Podcast appearances and mentions of ram guha

He's lived a rich life as a journalist, a human rights activist, an author, a columnist -- and now he's written a great book on Gujaratis. Salil Tripathi joins Amit Varma in episode 409 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss his life, his learnings, these times we live in -- and the times that came before. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Salil Tripathi on Twitter, Instagram, Wikipedia, LinkedIn and Amazon. 2. The Gujaratis: A Portrait of a Community -- Salil Tripathi. 3. The Colonel Who Would Not Repent -- Salil Tripathi. 4. Offence – The Hindu Case -- Salil Tripathi. 5. Detours: Songs of the Open Road -- Salil Tripathi. 6. For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit -- Edited by Shilpa Gupta and Salil Tripathi. 7. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 8. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India — Akshaya Mukul. 9. Saraswatichandra (Gujarati) (English) -- Govardhanram Tripathi. 10. Gujarat Ni Asmita -- KM Munshi. 11. I Follow the Mahatma -- KM Munshi. 12. Devdutt Pattanaik and the Stories That Shape Us — Episode 404 of The Seen and the Unseen. 13. Ahimsa: 100 Reflections on the Harappan Civilization — Devdutt Pattanaik. 14. Until the Lions -- Karthika Nair. 15. Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity — Manu Pillai. 16. The Forces That Shaped Hinduism -- Episode 405 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Manu Pillai). 17. Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain -- Fintan O'Toole. 18. Understanding Gandhi: Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 19. Understanding Gandhi: Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 20. Gandhi Before India -- Ramachandra Guha. 21. Objects From Our Past -- Episode 77 of Everything is Everything. 22. The Diary of Manu Gandhi (Part 1) (Part 2) -- Edited and Translated by Tridip Suhrud. 23. The Ferment of Our Founders — Episode 272 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Kapila). 24. Lessons from an Ankhon Dekhi Prime Minister — Amit Varma. 25. Akhil Katyal's poem on caste. 26. Midnight's Children -- Salman Rushdie. 27. Bare Feet – a Poem about MF Husain -- Salil Tripathi. 28. My Mother's Fault -- Salil Tripathi. 29. Jejuri -- Arun Kolatkar. 30. Yashwant Rao -- Arun Kolatkar. 31. The Patriot -- Nissim Ezekiel. 32. Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne -- Satyajit Ray. 33. You're Missing -- Bruce Springsteen. 34. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Ved Mehta and John McPhee on Amazon. 35. All We Imagine as Light -- Payal Kapadia. 36. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha Is the Impartial Spectator — Episode 388 of The Seen and the Unseen. 37. On Tyranny -- Timothy Snyder. 38. Lant Pritchett Is on Team Prosperity — Episode 379 of The Seen and the Unseen. 39. Saving Capitalism From The Capitalists -- Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales. 40. Check out Johan Norberg's great work. 41. The Life and Times of the Indian Economy — Episode 387 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rajeswari Sengupta). 42. India's Problem is Poverty, Not Inequality — Amit Varma. 43. Stay Away From Luxury Beliefs — Episode 46 of Everything is Everything. 44. On Inequality — Harry Frankfurt. 45. Economic growth is enough and only economic growth is enough — Lant Pritchett with Addison Lewis. 46. Sample SSR conspiracy theory: He's alive! 47. Amit Varma's 2022 piece on the mess-up at The Wire. 48. Television Price Controls — Episode 27 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ashok Malik). 49. The Selfish Altruist -- Tony Vaux. 50. Sadanand Dhume's tweet on the hypocrisy around The Satanic Verses. 51. Bad Elements -- Ian Buruma. 52. Biju Rao Won't Bow to Conventional Wisdom — Episode 392 of The Seen and the Unseen. 53. Can Economics Become More Reflexive? — Vijayendra Rao. 54. The Life and Times of Teesta Setalvad — Episode 302 of The Seen and the Unseen. 55. Aakar Patel Is Full of Hope — Episode 270 of The Seen and the Unseen. 56. The Wal-Mart Effect -- Charles Fishman. 57. Modern South India -- Rajmohan Gandhi. 58. The Adda at the End of the Universe — Episode 309 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Sathaye and Roshan Abbas). 59. Whatever happened To Ehsan Jafri on February 28, 2002? — Harsh Mander. 60. Jai Jai Garvi Gujarat -- Narmad. 61. The Populist Playbook -- Episode 42 of Everything is Everything. 62. Where the Green Ants Dream -- Werner Herzog. 63. People's Linguistic Survey of India -- GN Devy and others. 64. The Refreshing Audacity of Vinay Singhal — Episode 291 of The Seen and the Unseen. 65. Stage.in. 66. Reading Lolita in Tehran -- Azar Nafisi. 67. Two Concepts of Liberty — Isaiah Berlin. 68. Understanding the State -- Episode 25 of Everything is Everything. 69. The First Assault on Our Constitution — Episode 194 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh). 70. Shruti Rajagopalan's talk on the many amendments in our constitution. 71. Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back — Subhashish Bhadra. 72. Subhashish Bhadra on Our Dysfunctional State — Episode 333 of The Seen and the Unseen. 73. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life — Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 74. Goodbye Solo — Ramin Bahrani. 75. The desire to help, and the desire not to be helped — Roger Ebert's review of Goodbye Solo. 76. Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada -- Shahu Patole. 77. Firaaq -- Nandita Das. 78. How the BJP Wins — Prashant Jha. 79. The BJP's Magic Formula — Episode 45 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Prashant Jha). 80. The Year of Living Dangerously -- Peter Weir. 81. Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Francois Truffaut and Aparna Sen. 82. The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and London Review of Books. 83. Ravi Shankar, Zakir Hussain and Vilayat Khan on Spotify. 84. Nadine Gordiner, Fintan O'Toole, Ilya Kaminsky, Karthika Nair, Ruchir Joshi, Kiran Desai, Nilanjana Roy, Sunil Gavaskar and Mike Brearley. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here. Amit and Ajay also bring out a weekly YouTube show, Everything is Everything. Have you watched it yet? You must! And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Asmita' by Simahina.

