In a country plagued by a massive income disparity and widespread corruption, communism is an experiment which cannot lead to worse outcomes than what already exists. It isn't so surprising then that the Marxist ideology and its ideas of equal privilege have attracted a fair amount of traction in India. However, in 2011, when the Communist Party of India lost in Kerala, it took with it the seed of Marxist thought and influence in the country. In The Past and Future of the Indian Left, Ramachandra Guha examines the Marxist ideology and talks about what it means for India by deeming it as a religious doctrine having scriptures and deities, going into the details of how the Communist party of India gained power in the country.
Do the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 signal the end of the road for the Left? Over the past twenty years, the Indian political climate has shifted decidedly to the Right - with the BJP and the Congress dragging India into a growth trajectory that squanders the hopes of working people. The old consensus on Indian socialism is threadbare, and socialist parties in disarray.//The future of Indian communism is rooted in the popular hopes for a better tomorrow and in the popular discontent with the bitter present. No Free Left is a critical examination of the past of Indian Communism and an assessment of its future.//Most literature on Indian communism feels claustrophobic. It assumes that the communist movement lives on a detached landscape - its programme and political judgments are adjudged against a divine standard. A history of communism cannot be written, Gramsci said, without writing a "general history of a country." Vijay Prashad does exactly that.//No Free Left stays alive to the details of the present while drawing out the long term dynamic, combining a rich historical survey with acute political analysis of the present. It is a compelling work for students of Indian politics. For activists of the Left, it is indispensable reading. Above all, it is a live work, an invitation to debate and discussion.
Who are the Indian Leftists? Why are communist leaders like Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Sitaram Yechury considered so important though the Indian Left parties are numerically not very strong in Parliament? Why is it that the most extravagant claims of the Leftists pass off as gospel truth and their kinky theories as well-known facts? Where do the Leftists derive their authority from? More Equal Than Others seeks to answer such questions and analyzes why the influence of the Indian Left is disproportionately greater than its electoral strength. Ravi Shanker Kapoor asserts that a purely political study will not help understand the tremendous intellectual hegemony of the Left; one has to look beyond politics. The author thus delves into art, culture, cinema, literature, academics, and the media to map the pervasive influence the Indian Left wields. He probes into the antics and pranks of aristocratic socialists, elitist Left-libbers, and pinkish teenybopper intellectuals: how they revel in controversies like the ones caused by Hussain's nude Saraswati and the movie Fire; how they manufacture consent and ostracize dissent; and how they collaborate with the Establishment, their professed radicalism notwithstanding. More Equal Than Others is the first critical study of the Indian Left. And while the author's criticism of the Left is scathing, he is equally unsparing of the Indian Right which, he holds, suffers from "downright cerebral poverty".
Excerpt from The Future of Indian Politics: A Contribution to the Understanding, of Present-Day Problems This booklet is intended to offer to those interested in the fate of India and Great Britain, a picture showing the problems that India has to solve in the near future in connec tion with self-determination and self-govern ment, and in her decision between solitary Independence and Partnership in a Common wealth of Free Nations, under the British Crown. The two last chapters deal with these; the background, necessary for the understanding and the decision of these two supreme questions, determining the future Of both Nations, is painted in with care, so as to contain the vital facts, and those only, which have led to the parting of the ways, indicated in the problems An Introduction gives A bird's-eye View of the relations between India and Britain, from their first importantcontact to the end of the East India Company Rule. Step by Step takes us from the first National Congress to the outbreak of the War. A New Departure tells of the Congress Of 1914, Indians in the War, and the demand for the recognition Of India as a component part Of the Empire. The Great Agitation takes up the next two chapters, and carries us to the coming to India of the Secretary Of State. The New Spirit in India marks the causes of her Changed attitude. The Struggle over the Reforms tells of the Death of the Old Congress and the Reformed Legislatures. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi is a magisterial account of the pains, struggles, humiliations and glories of the world’s largest and least likely democracy. A riveting chronicle of the often brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation, and of the extraordinary individuals and institutions who held it together, it established itself as a classic when it was first published in 2007. In the last decade, India has witnessed, among other things, two general elections; the fall of the Congress and the rise of Narendra Modi; a major anti-corruption movement; more violence against women, Dalits, and religious minorities; a wave of prosperity for some but the persistence of poverty for others; comparative peace in Nagaland but greater discontent in Kashmir than ever before. This tenth anniversary edition, updated and expanded, brings the narrative up to the present. Published to coincide with seventy years of the country’s independence, this definitive history of modern India is the work of one of the world’s finest scholars at the height of his powers.
Excerpt from The Political Future of India My book, Young India, was written during the first year of the war and was finally revised and sent to the press before the war was two years old. It concluded with the following observation: "The Indians are a chivalrous people; they will not disturb England as long as she is engaged with Germany. The struggle after the war might, however, be even more bitter and sustained." The events that have happened since have amply justified the above conclusion. India not only refrained from disturbing England while she was engaged in war with Germany, but actively helped in defeating Germany and winning the war. She raised an army of over a million combatants and supplied a large number of war workers, and made huge contributions in money and materials. She denied herself the necessities of life in order to feed and equip the armies in the field though within the last months of the war when scarcity and epidemic overtook her, she lost six millions of her sons and daughters from one disease alone - influenza. This was more than chivalry. This was self-effacement in the interests of an Empire which, in the past, had treated her children as helots. How much of this effort was voluntary and how much of it was forced it is difficult to appraise. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Focusing on politics and society in India, this book explores new areas enmeshed in the complex social, economic and political processes in the country. Linking the structural characteristics with the broader sociological context, the book emphasizes the strong influence of sociological issues on politics, such as social milieu shaping and the articulation of the political in day-to-day events. Political events are connected with the ever-changing social, economic and political processes in order to provide an analytical framework to explain ‘peculiarities’ of Indian politics. Bidyut Chakrabarty argues that three major ideological influences of colonialism, nationalism and democracy have provided the foundational values of Indian politics. Structured thematically and chronologically, this work is a useful resource for students of political science, sociology and South Asian studies.
India today is a vibrant free-market democracy, a nation well on its way to overcoming decades of widespread poverty. The nation’s rise is one of the great international stories of the late twentieth century, and in India Unbound the acclaimed columnist Gurcharan Das offers a sweeping economic history of India from independence to the new millennium. Das shows how India’s policies after 1947 condemned the nation to a hobbled economy until 1991, when the government instituted sweeping reforms that paved the way for extraordinary growth. Das traces these developments and tells the stories of the major players from Nehru through today. As the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble India, Das offers a unique insider’s perspective and he deftly interweaves memoir with history, creating a book that is at once vigorously analytical and vividly written. Impassioned, erudite, and eminently readable, India Unbound is a must for anyone interested in the global economy and its future.
