India After Gandhi: A History (3rd Edition, Revised and Updated)
Ramachandra Guha offers a sprawling portrait of independent India, capturing both its contradictions and its stubborn resilience. This is the story of a nation that shouldn't have held together, yet somehow did. The narrative sweeps across seven and a half decades of triumph and trauma, plotting the rise of the world's most improbable democratic experiment against a backdrop of partition's aftermath, regional strife, and social upheaval. Guha examines the fierce personalities and resilient institutions that prevented fragmentation, whilst unflinching about the brutalities that have scarred the journey. The third edition extends the chronicle to encompass recent seismic shifts: demonetisation's shock, pandemic devastation, Kashmir's contested autonomy, and the troubling surge in violence targeting women, lower castes, and religious minorities. Alongside these darker chapters sits an equally complex picture of burgeoning wealth existing uneasily with stubborn deprivation. What emerges is neither hagiography nor pessimism, but something more valuable. Guha writes with scholarly precision yet surprising warmth, making vast institutional histories feel genuinely human. His work stands as the definitive modern account of India's fractious, bewildering, and ultimately extraordinary experiment in plural democracy.
- Author: Ramachandra Guha
- Publisher: Picador India
- Genre: Action & Adventure
- ISBN: 978-9361131257
- Pages: 980 pages