He's an economist who cares more about people than numbers -- and he thinks his field needs more sociology and anthropology in it. Vijayendra (Biju) Rao joins Amit Varma in episode 392 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about what makes him angry and what brings him peace. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Vijayendra (Biju) Rao on Twitter, Google Scholar, The World Bank and his own website. 2. Biju Rao's blog at the World Bank. 3. Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? -- Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao. 4. Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Indian Village Assemblies -- Paromita Sanyal and Vijayendra Rao. 5. Can Economics Become More Reflexive? -- Vijayendra Rao. 6. Vamsha Vriksha -- Girish Karnad. 7. ‘I want absolute commitment to our gharana': A tribute to Rajshekhar Mansur and his music -- Vijayendra Rao. 8. The Life and Work of Ashwini Deshpande — Episode 298 of The Seen and the Unseen. 9. Two Hundred and Fifty-Thousand Democracies: A Review of Village Government in India -- Siddharth George, Vijaendra Rao and MR Sharan. 10. Last Among Equals : Power Caste And Politics In Bihar's Villages -- MR Sharan. 11. Lant Pritchett Is on Team Prosperity — Episode 379 of The Seen and the Unseen. 12. National Development Delivers: And How! And How? — Lant Pritchett. 13. The Perils of Partial Attribution: Let's All Play for Team Development — Lant Pritchett. 14. The Rising Price of Husbands: A Hedonic Analysis of Dowry Increases in Rural India -- Vijayendra Rao. 15. The Life and Times of Jerry Pinto — Episode 314 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. Shephali Bhatt Is Searching for the Incredible -- Episode 391 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Jiddu Krishnamurti on Wikipedia, Britannica and Amazon. 18. Biju Rao listens to Jiddu Krishnamurthy. 19. Ben Hur -- William Wyler. 20. Trade, Institutions and Ethnic Tolerance: Evidence from South Asia -- Saumitra Jha. 21. Memories and Things — Episode 195 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aanchal Malhotra). 22. Remnants of a Separation — Aanchal Malhotra. 23. Deliberative Democracy -- Jon Elster. 24. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 25. Subhashish Bhadra on Our Dysfunctional State — Episode 333 of The Seen and the Unseen. 26. Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back — Subhashish Bhadra. 27. Urban Governance in India — Episode 31 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 28. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 29. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 30. Accelerating India's Development — Karthik Muralidharan. 31. The Added Value of Local Democracy -- Abhishek Arora, Siddharth George, Vijayendra Rao and MR Sharan. 32. Some memories of VKRV Rao -- Vijayendra Rao. 33. The Foundation Series — Isaac Asimov. 34. Lawrence of Arabia -- David Lean. 35. Gandhi -- Richard Attenborough. 36. The Story of My Experiments with Truth -- Mohandas Gandhi. 37. Bhagavad Gita on Wikipedia and Amazon. 38. KT Achaya on Amazon. 39. The Emergency: A Personal History — Coomi Kapoor. 40. My Varied Life in Management: A Short Memoir -- SL Rao. 41. The Incredible Curiosities of Mukulika Banerjee — Episode 276 of The Seen and the Unseen. 42. Ram Guha Writes a Letter to a Friend -- Episode 371 of The Seen and the Unseen. 43. Terror as a Bargaining Instrument : A Case Study of Dowry Violence in Rural India -- Francis Bloch and Vijayendra Rao. 44. Domestic Violence and Intra-Household Resource Allocation in Rural India: An Exercise in Participatory Econometrics -- Vijayendra Rao. 45. Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative. 46. Narrative Economics -- Robert J Shiller. 47. Culture and Public Action -- Edited by Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton. 48. The Capacity to Aspire -- Arjun Appadurai. 49. Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming -- Agnes Callard. 50. Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind -- Tom Holland. 51. PV Sukhatme in EPW. 52. India Needs Decentralization -- Episode 47 of Everything if Everything. 53. Deliberative Inequality:  A Text-As-Data Study of India's Village Assemblies -- Ramya Parthasarathy, Vijayendra Rao and Nethra Palaniswamy. 54. A Method to Scale Up Interpretive Qualitative Analysis with An Application to Aspirations among Refugees and Hosts in Bangladesh -- Julian Ashwin, Vijayendra Rao, Monica Biradavolu, Aditya Chhabra, Afsana Khan, Arshia Haque and Nandini Krishnan. 55. Using Large-Language Models for Qualitative Analysis Can Introduce Serious Bias -- Julian Ashwin, Aditya Chhabra and Vijayendra Rao. 56. This Be The Verse — Philip Larkin. 57. Audacious Hope: An Archive of How Democracy is Being Saved in India -- Indrajit Roy. 58. Poverty and the Quest for Life -- Bhrigupati Singh. 59. Recasting Culture to Undo Gender: A Sociological Analysis of Jeevika in Rural Bihar, India -- Paromita Sanyal, Vijayendra Rao and Shruti Majumdar. 60. We Are Poor but So Many -- Ela Bhatt. 61. Premature Imitation and India's Flailing State — Shruti Rajagopalan & Alexander Tabarrok. 62. James Wolfensohn in Wikipedia and The World Bank. 63. Arati Kumar-Rao Took a One-Way Ticket -- Episode 383 of The Seen and the Unseen. 64. Marginlands: Indian Landscapes on the Brink — Arati Kumar-Rao. 65. Amitav Ghosh on Amazon. 66. Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life -- Nicholas Phillipson. 67. Elinor Ostrom on Amazon, Britannica, Wikipedia and EconLib. 68. Jane Mansbridge on Amazon, Wikipedia, and Google Scholar. 69. Albert O Hirschman on Amazon and Wikipedia. 70. Mughal-e-Azam -- K Asif. 71. Samskara -- Pattabhirama Reddy. 72. The Wire -- David Simon. 73. Deadwood -- David Milch. 74. Biju Rao on Democracy, Deliberation, and Development -- the Ideas of India podcast with Shruti Rajagopalan. Biju Rao's Specially curated music recommendations: 1. The Senior Dagar Brothers (Moinuddin & Aminuddin Dagar) performing (Komal Rishab) Asavari and Kamboji. 2. Raghunath Panigrahi performing Ashtapadi from the Geeta Govinda and Lalita Lavanga. 3. Amir Khan performing Lalit and Jog. 4. Vilayat Khan performing Sanjh Saravali and Hameer. 5. Ravi Shankar performing Jaijaiwanti and Tilak Shyam (full concert) and Durga. 6. Faiyaz Khan performing Raga Darbari and Raga Des. 7. N Rajam performing a full concert with Gorakh Kalyan, Sawani Barwa, Hamir, Malkauns. 8. Kumar Gandharva performing Tulsidas – Ek Darshan and Surdas – Ek Darshan. 9. Bhimsen Joshi performing Ragas Chhaya and Chhaya Malhar & Jo Bhaje Hari Ko Sada – Bhajan in Raga Bhairavi (original recording from 1960). The Jaipur-Atrauli Gharana: 1. Mallikarjun Mansur in a guided Listening Session by Irfan Zuberi, and performing Basanti Kedar and Tilak Kamod. 2. Kesarbai Kerkar performing Lalit and Bhairavi. 3. Moghubai Kurdikar performing Kedar and Suddha Nat. 4. Kishori Amonkar performing Bhimpalas and Bhoop(ali). 5. Some performances by Rajshekhar Mansur are linked in Biju Rao's piece on him. Karnatic Music: 1. TM Krishna performing Krishna Nee Begane Baaro, Yamuna Kalyani (Yaman Kalyan) and Nalinakanthi (closest Hindustani equivalent is Tilak Kamod). 2. MD Ramanathan performing Bhavayami – Raga Malika and Samaja Vara Gamana – Ragam Hindolam (Malkauns). 3. Aruna Sairam performing a full concert. 4. Madurai Mani Iyer performing Taaye Yoshade. 5. MS Subbulakshmi performing a full Concert from 1966 and Bhaja Govindam (Ragamalika). 6. TR Mahalingam performing Swara Raga Sudha – Shankarabharanam. Jugalbandis: 1. Ali Akbar Khan and Vilayat Khan performing Marwa. 2. Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar performing Jaijaiwanti. 3. N Rajam with her brother TN Krishnan performing Raga Hamsadhwani. Amit's newsletter is active again. Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘The Iconoclast' by Simahina.

