India after Gandhi

Knowing our history should be an important part of our up-bringing. In my elementary and middle schools back in India, history was an important subject which students had to study. But most of the history taught in schools is mostly around French revolution, Russian revolution, Dark Ages and Renaissance in Europe and the two world wars. India's history is mostly limited till the date India achieved independence from the British Raj. Almost none of the history after India's independence on August 15th 1947 was ever taught to us as if there was no notable event since August 15th 1947 happened in our history. The book 'India after Gandhi' is specifically exploring India's history after independence. Author Ramchand Guha gives similar argument that India's there is very little work on exploring and documentation of important events after independence. In the book, author attempts to give an impartial view of the facts from India's history after Mahatma Gandhi and let the reader gauge and make their own opinion about these events. The book is a significant body of work of around 700 pages with the author dividing the book into 5 parts. So this blog post is a little longer with a detailed summary of each of the five sections. Date: 5th April 2020 Part One: PICKING UP THE PIECES The part starts with celebrations of India's independences. is about to achieve its independence on 15th August 1947. India's' independence didn't come without paying the heavy price of partition of the Indian sub-continent into two new nations India and Pakistan. The painful division was the parting aftermath of strategy divide and conquer strategy of Britain who employed this tactic to rule Indian sub-continent for over 200 years. Again a Britisher was assigned the job to draw the lines between India and Pakistan who did not keep the incentives of Indian/Pakistani people in mind. This caused a mass migration of Sikhs and Hindus from west Punjab in Pakistan to East Punjab in India and of Muslims in the opposite direction. The riots which ensued across prominent populated areas of India in Punjab and Bengal left an ever lasting impact on the psych of the survivors. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru tried their best to prevent the rioting to ensure that people crossed the border without any more violence but still a lot of lives were lost to this gruesome mass migration seen rarely in history. Mahatma Gandhi's effort to protect the Muslims of India from the Hindus and Sikhs in India eventually led to the assassination of father of young Indian nation. With the option of aligning with either of two new nations states, the so-called princely states were suddenly caught off-guard with the Britishers leaving the sub-content for good. Most of the princely states had little choice than to join either the Union of India or Pakistan. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and little known V.P. Menon played an important role in bringing more than 500 princely states under the Union of India. The author provides historic documentation on how the prominent princely states of Travancore, Mysore, Hyderabad and Kashmir were brought under Union of India sometimes by persuasion, political acumen and show of power. Among all the princely states and integration of the state of Kashmir into Union of India was the most controversial and painful and to this date has remained an unresolved issue between India and Pakistan. With a significant number of refugees who found themselves without food and their homes in India, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and home minister Vallabhbhai Patel went about settling the refugees by allowing them farmable lands in Punjab and providing them food by importing large quantities of grains. I distinctly remember my late grand mother telling me that the Sikh family, who lived in the house across from the street, had migrated to India from their native place in Pakistan's part of Punjab. She used to tell their painful stories on how they managed to put food on table for their family by selling stuff on buses and trains instead of their being able to practice their trait which was farming. It was unbelievable for me to understand if such a time ever existed where people didn't have food to eat the next day and seeing that the Sikhs living across the street in their lavish and magnificent house were ever so poor. Finally, the author talks about how the constitution of India came into being and how disparate views of Indian people helped shape it. The constitution of India is the largest in the world and spans 11 volumes. The constituent assembly consisted of people from different parts of India and came from different backgrounds. There were contentious issues like reservations for minorities like Harijans and declining reservations for tribals and muslims, which language should be the official language of India and which language should be chosen for the written version of the constitution to name a few.