Rediscovering the history of India
Christopher Hill (1912-2003), the brilliant British Marxist historian, reminded us that history and politics were two sides of the same coin. Which meant that historians were primarily interested in ideas not only because they influence societies but also because they reveal the societies that give rise to them. It also means that since politics is always in a state of flux, history had to be rewritten in every generation because, although the past doesn’t change, the present does; each generation asks questions of the past and finds new areas of sympathy as it relives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors. Some such motivation has given rise to the recent crop of “revised” Indian histories from Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi, Sunil Khilani’s The Idea of India and Nandan Nilekani’s Imagining India. And now we have Meghnad Desai’s The Rediscovery of India (Allen Lane/Penguin Books, Rs 699) that traverses the same passage of India from colonialism to a modern state.
First, Meghnad Desai as the historian before we study his history. Desai is first and last a political economist, to begin with distinct Marxist sympathies which have mellowed over the years but still bear traces in his selection of facts and his observations in the book. Desai has divided his story into two parts after a long introduction, India at Sixty. The first opens with the coming of Vasco Da Gama (1500), the consolidation of British rule and rapidly comes down to Gandhi, Irwin and Churchill, the beginnings of Partition and the Road to Pakistan, and closes with the Political Economy of Empire and Nation. It is cobbled history at best which is suitable for the general reader but not for a student even slightly familiar with British rule and the rise of nationalism in the 20th century. In fact, class 12 students would get all this and more from a standard NCERT text.
It is the short second half of the book that deals with contemporary India in five long chapters that would interest the common reader. These chapters are: Independent India: The Nehru Years, Heirs and Successors, Search for Stability, 1989-2004, Globalizing India and Whose India? Which India? That would be of principal interest to some of us. But this is essentially journalistic writing, gossipy in most parts, and for someone who has followed the ups and downs of Indian politics, much of it is familiar stuff...
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First, Meghnad Desai as the historian before we study his history. Desai is first and last a political economist, to begin with distinct Marxist sympathies which have mellowed over the years but still bear traces in his selection of facts and his observations in the book. Desai has divided his story into two parts after a long introduction, India at Sixty. The first opens with the coming of Vasco Da Gama (1500), the consolidation of British rule and rapidly comes down to Gandhi, Irwin and Churchill, the beginnings of Partition and the Road to Pakistan, and closes with the Political Economy of Empire and Nation. It is cobbled history at best which is suitable for the general reader but not for a student even slightly familiar with British rule and the rise of nationalism in the 20th century. In fact, class 12 students would get all this and more from a standard NCERT text.
It is the short second half of the book that deals with contemporary India in five long chapters that would interest the common reader. These chapters are: Independent India: The Nehru Years, Heirs and Successors, Search for Stability, 1989-2004, Globalizing India and Whose India? Which India? That would be of principal interest to some of us. But this is essentially journalistic writing, gossipy in most parts, and for someone who has followed the ups and downs of Indian politics, much of it is familiar stuff...