To understand modern India, we must understand the history of Hindutva -- and we must wrestle with Savarkar. Vinayak Chaturvedi joins Amit Varma in episode 385 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss his life and work as a historian -- and the importance of history in shaping the present moment. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) (This episode was recorded in March, 2024.) Also check out: 1. Vinayak Chaturvedi at UC Irvine and Amazon. 2. Hindutva and Violence: VD Savarkar and the Politics of History -- Vinayak Chaturvedi. 3. Peasant Pasts – History and Memory in Western India -- Vinayak Chaturvedi. 4. Imaginary Homelands -- Salman Rushdie. 5. The Road and No Country for Old Men -- Cormac McCarthy. 6. No Country for Old Men -- Joel and Ethan Coen. 7. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages — Peggy Mohan. 8. Understanding India Through Its Languages — Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 9. Partha Chatterjee on Amazon, Wikipedia and Columbia University. 10. The Egg -- Andy Weir. 11. Deepak VS and the Man Behind His Face -- Episode 373 of The Seen and the Unseen. 12. The Incredible Insights of Timur Kuran -- Episode 349 of The Seen and the Unseen. 13. Private Truths, Public Lies — Timur Kuran. 14. The Long Divergence — Timur Kuran. 15. Some plagiarism complaints against Claudine Gay: 1, 2, 3, 4. 16. The Exquisite Irony of Claudine Gay's Downfall -- Glenn Loury with John McWhorter. 17. Why Did Harvard Cancel Its Best Black Professor? -- Documentary by Rob Montz on the destruction of Roland Fryer. 18. “A White Male Would Probably Already Be Gone” -- Carol Swain interviewed by Christopher Rufo. 19. How one hearing brought down two Ivy League presidents -- Sareen Habeshian. 20. Carlo Ginzburg and Christopher Bayly. 21. The Birth of the Modern World -- CA Bayly. 22. Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire -- CA Bayly. 23. The Indian Ideology -- Perry Anderson. 24. Event, Metaphor, Memory : Chauri Chaura -- Shahid Amin. 25. Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania -- Steven Feierman. 26. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India -- Ranajit Guha. 27. Maps Are Magic -- Episode 44 of Everything is Everything. 28. On Exactitude in Science — Jorge Luis Borges. 29. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars -- CA Bayly. 30. The Cheese and the Worms -- Carlo Ginzburg. 31. From Peasant Pasts to Hindutva Futures? -- Vinayak Chaturvedi. 32. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India — Akshaya Mukul. 33. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 34. The Life and Times of Vir Sanghvi -- Episode 236 of The Seen and the Unseen. 35. A Rude Life — Vir Sanghvi. 36. The BJP Before Modi — Episode 202 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati). 37. The Importance of the 1991 Reforms — Episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah). 38. Essentials Of Hindutva -- VD Savarkar. 39. Farewell Waltz -- Milan Kundera. 40. A Zone of Engagement -- Perry Anderson. 41. Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas -- Perry Anderson. 42. BR Ambedkar's interview on BBC from 1955. 43. Hindutva before Hindutva: Selected Writings and Discourses of Chandranath Basu in Translation -- Edited by Amiya Sen. 44. The Ferment of Our Founders — Episode 272 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Kapila). 45. The Many Shades of George Fernandes -- Episode 327 of The Seen and the Unseen. 46. The Life and Times of George Fernandes — Rahul Ramagundam. 47. Hind Swaraj — MK Gandhi. 48. Annihilation of Caste — BR Ambedkar. 49. Understanding Gandhi: Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 50. Understanding Gandhi: Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 51. The Indian War of Independence: 1857 -- VD Savarkar. 52. Savarkar: The True Story of the Father of Hindutva -- Vaibhav Purandare. 53. The Populist Playbook -- Episode 42 of Everything is Everything. 54. The Intellectual Foundations of Hindutva — Episode 115 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 55. Hindu-Padpaadshahi (Hindi Edition) -- VD Savarkar. 56. Veer Savarkar -- Dhananjay Keer. 57.  GS Sardesai, VK Rajwade and Jadunath Sarkar. 58. The Collected Works of MK Gandhi and BR Ambedkar. 59. Swapna Liddle and the Many Shades of Delhi — Episode 367 of The Seen and the Unseen. 60. Episodes of the Seen and the Unseen with Srinath Raghavan: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 61.  Episodes of the Seen and the Unseen with Manu Pillai: 1, 2, 3, 4. 62. Episodes of the Seen and the Unseen with Ramachandra Guha: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 63. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Ira Mukhoty, Parvati Sharma and Rana Safvi. 64. John McEnroe plus Anyone -- Edward Said. 65. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste -- Pierre Bourdieu. 66. Lendl, Becker, McEnroe, & Wilander interviewed in the Tennis Legends Podcast. 67. Ben Böhmer, Sultan+Shepard, Nora En Pure, U2 and New Order on Spotify. 68. The Zone of Interest -- Jonathan Glazer. 69. Oldboy -- Park Chan-wook. 70. Burning -- Lee Chang-dong. 71. Memories of Murder -- Bong Joon-ho. 72. Return to Seoul -- Davy Chou. 73. Past Lives -- Celine Song. 74. Monster -- Kore-eda Hirokazu. 75. The Wind From Far Away -- Amit Varma (on Monster among other things). 76. Shoplifters -- Hirokazu Kore-eda. 77. Nobody Knows --   Hirokazu Kore-eda. 78. Broker --   Hirokazu Kore-eda. 79. A Death in the Family -- Book 1 of Karl Ove Knausgaard's A Struggle. 80. In Search Of Lost Time -- Marcel Proust. 81. My Saga -- Karl Ove Knausgaard's essay for NYT. Amit's newsletter is active again. Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘The Historian' by Simahina.

His latest book looks back at a friendship -- and at a world gone by. Ramachandra Guha joins Amit Varma in episode 371 of The Seen and the Unseen to shoot the breeze and share some memories. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Ramachandra Guha on Amazon, Twitter and his own website. 2. The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir -- Ramachandra Guha. 3. Ram Guha Reflects on His Life -- Episode 266 of The Seen and the Unseen. 4. A Cricket Tragic Celebrates the Game — Episode 201 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 5. Taking Stock of Our Republic — Episode 157 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 6. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 7. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 8. Savaging the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals and India -- Ramachandra Guha. 9. Gandhi before India -- Ramachandra Guha. 10. Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World -- Ramachandra Guha. 11. India After Gandhi -- Ramachandra Guha. 12. Environmentalism: A Global History -- Ramachandra Guha. 13. A Corner of a Foreign Field -- Ramachandra Guha. 14. The New India Foundation. 15. Stet: An Editor's Life -- Diana Athill. 16. Of Gifted Voice: The Life and Art of MS Subbulakshmi — Keshav Desiraju. 17. Dunbar's number. 18. How Many Friends Does One Person Need? -- Robin Dunbar. 19. India Moving — Chinmay Tumbe. 20. India = Migration — Episode 128 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Chinmay Tumbe). 21. Trapped Inside the Infinite Scroll -- Amit Varma. 22. India vs West Indies, 1st Test, Bengaluru, November 22 - 27, 1974. 23. The Life and Times of Montek Singh Ahluwalia — Episode 285 of The Seen and the Unseen. 24. The Life and Times of KP Krishnan — Episode 355 of The Seen and the Unseen. 25. The Reformers -- Episode 28 of Everything is Everything. 26. Pundits from Pakistan -- Rahul Bhattacharya. 27. Fixing the Knowledge Society -- Episode 24 of Everything is Everything. 28. Where Are The Conservative Intellectuals in India (2015) -- Ramachandra Guha. 29. Beethoven Among the Cows -- Rukun Advani. 30. Sharafat Hussain Khan, Latafat Hussain Khan, Lalith Rao, Radhika Mohan Maitra and Buddhadev Das Gupta. Amit's newsletter is explosively active again. Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘Letter' by Simahina.

