Indian writer and historian Ramachandra Guha’s latest volume of essays, Patriots and Partisans is divided into two parts; the larger first part, Debating Democracy, comprises of political essays while the second, The Word and the World, contains essays on what Guha calls “the life of the mind”- in more specific terms, these essays deal with the locus of the personal, the political and the academic.
In the preface, Guha describes himself as a moderate liberal with no party affiliations. To his credit, Guha is critical of both extremes of the political spectrum as he lays bare their paradoxes and absurdities. In the essay titled The Past and Future of the Indian Left, he perceptively reveals the moribund state of his country’s Left as it fails repeatedly to revise its modus vivendi and attune it to actual ground realities, thereby becoming mired in recalcitrant dogma and ideological confusion which colonize and misarticulate the troubles of the people it claims to represent. When tackling the paranoia, chauvinism and dangerous rhetoric of right wing parties such as the RSS and the BJP, Guha is equally apt, though perhaps slightly less insightful. Likewise, he does not shy away from attacking the Congress party for the parochial, sycophantic, self-serving “family firm” it has become.
[quote]It becomes clear that the moderate Guha is far from being unsusceptible to dogma[/quote]
However, a few essays into the first part of the book, it becomes clear that the moderate Guha is far from being unsusceptible to dogma; his personal set of idols include democracy, the Indian Constitution and early Indian national figures, including Gandhi, Nehru and B. R. Ambedkar. It is by invoking the abstract idea of a “plural and inclusive” India, its “flexible and adaptable” constitution and the legacy of its early leaders that Guha prescribes immaculate remedies to the problems which beset his nation. A strange sense of sterility pervades several essays, for although the India we are given in these is plagued with the problems of political partisanship, rampant inequality and poverty, ethnic unrest, ‘crony capitalism’, a bigoted media, environmental degradation and corruption, all of these troubles lurk about and remain deprived of a deeper and more encompassing analysis as Guha focuses on the virtues of his idols instead.
In the essay The Beauty of Compromise, Guha advocates moderation and negotiation in conflict resolution. In solving the problems of Kashmir and the Naga secessionist movement in Assam, he claims that the “democratic and federal Constitution of India could embrace these states should the rebels settle for autonomy within the Union” and blames the rebels’ pride and their “burden of history” for their inability to acknowledge and accept this solution. While he briefly admits that the state should apologize for its excesses and take legal measures to offset them and, in an earlier essay, also says that these conflicts remain due to the “intense commitment of rebels on the one side, and the excessive use of force by the state on the other,” at no place does Guha allow details of the cumbersome ‘burden of history’ to interrupt (and challenge) his tidy argument. There is no mention of the fact that Gandhi’s promise of independence to the Naga was retracted by Nehru; this was followed by the declaration of a war of independence on behalf of the Naga, which was dealt with ruthless repression on Delhi’s part. This included an outrageous piece of legislation (which is still in use): the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. The Act allows the killing of anyone seen in a group of five people or more if such was forbidden, and bars any legal action against the exercise of this power, except by the central government. This was, in other words, a perfect legal mantle behind which murder, rape and pillage were unleashed upon the Naga. Similarly, the questionable seizure of Kashmir, Nehru’s failure to carry out a promised referendum and over sixty years of brutal military occupation are wrongs for which perhaps the state is liable to make greater redress than simply apologizing a little, asking the ‘rebels’ to chill out, not be so ‘intense’ in their commitment and walk into the arms of the Union. Surely such tyranny points to something rotten at the heart of the state even as Guha studiously maintains the perfection of its theoretical basis.
[quote]The later, disillusioned Ambedkar is conveniently absent from Guha’s version of India[/quote]
Although a historian, Guha comes across as one suffering from a particularly debilitating case of selective historical amnesia. In celebrating the Indian Constitution as democratic, plural, egalitarian and adaptive, he glosses over the fact that the document inherited from colonial rule – among other things – an electoral system which in effect removed all political opposition for the Congress at the national level, as well as legal tenets which bequeathed immense power to the centre. It was this carrying forth of colonial instruments of rule in the constitution which enabled the centre to exercise wholesale repression and curtail civil liberties when it was in need of crushing opposition. Nehru and Vallabhai Patel used these powers soon after independence to jail hundreds of militants and communist leaders. The democratic Indian state was actually a Union in which the centre had the power to manipulate or overthrow its constituent units; by 1987, it had taken over various states on at least 75 occasions. Moreover, the constitution of the new state, for all of its talk of equality and secularism, failed to do away with caste entirely and enshrined many principles there were of Hindu origin. This was so to the extent that Ambedkar – who initially framed the constitution and whom Guha reveres – resigned after his egalitarian revisions to the Hindu Code Bill were turned down in 1951, saying: “People always keep on saying to me: oh sir, you are the maker of the constitution. My answer is I was a hack. What I was asked to do I did much against my will.” Guha, however, introduces us to Ambedkar as the great mind behind the glorious Constitution, along with the following quote from him in 1948: “The constitution… is workable, it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the country together both in peace time and in war time.” The later, disillusioned Ambedkar is conveniently absent from Guha’s version of India.
Guha’s commitment to Nehru is almost touching: he repeatedly insists that the man was “profoundly good,” a veritable embodiment of democracy, cosmopolitanism and nationalism, and all that he may have failed at was largely accidental. Such loyalty and commitment do perhaps befit a reminiscing septuagenarian, but they certainly don’t suit an academic and a historian. The essay Verdicts on Nehru oozes with praise for the man and squarely lays the blame of much that is unpleasant in Nehru’s legacy upon Indira Gandhi and her successors. For some unfathomable reason (perhaps he felt duty-bound?), Guha even takes a rather sketchy stab at salvaging his hero from the rumour that he was politically influenced by Edwina Mountbatten. In a similar vein, the next essay in the volume; An Asian Clash of Civilizations attempts to rescue Nehru from the debacle of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. Here he admits that yes, Nehru had made some mistakes, but quickly adds that the fault lay mainly in Nehru’s misleading advisors and in Nehru’s inability to take the Chinese risk seriously due to his high-minded belief in Asian solidarity. Then comes the strange claim that “Nehru was not as much in control of these events as commonly supposed,” leading to the singularly unconvincing argument that a clash between the two nations was inevitable; practically “written into the logic of the respective and collective histories of India and China.”
[quote]Guha recalls the first time he kissed his wife[/quote]
Reading the shorter second part of the volume after all this myopic reasoning and historical revisionism is a relief. Here Guha is, for the large part, much more apt and engaging as he moves about a variety of subjects; he discusses bilingualism, makes a case for pluralism in the academia, bemoans the fate of his beloved Nehru Memorial Museum and Library after it was overtaken by incompetent Congress sycophants, and even recalls the first time he kissed his wife. The latter is described in Turning Crimson at Premier’s- a charming and refreshingly witty essay on his lifetime relationship with a small Bangalore bookshop and its owner. In the animated, if somewhat abruptly concluded essay My Life with a Duchess, Guha unspools his long association with the Oxford University Press and its editors. And so one ends the volume wishing Guha had given it more of the ‘life of his mind’ instead of his partisan political views.
