Quotes from Ramachandra Guha

There are four varnas, with the former 'Untouchables' constituting a fifth (and lowest) strata. Into these varnas fit the 3,000 and more jatis, each challenging those, in the same region, that are ranked above it, and being in turn challenged by those below.

an empty refugee special steaming into Ferozepur Station late one afternoon. The driver was incoherent with terror, the guard was lying dead in his van, and the stoker was missing. I walked down the platform – all but two bogeys were bespattered with blood inside and out; three dead bodies lay in pools of blood in a third-class carriage. An armed Muslim mob had stopped the train between Lahore and Ferozepur and done this neat job of butchery in broad daylight.

freedom of a nation cannot be won by solitary acts of heroism'; rather, it 'requires the patient, intelligent, and constructive effort of tens of thousands of men and women, young and old'.

Asian Relations Conference

The Kingsford–Maitland view of Christianity appealed to Gandhi because it asked not for exaltation of a personal Saviour, but fidelity to one's conscience.

Is it any great wonder', asked the writer, 'that an Indian Muslim no longer feels secure in secular India? He feels discriminated against. He feels a second-class citizen.

Nehru was a well-read and widely travelled man. Through his travels and readings, he arrived at a synthesis of socialism and liberalism that he thought appropriate to his country. In other words, the political beliefs he came to profess – and invited the people of India to share – were his own.

In March 1950 Sukumar Sen was appointed chief election commissioner.

The blood of many a brave Tamilian, Andhra, Malayalee and Coorgi', it said, 'has soaked into the fertile soil of Kashmir and mixed with the blood of the Kashmiri patriots, cementing for ever the unity of the North and the South.

Lathi goli khayenge, phir bhi Bambai layenge

But the history of independent India has remained a field mostly untilled. If history is 'formally constituted knowledge of the past', then for the period since 1947 this knowledge practically does not exist.

At no other time or place in human history have social conflicts been so richly diverse, so vigorously articulated, so eloquently manifest in art and literature or adressed with such directness by the political system and the media.

India' was merely a label of convenience, 'a name which we give to a great region including a multitude of different countries'.

Kuomintang leader Chiang Kaishek

The world over, the rhetoric of modern democratic politics has been marked by two rather opposed rhetorical styles. The first appeals to hope, to popular aspirations for economic prosperity and social peace. The second appeals to fear, to sectional worries about being worsted or swamped by one's historic enemies.

The All-India Congress Committee had once elected representatives from the states, these in turn sent up by Congress bodies at the taluk and district levels. More significantly, the chief ministers of Congress-ruled states were chosen by the local legislators alone. However, after the Congress split in 1969, Mrs Gandhi was able to place her own candidates in key positions.

Gandhi's fast unto death to keep the Depressed Classes in the Hindu fold was to begin at 12 noon on 20 September 1932.

Haste and teleology – these twin temptations – do injustice to both man and place. As social reformer, popular leader, political thinker and family man, Gandhi was fundamentally shaped by his South African experience. In turn, he had a profound impact on the history of that continent, with his ideas and attitudes influencing later struggles against racism.

As an upper-caste reformer, Gandhi was motivated by a sense of guilt, the desire to make reparation for past sins, whereas as one born in an 'untouchable' home, Ambedkar was animated by the drive to achieve a position of social equality and human dignity for his fellows.

Eighteen applications were received for a licence to make small cars; only that of the prime minister's son was approved, despite his having no past experience in this regard.

The Congress chief minister of Haryana, Bansi Lal, gave Sanjay's Maruti car company 300 acres of land at a giveaway price.

The socialists' manifesto called for 'the progressive nationalization of all the instruments of production, distribution and exchange'. Gandhi thought this 'too sweeping', commenting archly that 'Rabindranath Tagore is an instrument of marvellous production. I do not know that he will submit to being nationalized.

plain, once ruled by a single monarch, was now split between

It remains one of the saddest memories of my life—the memory of how, intimidated by decades of harassment and violence at the hands of Hindutva bigots, so many of my fellow citizens had to shame themselves into a public display of patriotism