My guest today is a titan of Indian history, Ramachandra Guha.He is known for his monumental works on Gandhi and Indian history, but today we're taking a detour into the realm of literature.We'll be diving into his latest book, "The Cooking Of Books," a slice-of-life memoir that offers a poignant glimpse into his relationship with his first editor, Rukun Advani. It also offers us a look into Ram's literary side and the bonds that have shaped his writing journey.My first encounter with Ram Guha's writing—and I have probably read every book he has written, other than his books on cricket—was what could have been the start of his own intellectual odyssey, "Savaging the Civilized". I was carrying a freshly purchased copy of it into our favourite cafe in Bangalore, Koshy's, and Ram jabbed approvingly at it.That book captures him, beyond his geographical roots and into a profound intellectual depth—a passion for colonial critiques, insightful biographies, and an unwavering commitment to social justice. It is refreshing not to have to interview Ram Guha about Gandhi, or any other history, sociology or politics but rather about his prodigious output— in books, columns in newspapers and publications—and what must constitute a lifetime of learning.And it begs the question: what drives him as a historian? Is it the solitary pursuit of knowledge, the quiet contemplation he once described as "staring out of the window with a blank piece of paper in front of him"?This ethic is wonderfully captured in his latest book, "The Cooking Of Books". The title hints at the profound collaboration in editing a manuscript, a process he celebrates through his long-standing association with Rukun Advani.And now to the conversation.ABOUT RAMACHANDRA GUHARamachandra Guha is a distinguished historian and author of several acclaimed books, including "India After Gandhi" and "The Unquiet Woods." He has received numerous awards, including the Leopold-Hidy Prize and the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian culture. Currently a Distinguished University Professor at Krea University, Guha's intellectual breadth spans environmental history, biographies, and socio-political commentary.Buy The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir here: https://amzn.to/42N3afAWHAT'S THAT WORD?!Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in the fun etymology segment, "WHAT'S THAT WORD?!" where they discuss the word “HISTORY”.CONTACT USReach us by mail: theliterarycity@explocity.com or simply, tlc@explocity..comOr here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theliterarycityOr here: https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/

He's been an important force in shaping legal policy over the last decade. He's written an essential book on our constitution. He's worked closely with government -- but done so with a sense of public purpose. Arghya Sengupta joins Amit Varma in episode 366 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about  his life, his work and his learnings.  (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out 1. Arghya Sengupta on Twitter, LinkedIn, Times of India and Vidhi Center for Legal Policy. 2. The Colonial Constitution -- Arghya Sengupta. 3. Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. 4. Insiders and Outsiders -- Amit Varma. 5. The Ideas of Our Constitution — Episode 164 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Madhav Khosla). 6. The First Assault on Our Constitution — Episode 194 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh). 7. Murali Neelakantan Looks at the World -- Episode 329 of The Seen and the Unseen. 8. Rahul Matthan Seeks the Protocol -- Episode 360 of The Seen and the Unseen. 9. Apar Gupta Fights the Good Fight -- Episode 353 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10.  The Life and Times of KP Krishnan -- Episode 355 of The Seen and the Unseen. 11. Subhashish Bhadra on Our Dysfunctional State -- Episode 333 of The Seen and the Unseen. 12. The Right to Property -- Episode 26 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 13. Shruti Rajagopalan on our constitutional amendments. 14. 'कोस-कोस पर बदले पानी, चार कोस पर वाणी।' 15. Devangshu Datta Traded His Corduroy Pants -- Episode 348 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. Ao. 17. Enid Blyton, Five Find-Outers, The Famous Five, Billy Bunter, Just William, Hardy Boys, Three Investigators and Jeffrey Archer. 18. Kane and Abel -- Jeffrey Archer. 19. Bimbo -- Jim Reeves. 20. Chandril Bhattacharya interviewed at Kolkata Literary Meet 2016. (Listen to him 5:40 onwards). 21. Chandrabindoo on Spotify and YouTube. 22. Rabindra Sangeet. 23. The Complete Adventures of Feluda — Satyajit Ray. 24. Chander Pahar (Bengali) -- Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. 25. Sonar Kella -- Satyajit Ray. 26. Donoghue v Stevenson. 27. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — Ludwig Wittgenstein. 28. Law, Legislation and Liberty -- Friedrich Hayek. 29. Nationalist Thought in a Colonial World -- Partha Chatterjee. 30. The Truth Pill -- Dinesh Thakur and Prashant Reddy. 31. Taxi No 9211 -- Milan Luthria. 32. Kashmir and Article 370 — Episode 134 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Srinath Raghavan). 33. The Overton Window. 34. From Addict to Convict -- Neha Singhal, Arpita Mitra and Kaushiki Sanyal. (Scroll down on the page for Punjabi version.) 35. Punjab's drug menace: Secrecy renders women substance abusers 'invisible' -- Neha Singhal & Sumathi Chandrashekaran. 36. End of Life Care in India: A Model Legal Framework 2.0 -- Dhvani Mehta and Akshat Agarwal. 37. Gyan Prakash on the Emergency — Episode 103 of The Seen and the Unseen. 38. The Collected Writings and Speeches of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. 39. Annihilation of Caste -- BR Ambedkar. 40. Caste, Capitalism and Chandra Bhan Prasad -- Episode 296 of The Seen and the Unseen. 41. Where Have All The Leaders Gone? — Amit Varma. 42. The Federalist Papers — Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. 43. Marching For Salt (2015) -- Amit Varma. 44. Two Concepts of Liberty -- Isaiah Berlin. 45. Why Freedom Matters -- Episode 10 of Everything is Everything. 46. Sandipto Dasgupta on the Anxious Administrator. 47. Fixing Indian Education — Episode 185 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 48. Hind Swaraj — MK Gandhi. 49. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 50. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 51. Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back -- Subhashish Bhadra. 52. Of Gods and Men -- Xavier Beauvois. 53. Devi -- Satyajit Ray. 54. Jalsaghar -- Satyajit Ray. 55. Advaita on YouTube Music, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram and Twitter. 56. Junoon and Coke Studio Pakistan. 57. Now and Then -- The Beatles. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘'The Engine Room of Law” by Simahina.

