ramachandra guha india after gandhi review

Guha tells us what happened elegantly, sometimes doggedly: but it's by constantly implying what might have, while disavowing it with the professional historian's gesture, that he brings his copious material to life. Since 1947, the possibility of disaster has taken the form of certain questions and crises: 'What if India were to disintegrate or to become a totalitarian society or a military dictatorship or a Hindu state?' All these are scenarios that appeared plausible, at one time or another, to both the Indian and foreign observer. Similarly, a 'What if?' animates Guha's reconstruction of the past 60 years of Indian history. Both the American film-maker embarking on the new second world war movie and the Englishwoman wearing a poppy are thinking, yet again, of events that took place many years ago, but also, in some hidden but urgent way, of the world that might have come into existence had the other side won. Yet it is precisely the possibility of what might have happened but didn't that gives an immediate but inexhaustible magic to some of the 20th century's most triumphal historical narratives. Guha reminds us, more than once, that it's the historian's job to tell us what happened, and not spend too much time speculating on what might have. Historical narrative, too, depends on familiarity enlivened by interpretative freshness and the surprise of new archival research but there's also, at times, something else. In mythic retelling, it is repetition itself, accompanied by improvisatory flourishes, that transfixes the audience by returning it to known terrain.

Ramachandra guha india after gandhi review