Pan Macmillan India is delighted to announce the release of
the 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION of Ramachandra Guha’s bestseller,
INDIA AFTER GANDHI- The History of the World’s Largest Democracy
Published to coincide with seventy years of India’s independence. this updated and expanded edition is being released in two formats, a Collector’s Edition and a hardback.
Launch Events:
BENGALURU
on Friday, 21 July 2017, 6.30 p.m.
at Alliance Francaise de Bangalore
MUMBAI
on Friday, 28 July 2017, 6.30 p.m.
at the Little Theatre, NCPA
About the Book
BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out and Outlook
Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award
Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi is a magisterial account of the pains, struggles, humiliations and glories of the world’s largest and least likely democracy. A riveting chronicle of the often brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation, and of the extraordinary individuals and institutions who held it together, it established itself as a classic when it was first published in 2007.
In the last decade, India has witnessed, among other things, two general elections; more violence against women, Dalits, and religious minorities; a wave of prosperity for some but the persistence of poverty for others; comparative peace in Nagaland but greater discontent in Kashmir than ever before. This tenth anniversary edition, revised and expanded, brings the narrative up to the present.
Published to coincide with seventy years of the country’s independence, this definitive history of modern India is the work of one of the world’s finest scholars at the height of his powers.
● Hardback ● ₹1,299
● Paperback ● ₹799
Ramachandra Guha was born in Dehradun in 1958, and educated in Delhi and Calcutta. He has taught at the universities of Oslo, Stanford and Yale, and at the Indian Institute of Science. He has been a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and also served as the Indo-American Community Chair Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
After a peripatetic academic career, with five jobs in ten years in three continents, Guha settled down to become a full-time writer, based in Bengaluru. His books cover a wide range of themes: they include a global history of environmentalism, a biography of an anthropologist-activist, a social history of Indian cricket, and a social history of Himalayan peasants. His entire career, he says, seems in retrospect to have been an extended (and painful) preparation for the writing of India After Gandhi.
Guha’s books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The prizes they have won include the UK Cricket Society’s Literary Award and the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History. In 2008, Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines nominated Guha as one of the world’s one hundred most influential intellectuals. In 2009, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan for services to literature and education. In 2015, he was awarded the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian culture and scholarship.
Praise for India After Gandhi
‘Finally, here is a history of democratic India that is every bit as sweeping as the country itself … (A) magisterial work’ Financial Times
‘A magnificently told history of the world’s largest democracy’ India Today
‘An insightful, spirited and elegantly crafted account of India since 1947’ Times Literary Suplement
Guha as given democratic India the rich, well-paced history it deserves’ Washington Post
‘It is a formidable undertaking to write in a single volume a history of this vast country … Keeping in proportion the separate elements of so huge and sprawling a history calls for the finest judgement … Guha rises noble to the challenges: his history is as comprehensive, balanced and elegantly crafted as any reasonable reader could expect ’ The Spectator
‘Indian democracy’s pre-eminent chronicler’ Time