He's a philosopher, a political theorist, a runner, a wine lover, an Ambedkarite -- and he used to be a Dharma Bum. Aakash Singh Rathore joins Amit Varma in episode 340 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss his unusual journey and his unconventional insights. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Aakash Singh Rathore on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Amazon, Deccan Herald and his own website. 2. Poorva Paksha -- Aakash Singh Rathore's columns in Deccan Herald. 3. Indian Political Theory: Laying the Groundwork for Svaraj -- Aakash Singh Rathore. 4. Ambedkar's Preamble: A Secret History of the Constitution of India -- Aakash Singh Rathore. 5. Becoming Babasaheb: The Life and Times of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (Volume 1): Birth to Mahad (1891-1929) -- Aakash Singh Rathore. 6. Vision for a Nation: Paths and Perspectives -- Edited by Aakash Singh Rathore and Ashis Nandy. 7. A Scientist in the Kitchen — Episode 204 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Krish Ashok). 8. Cathedral — Raymond Carver. 9. Both Sides Now -- Joni Mitchell. 10. Some ancient wisdom for the modern world -- Aakash Singh Rathore. 11. The Three Languages of Politics -- Arnold Kling. 12. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man -- Marshall McLuhan. 13. Understanding Media -- Marshall McLuhan. 14. Phaedrus -- Plato. 15. Why Are My Episodes so Long? -- Amit Varma. 16. A Meditation on Form -- Amit Varma. 17. Philosophy, Cognition and Writing: A Talk on the Writing Process -- Aakash Singh Rathore. 18. Ghare Baire / Home and the World -- Rabindranath Tagore. 19. Ghare Baire -- Satyajit Ray. 20. Citizen Kane — Orson Welles. 21. A Movable Feast -- Ernest Hemingway. 22. The Life and Times of Jerry Pinto — Episode 314 of The Seen and the Unseen. 23. Murder in Mahim — Jerry Pinto. 24. Eric Weinstein Won't Toe the Line -- Episode 330 of The Seen and the Unseen. 25. Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas — Natasha Dow Schüll. 26. The Dharma Bums -- Jack Kerouac. 27. The Beat Generation. 28. Kicking Schoolbags -- Amit Varma. 29. The Sex Pistols and Clash. 30. Unsatisfied — The Replacements. 31. Fixing Indian Education — Episode 185 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 32. Yukio Mishima on Wikipedia, Britannica and Amazon. 33. The Poetic Feminism of Paromita Vohra -- Episode 339 of The Seen and the Unseen. 34. Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Life and Mission -- Dhananjay Keer. 35. CB Khairmode's 12-volume Marathi biography of Ambedkar. 36. The Ferment of Our Founders — Episode 272 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Kapila). 37. India's Greatest Civil Servant — Episode 167 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Narayani Basu). 38. The First Assault on Our Constitution — Episode 194 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh). 39. Hind Swaraj -- Mohandas Gandhi. 40. Understanding Gandhi: Part 1: Mohandas -- Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 41. Understanding Gandhi: Part 2: Mahatma -- Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 42. The centre-Left in India is more concerned with dirty politics -- Aakash Singh Rathore interviewed by Caravan. 43. Coriolanus -- William Shakespeare. 44. The Incredible Curiosities of Mukulika Banerjee -- Episode 276 of The Seen and the Unseen. 45. The Pathan Unarmed — Mukulika Banerjee. 46. Josh Felman Tries to Make Sense of the World — Episode 321 of The Seen and the Unseen. 47. Relativity: The Special And The General Theory -- Albert Einstein. 48. I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You) -- Aakash Singh Rathore. 49. Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers -- Jeremy Corbell. 50. The Fermi Paradox. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘Running to Find the Light' by Simahina.

In a democracy, every vote should be equal. But in India, that's not the case. Shruti Rajagopalan joins Amit Varma in episode 336 of The Seen and the Unseen to give a detailed primer into the complex issue of Delimitation -- and to suggest her own radical solution. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Shruti Rajagopalan on Twitter, Substack, Instagram and her podcast, Ideas of India. 2. Demography, Delimitation, and Democracy -- Shruti Rajagopalan's detailed post on Delimitation. 3. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen w Shruti Rajagopalan, in reverse chronological order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. 4. India's Emerging Crisis of Representation -- Milan Vaishnav and Jamie Hintson. 5. Of Openings and Possibilities -- Pranay Kotasthane on Delimitation. 6. South India Would Like to Have a Word — Episode 320 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nilakantan RS). 7. Jayaprakash Narayan Wants to Mend Our Democracy -- Episode 334 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 8. The Life and Times of Shanta Gokhale — Episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen. 9. The Life and Times of Jerry Pinto — Episode 314 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. Amit Varma on the Creator Economy -- A recent episode of the Ideas of India podcast. 11. Gurwinder Bhogal Examines Human Nature -- Episode 331 of The Seen and the Unseen. 12. The Prism -- Gurwinder Bhogal's Substack newsletter. 13. Public Choice Theory — Episode 121 of The Seen and the Unseen. 14. Public Choice: A Primer — Eomonn Butler. 15. Public Choice -- Politics Without Romance -- James M Buchanan. 16. Politics Without Romance -- Amit Varma's column archives for Bloomberg Quint. 17. David Hume on Britannica, Wikipedia and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 18. Adam Smith on Britannica, Wikipedia and Amazon. 19. James M Buchanan on Britannica, Wikipedia, Econlib and Amazon. 20. Gordon Tullock on Wikipedia, Econlib, Mercatus and Amazon. 21. The Calculus of Consent — James M Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. 22. Democracy in Deficit -- James M Buchanan and Richard E Wagner. 23. Shruti Rajagopalan on our constitutional amendments. 24. Subhashish Bhadra on Our Dysfunctional State -- Episode 33 of The Seen and the Unseen. 25. Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government Is Holding Indians Back — Subhashish Bhadra. 26. Where Have All The Leaders Gone? -- Amit Varma. 27. The Political Theory of a Compound Republic -- Vincent Ostrom. 28. Urban Governance in India — Episode 31 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 29. India's Greatest Civil Servant — Episode 167 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Narayani Basu, on VP Menon). 30. Great Soul -- Joseph Lelyveld. 31. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 32. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 33. Population Is Not a Problem, but Our Greatest Strength — Amit Varma. 34. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 35. The First Assault on Our Constitution — Episode 194 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh). 36. Nehru's Debates — Episode 262 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh and Adeel Hussain.) 37. Coalition Politics and Economic Development -- Irfan Nooruddin. 38. The Laffer Curve. 39. The Anti-Defection Law — Episode 13 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Barun Mitra). 40. Our Parliament and Our Democracy — Episode 253 of The Seen and the Unseen (w MR Madhavan). 41. The Four Quadrants of Conformism — Paul Graham. 42. ‘Let Me Interrupt Your Expertise With My Confidence' — New Yorker cartoon by Jason Adam Katzenstein. 43. Eppur si muove. 44. Jagdish Bhagwati's co-written defence of demonetisation, and Shruti Rajagopalan's co-written rebuttal. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘Figure it Out' by Simahina.

She's been a historian and a filmmaker. She's worked on feminism and caste and Buddhism. She's collected oral histories of India's traumas. She's mentored generations. The legendary Uma Chakravarti joins Amit Varma in episode 332 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about her life, her times and her invaluable work towards the pursuit of truth. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Uma Chakkravarti on Wikipedia and Amazon. 2. The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism -- Uma Chakravarti. 3. Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai -- Uma Chakravarti. 4. Gendering Caste Through a Feminist Lens -- Uma Chakravarti. 5. Delhi Riots: Three Days in the Life of a Nation -- Uma Chakravarti and Nandita Haksar. 6. Thinking Gender, Doing Gender -- Edited by Uma Chakravarti. 7. A Quiet Little Entry -- Uma Chakravarti. 8. Fragments of a Past -- Uma Chakravarti. 9. Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya: Lucknow 1920-1949 -- Uma Chakravarti. 10. Prison Diaries -- Uma Chakravarti. 11. Sexual Violence in Indian Society -- Uma Chakravarti. 12. Restructuring the Path: Inserting Women into History (2000) -- Uma Chakravarti. 13. Select episodes on The Seen and the Unseen that touched on feminism & gender with Paromita Vohra, Kavita Krishnan, Mrinal Pande, Kavitha Rao, Namita Bhandare, Shrayana Bhattacharya, Mukulika Banerjee, Manjima Bhattacharjya, Nilanjana Roy, Urvashi Butalia, Mahima Vashisht, Alice Evans, Ashwini Deshpande, Natasha Badhwar, Shanta Gokhale, Arshia Sattar, Rohini Nilekani and Shaili Chopra. 14. Memories and Things — Episode 195 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aanchal Malhotra). 15. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life — Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. Whatever happened To Ehsan Jafri on February 28, 2002? — Harsh Mander. 17. A Life in Indian Politics — Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w JP Narayan). 18. Kiran Ahluwalia Finds Our Aam Zameen -- Episode 328 of The Seen and the Unseen. 19. Yogendra Yadav on why he was named Salim. 20. The Intellectual Foundations of Hindutva — Episode 115 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 21. Aakar Patel Is Full of Hope — Episode 270 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 22. The Ferment of Our Founders — Episode 272 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Kapila). 23. Early Indians — Episode 112 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tony Joseph). 24. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 25. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 26. A Venture Capitalist Looks at the World — Episode 213 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Sajith Pai). 27. Therīgāthā on Wikipedia and Amazon. 28. Arshia Sattar and the Complex Search for Dharma — Episode 315 of The Seen and the Unseen. 29. Deedar -- Nitin Bose. 30. Diya Jalao Jagmag Jagmag -- Song from Tansen. 31. Do Bigha Zameen -- Bimal Roy. 32. The Life and Times of Shanta Gokhale — Episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen. 33. The Loneliness of the Indian Man — Episode 303 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Taneja). 34. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman — Mary Wollstonecraft. 35. Frankenstein -- Mary Shelley. 36. Amit Varma's episode of The Book Club on Wollstonecraft's book. 37. Amit Varma's episode of The Book Club on Shelley's book. 38. The Life and Times of Urvashi Butalia — Episode 287 of The Seen and the Unseen. 39. Manjima Bhattacharjya: The Making of a Feminist — Episode 280 of The Seen and the Unseen. 40. A Cricket Tragic Celebrates the Game — Episode 201 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 41. India = Migration — Episode 128 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Chinmay Tumbe). 42. India Moving — Chinmay Tumbe. 43. Fixing Indian Education — Episode 185 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 44. Education in India — Episode 77 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Amit Chandra). 45. Understanding Indian Healthcare — Episode 225 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 46. The Great Redistribution — Amit Varma. 47. The Beautiful Tree — James Tooley. 48. Hum Dekhenge -- Iqbal Bano. 49. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India -- V Geetha. 50. Let's Read Ambedkar -- Lecture series by V Geetha. 51. Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India -- Douglas Ober. 52. The Conversion of the Untouchables -- BR Ambedkar. 53. The Gregorian Chant. 54. Deva Bandha Namma -- Bhimsen Joshi. 55. Jo Bhaje Hari Ko Sada So Hi Param Pada Pavega -- Bhimsen Joshi. 56. Vaishnav Jan To -- Riyaaz Qawwali. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘Carrying the Torch' by Simahina.

