A rich and comprehensive repository of India’s political traditions, this book profiles nineteen Indians whose ideas had a defining impact on the formation and evolution of the Indian republic, and presents compelling excerpts from their writings and speeches. All of them were influential political activists, who also wrote with eloquence and authority, as they reflected on what Ramachandra Guha describes as ‘the most contentious times in the most interesting country in the world’.
The topics they explore and analyze include religion, caste, gender, language, nationalism, colonialism, democracy, secularism and the economy—issues that continue to find resonance in our own times.
About The Author:
Ramachandra Guha is a historian and columnist based in Bangalore. He has taught at the London School of Economics, Yale, Stanford, and the Indian Institute of Science. His new book, Patriots and Partisans, a collection of essays, will be published by Penguin Books India in November 2012, to be followed by new, updated editions of his earlier books, Environmentalism: A Global History; Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India; and A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport.
He is also The Author of the internationally acclaimed India After Gandhi, chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Outlook; and as a book of the decade by the Times of India and the Hindustan Times. He is currently working on a biography of Gandhi, to be published by Penguin. In 2008, Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines nominated Guha as one of the world’s hundred most influential intellectuals. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2009.
