The fifth point, then – that women are the storehouse of all guilt. In fact, it’s the other way round – when women go wrong it’s always because of you. See now. Many fathers marry off their daughters of ten or eleven, girls who shine like little stars, they marry them for a fat wad of rupees to some rich old man of eighty or ninety. They eye the old man’s wealth and say, ‘Well – it won’t really matter if he does die, will it? She’ll never want for money, after all.’ ... with words like that they hand her over shamelessly, like a goat to the tiger ... What’s the point of this empty ceremony for her?Other highlights include a record of the disagreements between Gandhi and Ambedkar and Gandhi and Tagore (adversarial, sometimes bitter, in the former case, cordial and respectful in the latter), the paranoid ramblings of the RSS leader M S Golwalkar (“The Pakistani Muslims have been infiltrating into Assam for the past 15 years...What else is this but a conspiracy to make Assam a Muslim-majority province so that it would automatically fall into the lap of Pakistan in course of time?”) and a revealing look at the Muslim modernist Hamid Dalwai, who made radical calls for reform in his own community (“Indian Muslims believe they are a perfect society and are superior to all other communities in India ... [based on] the assumption that the Islamic faith embodies the vision of a perfect society and therefore being a perfect Muslim implies not having to make any further progress. This is an unacceptable claim by modern criteria”).
Watch this space next week for more from Guha.
Have you read his cricket books? They're too marvelous for words. Especially Spin and Other Turns - a collection of lyrical essays dedicated to his boyhood heroes who made Indian cricket come of age in the early seventies. It's one of those books that I can read from any page at any time of the year.
ReplyDeleteI think it ought to be recommended as a supplementary English text in our high schools.
I am not a regionalist, but did anyone notice that the list of his 'makers' is overpopulated with Maharashtrians, incidentally? Well, when I asked him about it, the humble historian laughed it off saying that it was purely incidental, even though he felt that insptie of Maharashtra being the crucible of political and social reforms in 20th century, Indian History writing was dominated by Bengalis intellectuals simply because they were bilingual. I admire his honest statements, even when it makes Thackeray and his clan bloat with glory.
ReplyDeleteShrikanth: Spin and Other Turns was an absolute favourite back when I was a reading a lot of cricket literature (and before I knew anything about Guha's work in other fields). But then I somehow lost my copy and haven't seen the book since - must get hold of it again.
ReplyDeleteHill Goat: yes, he does have that direct, no-nonsense way about him even when he's being essentially genial.
Heck. Looks like I've got way too much to catch up with. Soon.
ReplyDeletepost on Bunuel=win
Also, given that Ram Guha had communist sympathies at one point, one would probably expect his books to be unequivocally "leftist". But that's clearly not true!
ReplyDeleteIndia after Gandhi is one of the most balanced and thoughtful histories you'll get to read. And Guha is typically more than willing to discuss ideas of India that are in conflict with the mainstream Nehruvian view of India.
500 Rs :(, how i crave for some good libraries in our country which are easily accessible !
ReplyDeleteBuy the recently published 'The States of Indian Cricket'. It is widely available and it contains Wickets in the East as well as Spin and Other Turns complete. I have all of Guha's cricket books and I really enjoyed his long essay on Vishwanath.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Makers of Modern India yet but I love the concept. It will be around 18-20 pages on each person and will provide a sort of beginning to go deeper into further works on the given people for the reader.
Jai- India can do with more scholars like Guha who dont have any dogmatic "isms" associated with their work and who intentionally keep their writing accessible. One issue which is evident in Guha's writing and is otherwise visible to any astute observer of Indian society and politics is the rapid erosion of the middle ground. The "you're with us or against us" approach has left us poorer as a nation.
ReplyDeleteAmbarish: I think there is more middle ground in Indian polity today than at any point in our history. Back in the fifties, it was the Congress that adopted the holier than thou "either with us or against us" attitude. The opposition was invariably branded as dangerously reactionary be it the Jan Sangh/Swatantra party on the right or the Communist/Socialist parties on the left.
ReplyDeleteToday, it is a lot more respectable to cast your vote for a conservative party like the BJP or even the Communist party than it was in the fifties - an era that laid far more emphasis on political conformity than does our own era.
@Shrikanth: I am honestly not aware of the situation in the fifties, but look at the current picture- a vast majority of politicians spend inordinate amounts of time trying to run down rivals. I dont think any side of the political spectrum is free from the malaise. There is no attempt at "consensus ad idem" (meeting of minds). But perhaps, this is inevitable in a hugely diverse and complex country.
ReplyDeleteNo malicious intentions, just wanted to share a different opinion. http://goo.gl/lpU41
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