Annie Besant. BG Horniman. Satyanada Stokes. Madeleine Slade. What do they call have in common? They were all Rebels Against the Raj. Listen as Anita and William are joined by Ram Guha to discuss what this means. Sign up to The Knowledge here: www.theknowledge.com/empire/ LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Find a list of the defining books about India published in the last 75 years and there's one book that will show up on list after list after list—Ramachandra Guha's magisterial India After Gandhi.For years, historians approached India as if history more or less ended with the partition of the subcontinent and the achievement of India's independence in 1947. Guha's India After Gandhi broke this mold and, in so doing, helped to define what a generation of students, scholars, and readers understands of India in the decades after independence.This year, Picador has published the third edition of India After Gandhi, which brings the book's narrative up to the present day with a new chapter on the post-2016 Modi era.To talk about his landmark book—and some of the themes that it covers—Ram Guha joins Milan on the podcast this week. The two discuss Gandhi's legacy after 75 years of independence, the inspiration behind India After Gandhi, and the transformation of Indian democracy in the past decade. Plus, the two discuss the themes, events, and people from India's history that are crying out for greater evaluation. Episode notes:Ramachandra Guha, “India against Gandhi — a legacy rewritten,” Financial Times, January 27, 2023.Ritika Chopra, “Purged from NCERT Textbooks: Hindu extremists' dislike for Gandhi, RSS ban after assassination,” Indian Express, April 8, 2023.Ramachandra Guha, “The Cult of Modi,” Foreign Policy, November 4, 2022.

The task of nation-building did not end with our founders, and does not stop at our politicians. It's up to us to build the India we want to see. Nitin Pai joins Amit Varma in episode 318 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about his life, his learnings and his liberal nationalism. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Nitin Pai on his own website, Mint & Mastodon . 2. The Nitopadesha -- Moral Tales for Good Citizens. 3. The archives of The Acorn, Nitin Pai's blog. And its current avatar. 4. Nitin Pai's ideas, notes and current research and teaching. 5. The Takshashila Institution. 6. Seven Tenets of Indian Nationalism -- Nitin Pai. 7. In support of a liberal nationalism -- Nitin Pai. 8. A republic - if we can keep it -- Nitin Pai. 9. Saving the Nation From Nationalists -- Nitin Pai. 10. The real problem is that we have too little republic -- Nitin Pai. 11. The operating system of liberal democracy needs a major upgrade -- Nitin Pai. 12. Social harmony is a matter of national interest -- Nitin Pai. 13. Liberal democracies must protect their citizens' minds from being hacked -- Nitin Pai. 14. Understanding Foreign Policy — Episode 63 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nitin Pai). 15. Russia, Ukraine, Foreign Policy -- Episode 268 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pranay Kotasthane and Nitin Pai). 16. The City and the City — China Miéville. 17. The State of Our Economy -- Episode 252 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Puja Mehra and Mohit Satyanand). 18. The Tragedy of Our Farm Bills — Episode 211 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ajay Shah). 19. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 20. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 21. Early Indians — Episode 112 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tony Joseph). 22. The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People — Michael Shermer. 23. History of European Morals — WEH Lecky. 24. The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress — Peter Singer. 25. How the BJP Wins — Prashant Jha. 26. The BJP's Magic Formula — Episode 45 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Prashant Jha). 27. Caste, Capitalism and Chandra Bhan Prasad — Episode 296 of The Seen and the Unseen. 28. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen w Pranay Kotasthane: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 29. Rohini Nilekani Pays It Forward -- Episode 317 of The Seen and the Unseen. 30. Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar : A citizen-first approach — Rohini Nilekani. 31. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind — Gustave le Bon. 32. Crowds and Power — Elias Canetti. 33. EO Wilson on Amazon, Wikipedia and Britannica. 34. Narendra Modi takes a Great Leap Backwards — Amit Varma (on Modi, Mao and locusts). 35. FAQ: Why Anna Hazare is wrong and Lok Pal a bad idea -- Nitin Pai. 36. Sadanand Dhume on Twitter -- and this podcast! 37. Social media is an existential threat to civilisation -- Nitin Pai. 38. Reframing the social media policy debate -- Nitin Pai. 39. The coming regulation of social media is an opportunity for India -- Nitin Pai. 40. The Double ‘Thank-You' Moment — John Stossel. 41. Thinking Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman. 42. Human — Michael S Gazzaniga. 43. The Interpreter — Amit Varma. 44. The Elephant in the Brain -- Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. 45. Freedom to Think -- Susie Alegre. 46. Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas — Natasha Dow Schüll. 47. The Importance of the 1991 Reforms — Episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah). 48. The Forgotten Greatness of PV Narasimha Rao — Episode 283 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati). 49. The Life and Times of Montek Singh Ahluwalia — Episode 285 of The Seen and the Unseen. 50. The original Takshashila. 51. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 52. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 53. Hind Swaraj — MK Gandhi. 54. Nikita -- Elton John. 55. The Importance of Cities — Episode 108 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Reuben Abraham & Pritika Hingorani). 56. The Gentle Wisdom of Pratap Bhanu Mehta -- Episode 300 of The Seen and the Unseen. 57. The Arthashastra -- Kautilya 58. On Exactitude in Science — Jorge Luis Borges. 59. Emergent Ventures. 60. Friedrich Hayek on Wikipedia, Britannica, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Econlib. 61. Milton Friedman on Amazon, Wikipedia, Britannica and Econlib. 62. Arshia Sattar and the Complex Search for Dharma -- Episode 315 of The Seen and the Unseen. 63. Every Act of Government Is an Act of Violence — Amit Varma. 64. The Generation of Rage in Kashmir — David Devadas. 65. Counterinsurgency Warfare — David Galula. 66. We Won't Need To Fight A War If We Can Win The Peace — Amit Varma. 67. Kashmir and Article 370 -- Episode 134 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Srinath Raghavan). 68. Think the Unthinkable (2008) -- Vir Sanghvi. 69. Independence Day for Kashmir (2008) -- Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar. 70. The Anti-Defection Law — Episode 13 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Barun Mitra). 71. Our Parliament and Our Democracy — Episode 253 of The Seen and the Unseen (w MR Madhavan). 72. Abby Philips Fights for Science and Medicine — Episode 310 of The Seen and the Unseen. 73. Why Read the Classics? — Italo Calvino. 74. History Of Western Philosophy -- Bertrand Russell. 75. Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud -- Peter Watson. 76. Arthashastra -- Kautilya (translated by Shama Shastri). 77. The Upanishads. 78. The Mahabharata -- translated by Bibek Debroy. 79. Brihatkatha, Kathasaritsagara, Panchatantra and Hitopadesha. 80. Charvaka and Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa. 81. Tattvopaplavasiṃha -- Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa. 82. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams. 83. Catch 22 -- Joseph Heller. 84. Commanding Hope -- Thomas Homer-Dixon. 85. Paul Auster, David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, Ryu Murakami and Terry Pratchett on Amazon. 86. Piercing -- Ryu Murakami. 87. 2021 - The Year in Fiction -- Nitin Pai. 88. Bhimsen Joshi, Kishore Kumar, Hemant Kumar, Radiohead, Norah Jones, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Himesh Reshammiya and Yehudi Menuhin on Spotify. 89. Take Five -- The Dave Brubeck Quartet. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘The Bigger Picture' by Simahina.

