At the Penguin annual lecture this week, renowned historian Ramachandra Guha, while pointing out that the leaders of today are ignorant of the lineage they represent, said, “I don’t believe that Rahul Gandhi has read the letters Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to the chief ministers, or Mayawati has any clue about Ambedkar?s speeches to the Constituent Assembly or that Mulayam Singh Yadav can name a single book written by Lohia.” With his latest book, Makers of Modern India, Ramachandra Guha hopes to reduce the comprehensive illiteracy prevalent in India about its political tradition. He also hopes to “make India somewhat less marginal to global debates on the political systems most appropriate to the 21st century”. Having read and reflected intensively on the works of some of India’s most influential thinkers, he was impressed deeply. The book, he says, is an attempt to share that experience with the readers. Through excerpts of essays and speeches of 19 thinkers, who have had a “defining impact on the formation and evolution of the Indian Republic”, Guha brings out perspectives that are at times complementary and at times competitive. In a brief interview he tells Kiran Yadav ?that is what makes India interesting?. Excerpts:

Are the present-day politicians too distanced from the political ideas and ideologies that form the very idea of India?

I would not single out the politicians. I think the citizenry at large?the educated class, the media, intellectuals, lawyers, doctors, professors?are all equally unaware of the social and political history of this country. There is a comprehensive illiteracy among our educated class about our political tradition. Maybe Gandhi is the only person with whose thoughts people have some kind of acquaintance. Even the political and social ideas of Tagore, Ambedkar and Nehru haven’t been studied in depth. But there are so many others. These thinkers against the background of so much hierarchy and inequality?the caste system, our treatment of women, a traditional society that was so anti-democratic?created this unified, diverse and democratic country. It is only partially successful, but it was a heroic attempt nonetheless.

What would you attribute this comprehensive illiteracy to?

Our education system is so biased towards professional disciplines like science and engineering, management and commerce. Part of the fault is that of my fellow historians?we haven?t looked at the history of political ideas and these debates. Or to acquaint many Indians with the multiplicity of our political tradition?how people have struggled and thought and reflected upon how to reshape this society and move it towards a more democratic path. I hope this book will help people act with a fuller understanding. We need not follow one thinker in toto. Our predicament today requires that we draw upon multiple sources and multiple legacies, but let us at least acquaint ourselves with how we got to where we are and how the people thought through this.

You mention that there’s a lot that we can draw from our political tradition. How in your opinion can we make relevant the Indian political tradition?

There?s so much that is fresh and alive?Rajagopalachari’s ideas on elections and funding is so relevant to the corruption in our democracy today. Reading Roy’s writings of the 1820s one recognises how contemporary they are ?on gender equality, freedom of the press, about the need to compliment a learning of our ancient scriptures of Sanskrit. He was both a thinker and actor. We can turn to Tarabai Shinde, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay to further the emancipation of women. Some aspects of Gandhian legacy are still enduring, such as Hindu-Muslim harmony and reform of the caste system. We must turn to Jayaprakash Narayan to promote decentralisation of the political authority; turn to Tagore to cultivate open-minded relations with other nations of the world. But honestly, it is up to the individual, how he or she internalises it. The book is not prescriptive in nature. In my opinion, Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar and Rajagopalachari are relevant today in a more fundamental way.

What in your opinion is the impediment to the understanding of the Indian political tradition?

India is unique in having had a long and continuous tradition?extending from Raja Rammohan Roy in the 1820s to Hamid Dalwai in the 1970s. This tradition has been most continuous and continuously of high quality. This tradition is one of political activism and reflective thinking and touched every aspect of the human condition. The makers of the Indian political tradition have original, compelling and relevant things to say about democracy, nationalism, economic policy, religion, gender, caste and environment to the world. Sectarianism is something I want to challenge with this book. Why is Tagore perceived only as a Bengali poet? Why is Nehru considered a property of the Congress party? Why do we think that Ambedkar is only relevant to Dalits?

Also, the diversity of ideas of these thinkers and the way they complemented and at times contested each other is so interesting. The ideas of Nehru and Gandhi were not uncontested, for instance. Nehru faced a political and ideological challenge from an array of great thinker activists. Lohia attacked Nehru for his love of the West and his underplaying of the caste oppression. Narayan attacked Nehru for his neglect of the villages and his lack of faith in the decentralised political institutions. C Rajagopalachari attacked Nehru for his promotion of sycophancy and careerism in the Congress party and for being too soft on communist totalitarianism. The startling thing about these critiques is that they were all fellow colleagues and fellow jail birds of Nehru in the fight against British colonialism.

You mention that there were and are five revolutions occurring in India simultaneously?the urban revolution, the industrial revolution, the national revolution, the democratic revolution and the social revolution. What accounts for the unfinished agenda of these revolutions?

Well, but we have made incremental progress on a variety of fronts, though the progress has been slow and halting. India today is a less hierarchical place than it was in 1947. Yes, Dalits are still oppressed, women are still subordinated, but they are less subordinated today. The move from feudalism to democracy has taken place. We are also moving from an agriculture-based economy to an industrial one. But all these revolutions are ongoing and incomplete. It is a complex and difficult task, but we need to minimise the conflicts and dislocations and the thinkers in this book can find ways of resolving them.

It must have been a difficult task to choose the 19 thinkers…

Yes. I would have liked to include Dadabhai Naoroji. He helped found the Indian National Congress and was the first Asian to become a member of the British Parliament. He lobbied for the rights of Indians with the British government. Subhash Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel, undoubtedly iconic leaders, were ‘doers’. So, was Indira Gandhi. Unlike Nehru, who drafted most of his speeches and writings, it was Indira Gandhi’s staff that did it for her.

Excerpt

“…I believe India still constitutes a special case. Its distinctiveness is threefold. First, the tradition of thinker-activist persisted far longer in India than elsewhere. While the men who founded the United States in the late Eighteenth century had fascinating ideas about democracy and nationhood, thereafter American politicians have merely governed and ruled, or sometimes misgoverned and misruled. Their ideas, such as these are, have come from professional ideologues or intellectuals. On the other hand, from the first decades of the Nineteenth century until the last decades of the Twentieth century, the most influential political thinkers in India were, as often as not, its most influential political actors. Long before India was conceived of as a nation, in the extended run up to Indian independence, and in the first few decades of the freedom, the most interesting reflections on society and politics were offered by men (and women) who were in the thick of political action.

Second, the relevance of individual thinkers too has lasted longer in India. For instance, Lenin’s ideas were influential for about seventy years, that is to say, from the time the Soviet state was founded to the time it disappeared. Mao’s heyday was even shorter-roughly three decades, from the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949 to the repudiation by Deng Xiaoping of his mentor’s ideas in the late 1970s. Turning to politicians in Western Europe, Churchill’s impassioned defence of the British Empire would find no takers after the 1950s. De Gaulle was famous for his invocation of the ‘grandeur de la France’, but those sentiments have now been (fortunately?) diluted and domesticated by the consolidation of the European Union. On the other hand, as this book will demonstrate, Indian thinkers of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries still speak in many ways to the concerns of the present.

A third difference has to do with the greater diversity of thinkers within the Indian political tradition. Even Gandhi and Nehru never held the kind of canonical status within their country as Mao and Lenin did in theirs. At any given moment, there were as many Indians who were opposed to their ideas as were guided by them. Moreover, the range of issues debated and acted upon by politicians and social reformers appears to have been far greater in India than in other countries.”

Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India, from ?Makers of Modern India?