanskritist inculcated further desires and ambitions, among them to make a deeper acquaintance with Buddhism. He travelled around the country, spending time in Bodh Gaya and in Sarnath.
In search of a living Buddhist tradition, Dharmanand Kosambi also spent several years in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and Burma, learning Pali from scholars of the Buddhist canon. By now, Kosambi was a world authority on the language and culture of early Buddhism.
Apparently, in his years in Ceylon and Burma, those compulsively carnivorous countries, Dharmanand Kosambi was compelled to eat meat, and repeatedly fell sick. Had he a tougher stomach or a more broad-minded approach to food, he might have stayed in those lands much longer.
On his return to India, Kosambi travelled in the garb and manner of a mendicant, begging for food and railway tickets. He visited Banaras, Madras, Ujjain, Gwalior, and Calcutta, seeking scholars to debate with and learn from. He also toured through Gorakhpur district where the Buddha spent his last days. Here, as Kosambi later told his student, ‘he often passed his days and nights in open verandahs or under trees or in cemeteries and practiced meditation, sometimes he practiced the meditation of love for all beings, including animals’.
P.V. Bapat ends his tribute to his mentor in these words: ‘His life is thus a source of great inspiration to many a young man. It is a splendid example of what a young man with no more education than what can be secured in a village school and with no material resources at all to help him, can achieve, provided he has a dogged perseverance to pursue his ideal, in spite of all obstacles that may come in his way.’
Now read this :
Reading this account, sitting in my home with piped water and round-the-clock electricity in Bangalore, with my laptop, and Google a click away, thinking of my own next journey (by aircraft) to Delhi to work in the archives while staying in the comfortably air-conditioned rooms of the India International Centre, was both embarrassing and uplifting. For, here was a scholar who knew what the search for knowledge really meant.
Indeed, our times are better, one should be an idiot to complain about it. But along the way have we become complicit in appreciating the information and knowledge we are served. I hope to be proved wrong here.
There also a chapter on the celebrated historian Hobsbawm( nothing new, if you are already acquainted with his works and ideology), there is a chapter on Amartya Sen’s book “Argumentative Indian”
Here, Guha is all guns blazing on sen’s appeal to the public for looking to the past for continuing the democratic character of future India. I haven’t read the book, but if I have to believe Guha. The book apart from Tagore doesn’t include any stalwarts like Gandhi(except featuring in letters of Tagore)Nehru and host of other colonial and post-independent times. Going as back as Yajnavalkya, Lokayata scholars, Buddha, Ashoka and till Akbar but not to have included Gandhi (imo, the most argumentative not in the pejorative sense) is indeed a mistake. Guha is of opinion, that though sympathetic to sen for not including Nehru and Gandhi, he has scored a same side goal benefitting the forces he is writing against. I wholly agree, but read this :
The choice of which Indian to pick and celebrate from the past is here directly linked to the kind of Indian who one thinks best represents India in the present. Homo Indicus, in one reading, is rational, reasonable, secular, curious about and respectful of other people and cultures—like Ashoka or Akbar, indeed much like Amartya Sen himself. Homo Indicus, in the other and perhaps no less legitimate reading, is deeply religious, but also passionate and combative, anxious to reclaim the land for the faith and the faithful—a little like Adi Sankara and Shivaji, perhaps, and much like Lal Krishna Advani and (at a pinch) Praveen Togadia as well.
I understand and share the feeling, but Adi Sankara? (wasn’t he one of the most argumentative Indian as well). He before noting this, at one place said that with some places to criticize Sen could have very well included Gandhi and Nehru. Doesn’t the same parameter include Adi Sankara too?. Wouldn’t the Right Wingers use this vacuum to provide a rosy picture of Sankara if neglected?.
Guha’s central criticizing point is on the hypothesis that reevaluating the ancient or medieval India is an important part for the growth of Indian republic’s future. Though Indian past has to be read, discussed and looked with the critical aptitude I feel emphasizing more importance for its importance in future of Indian democracy is a far reach and exactly what Hindutvadis want.
Other chapters were on other intellectuals from India and sometimes other worlds like U.R Ananthamurthy, an Indian economist Dharma Kumar and an Irish Indonesian scholar Benedict Anderson.
Apart from Anathamurthy, I wasn’t aware of others’ works. So it was refreshing to know about their work as well their social commentaries of their times.
To give a taste of the rare mix of literary as well a sharp social critic of Ananthamurthy, read this :
In Modi’s enthusiasm for development, the atmosphere is further filled with factory smoke. Tribals who live close to nature have nowhere to go. In the hubris of extreme progress, man, suffering revulsion from excessive consumption, may see the need for change. If not, the Earth will speak.’
But he(Guha) immediately adds a caveat :
These are powerful and moving words, but I must enter a caveat. For, well before Narendra Modi became prime minister, successive Congress governments (and prime ministers) had displayed a callous disregard for both environmental sustainability and the rights of tribal communities. Personifying the problem may be a case of literary licence, perhaps, but the issue goes well beyond a particular individual (or, indeed, political party).
How can one forget about Guha’s Favorite politician, freedom fighter, and scholar Rajagopalachari(Rajaji)?
It was very interesting to read about the praise Guha has for Rajaji’s prophesizing words on the free market and his take on Hindu Muslim unity, Kashmir issue, Jan Sangh.
My own personal appreciation for Rajaji has increased reading these.
But, I have never understood Guha’s fascination for this man to the level that he has never even mentioned about the controversial Kula Kalvi Thittam (“Hereditary Education Policy”).
Why doesn’t he even in a single place has explained about it or criticized it. Not this book, for long I have noticed this one Glitch in Guha’s otherwise unbiased writings.
His final chapter is my most favorite-“Where are the Conservative Intellectuals in India?”
This has been my thoughts for well over 2 years. Why doesn’t the country possess a strong or even a mild conservative intellectual climate? He answers for that to achieve any credibility they have to remove their tainted spectacles of communal hatred and bigotry. He provides examples of the ideal conservative of this type from Roger Scruton’s How to be a Conservative.
So, the question that begs is: Given that there is a conservative government at the centre and whose fortunes are still shiny considering that the opposition is beyond weak at the present, can there be host of scholars if not institutions which can come for the defense of the Goverment of the day and it’s ideology or if not for the Hindu issues?
It seems very unlikely, reason being, for one to remove his hatred for the Muslims and Christians is to move away from the Rss’s philosophy, which in turn is cheek by jowl associated with Bjp. To remove oneself associating with one is to gain the antipathy of the other.
But, Guha does give three example from the past of being conservative intellectuals they are: Romesh Chandra Majumdar, Radhakumud Mookerjee and G.s.Ghurye.
Apart from the Majumdar I haven’t heard about the other two. Guha after putting forth each one’s version of history ends with a reasoning that their times could have made them to write so. The 1940s was the bloodiest of Hindu Muslim Riots.
But, My own search has led me in the past to identify two contemporary scholars of some credibility. One is R.Nagaswamy and Prof. Michel Danino. The latter is a french who lives in Pondicherry ashram and his talks and books should be of some interest to people seeking contrarian narratives of India’s past.
To read Guha’s live and lucid writing was a treat unto itself. Was reminded of my own childhood days when I thought Guha was a cricket historian (which he is and more).
If u have read this much, Thank you 🙂
DIFFUSED MODE 