The Ramayana is not one book, but a living text with countless versions across languages, each reflecting the values of its time and place. Arshia Sattar joins Amit Varma to share her insights from decades of study. Also discussed: the art of translation -- and our search for dharma. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out 1. Arshia Sattar on Amazon, Open and Wikipedia. 2. Valmiki's Ramayana -- Translated by Arshia Sattar. 3. Maryada: Searching for Dharma in the Ramayana -- Arshia Sattar. 4. Lost Loves: Exploring Rama's Anguish -- Arshia Sattar. 5. AK Ramanujan on Amazon and Wikipedia. 6. Wendy Doniger on Amazon and Wikipedia. 7. Alf Hiltebeitel on Amazon and Wikipedia. 8. 300 Ramayanas — AK Ramanujan. 9. On Hinduism and The Hindus — Wendy Doniger. 10. Yuganta — Irawati Karve. 11. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 12. The Loneliness of the Indian Man — Episode 303 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Nikhil Taneja). 13. 'I Have a Dream' (video) (transcript) -- Martin Luther King. 14. Whatever happened To Ehsan Jafri on February 28, 2002? — Harsh Mander. 15. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 14. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India — Akshaya Mukul. 15. The Shah Bano case, the Sati at Deorala and the banning of Satanic Verses. 16. 1968: The Year that Rocked the World -- Mark Kurlanksy. 17. The Rooted Cosmopolitanism of Sugata Srinivasaraju — Episode 277 of The Seen and the Unseen. 18. Girish Karnad on Amazon and Wikipedia. 19. Understanding India Through Its Languages — Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 20. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages — Peggy Mohan. 21. Early Indians — Episode 112 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tony Joseph). 22. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 23. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 24. Nissim Ezekiel on Amazon, Wikipedia and All Poetry. 25. The Seven Basic Plots — Christopher Booker. 26. The Long Road From Neeyat to Neeti -- Episode 313 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pranay Kotasthane and Raghu S Jaitley). 27. Sansar Se Bhage Phirte Ho — Song from Chitralekha with lyrics by Sahir Ludhianvi. 28. Episodes of the Seen and the Unseen on Mughal history with Ira Mukhoty, Parvati Sharma, Rana Safvi and Manimugdha Sharma. 29. Tales from the Kathasaritsagara -- Somadeva (translated by Arshia Sattar). 30. The Second Game of Dice -- Amit Varma. 31. Range Rover -- The archives of Amit Varma's column on poker for the Economic Times. 32. Critical Theory and Structuralism. 33. The Missing Queen -- Samhita Arni. 34. Ramcharitmanas (Hindi) (English) (Wikipedia) -- Tulsidas. 35. Krittivasi Ramayan (Bengali) (Wikipedia) -- Krittibas Ojha. 36. The Kamba Ramayana -- Translated by PS Sundaram. 37. The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer. 38. David Shulman on Amazon and Wikipedia. 39. Narendra Modi takes a Great Leap Backwards — Amit Varma (on demonetisation). 40. Bimal Krishna Matilal on Amazon and Wikipedia. 41. Dharma: Dimensions of Asian Spirituality -- Alf Hiltebeitel. 42. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 43. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 44. The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology -- Wendy Doniger. 45. Raja Ravi Varma. 46. Shoodhra Tapasvi -- Kuvempu. 47. Ludwig Wittgenstein on Amazon, Wikipedia, Britannica and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 48. The Art of Translation — Episode 168 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Arunava Sinha). 49. The Life and Times of Shanta Gokhale — Episode 311 of The Seen and the Unseen. 50. The Life and Times of Jerry Pinto -- Episode 314 of The Seen and the Unseen. 51. RRR -- SS Rajamouli. 52. The Girish Karnad Podcasts: The Rover Has No Fear of Memories -- An oral history enabled by Arshia Sattar and Anmol Tikoo. 53. This Life At Play: Memoirs -- Girish Karnad. 54. Kind of Blue -- Miles Davis. 55. Elena Ferrante on Amazon. 56. The Door -- Magda Szabó. 57. The Mahabaharata -- Peter Brook. 58. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty, That Obscure Object of Desire — Luis Buñuel. 59. The Unbearable Lightness of Being — Philip Kaufman. 60. The Line -- An Apple Original podcast. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘Searching for Dharma' by Simahina.

Indian society, the Indian state and the Indian economy are all complex beasts that defy simple narratives. Suyash Rai joins Amit Varma in episode 307 of The Seen and the Unseen to describe how he has tried to make sense of it all -- and how he tries to make a difference. (For full linked show notes, go to SeenUnseen.in.) Also check out: 1. Suyash Rai at Carnegie India, Twitter and The Print. 2. Ideas and Institutions -- The Carnegie India newsletter co-written by Suyash Rai. 3. Interpreting India -- The Carnegie India podcast sometimes hosted by Suyash Rai. 4. Carnegie India's YouTube Channel. 5. Demonetisation -- Episode 2 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Suyash Rai). 6. Religion and Ideology in Indian Society — Episode 124 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Suyash Rai). 7. Suyash Rai on GDP growth: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 8. Suyash Rai on public finance: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 9. Suyash Rai on the financial system: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 10. Suyash Rai on changes in state-capital relations in recent years: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 11. Suyash Rai on the judiciary: 1, 2. 12. Suyash Rai on utopian laws that do not work in practice: 1, 2, 3. 13. Suyash Rai on Demonetisation: 1, 2, 3, 4. 14. Paper Menagerie — Ken Liu. 15. Natasha Badhwar Lives the Examined Life -- Episode 301 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. Conquest and Community: The Afterlife of Warrior Saint Ghazi Miyan -- Shahid Amin. 17. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 18. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 19. The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society -- CG Jung. 20. A Memoir of Mary Ann -- By Dominican Nuns (introduction by Flannery O'Connor). 21. Nathaniel Hawthorne on Amazon and Wikipedia. 22. Flannery O'Connor and “A Memoir of Mary Ann” -- Daniel J Sundahl. 23. GK Chesterton on Amazon and Wikipedia. 24. Alasdair MacIntyre on Amazon, Wikipedia and Britannica. 25. The Moral Animal -- Robert Wright. 26. Gimpel the Fool -- Isaac Bashevis Singer (translated by Saul Bellow). 27. George Orwell on Amazon and Wikipedia. 28. Frédéric Bastiat on Amazon and Wikipedia. 29. Reflections on Gandhi -- George Orwell. 30. Interview of Harshal Patel in Breakfast With Champions. 31. The Double ‘Thank-You' Moment — John Stossel. 32. The Facts Do Not Matter — Amit Varma. 33. The Hippocratic Oath. 34. Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart -- Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M Todd and the ABC Research Group on 'fast and frugal heuristics'). 35. The Right to Property -- Episode 26 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 36. The World of Premchand: Selected Short Stories — Munshi Premchand (translated and with an introduction by David Rubin). 37. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood -- Howard Pyle. 38. Ivanhoe -- Walter Scott. 39. The Swiss Family Robinson -- Johann David Wyss. 40. Treasure Island -- Robert Louis Stevenson. 41. One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 42. Saul Bellow on Amazon and Wikipedia. 43. Dangling Man -- Saul Bellow. 44. Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud on Amazon. 45. Aristotle on Amazon, Britannica and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 46. Plato on Amazon, Britannica and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 47. Gorgias -- Plato. 48. The Dialogues of Plato. 49. Ramayana, Mahabharata and Amar Chitra Katha. 50. Nausea -- Jean-Paul Sartre. 51. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 52. Political Ideology in India — Episode 131 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rahul Verma). 53. Against Sainte-Beuve and Other Essays -- Marcel Proust. 54. What Have We Done With Our Independence? — Episode 186 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pratap Bhanu Mehta). 55. The Gentle Wisdom of Pratap Bhanu Mehta — Episode 300 of The Seen and the Unseen. 56.  The Aristocratic Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville -- Suyash Rai.   57. Narendra Modi takes a Great Leap Backwards — Amit Varma. 58. Ronald Dworkin on Amazon and Wikipedia. 59. Immanuel Kant on Amazon, Britannica and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 60. Beware of the Useful Idiots — Amit Varma. 61. Don't Choose Tribalism Over Principles -- Amit Varma. 62. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Ajay Shah: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 63. Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do And Why They Do It -- James Q Wilson. 64. The Moral Sense -- James Q Wilson. 65. Karthik Muralidharan Examines the Indian State -- Episode 290 of The Seen and the Unseen. 66. State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century — Francis Fukuyama. 67. The Origins of Political Order — Francis Fukuyama. 68. Political Order and Political Decay — Francis Fukuyama. 69. Going from strong as in scary to strong as in capable -- Suyash Rai and Ajay Shah.   70. The Life and Times of Montek Singh Ahluwalia -- Episode 285 of The Seen and the Unseen. 71. Anna Karenina -- Leo Tolstoy. 72. Utilitarianism on Wikipedia, Britannica and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 73. Practical Ethics -- Peter Singer. 74. Reasons and Persons -- Derek Parfit. 75. The Repugnant Conclusion. 76. Governing the Commons -- Elinor Ostrom. 77. A Pragmatic Approach to Data Protection -- Suyash Rai. 78. Technology and the Lifeworld -- Don Ihde. 79. Postphenomenology -- Don Ihde. 80. Kashi Ka Assi — Kashinath Singh. 81. Looking at Lucas's Question After Seventy-five Years of India's Independence -- Suyash Rai. 82. India's Lost Decade — Episode 116 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Puja Mehra). 83. The Lost Decade — Puja Mehra. 84. The Importance of the 1991 Reforms — Episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah). 85. The Art and Science of Economic Policy — Episode 154 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vijay Kelkar & Ajay Shah). 86. In Service of the Republic — Vijay Kelkar & Ajay Shah. 87. Douglass North and Albert O Hirschman. 88. The Intellectual Odyssey of Albert Hirschman -- Suyash Rai. 89. India's Problem is Poverty, Not Inequality — Amit Varma. 90. Democracy in America -- Alexis De Tocqueville. 91. Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy -- Pierre Manent. 92. The Populist Century -- Pierre Rosanvallon. 93. The Theory of Populism According to Pierre Rosanvallon -- Suyash Rai. 94. After Virtue -- Alasdair MacIntyre. 95. Philosophy of Technology -- Don Ihde. 96. Technology and the Virtues -- Shannon Vallor. 97. Nihilism and Technology -- Nolen Gertz. 98. Lant Pritchett on Amazon, Google Scholar and his own website. 99. Harnessing Complexity -- Robert Axelrod and Michael D Cohen. 100. Mahabharata, Odyssey, Divine Comedy and Rashmirathi. 101. Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar on Spotify. 102. Andrei Rublev -- Andrei Tarkovsky. 103. Andrei Tarkovsky, Luis Buñuel, Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray. 104. Mission Impossible, Bad News Bears and Anand. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘The Past and the Future' by Simahina.

The Accidental Sports Historian Ramachandra Guha is a historian and biographer based in Bengaluru. For many years, Ramachandra Guha wrote scholarly, heavily footnoted, academic books and papers which dealt with subjects other than sport, while moonlighting during the weekends as a writer of popular, anecdotal, articles on Indian cricket and cricketers. The serendipitous discovery that India's first great slow bowler, Palwankar Baloo, played a modest role in a political controversy that took place long after he retired from the game, encouraged Guha to bring his profession and passion together. The outcome was his book A Corner of a Foreign Field, a social history of cricket in India. Guha discusses the methodological lessons he learnt while researching the book, and also speaks about the future prospects for sports history. His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002), and a widely acclaimed history of his country, India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007). He is also the author of a two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi Before India, 2013, and Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 2018, both published by Knopf), and of a memoir of his life as a cricket fan, The Commonwealth of Cricket (William Collins, 2020).

In the latest episode of Empire, William and Anita are joined by Ram Guha to explore the incredible life and story of Mahatma Gandhi. LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire Email: empirepoduk@gmail.com Instagram: @EmpirePodUK Twitter: @EmpirePodUK goalhangerpodcasts.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

South African cricket writer Rich Parry talks to India's leading cricket historian Ram Guha about his life in the game and the state of cricket in India and the world today.

Happy Independence Day!- Pranay Kotasthane and RSJThis newsletter can often seem pessimistic about India. That isn’t true, though. Every year, on Independence Day, we remind ourselves and our readers why we write this newsletter. This is how we ended the Independence Day edition of 2020:“What we have achieved so far is precious. That’s worth reminding ourselves today. We will go back to writing future editions lamenting our state of affairs.We will do so because we know it’s worth it.”  This year we thought it would be fun (?) to run through every year since 1947 and ask ourselves what happened in the year that had long-term repercussions for our nation. This kind of thing runs a serious risk. It can get tedious and all too familiar. Most of us know the landmark events of recent history and what they meant for the nation. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve given an honest try (of over 8000 words) to see if there’s a different way of looking at these familiar events and their impact on us. Here we go.1947 - 1960: Sense Of A Beginning 1947Perhaps the most significant “What, if?” question for independent India surfaced on 17th August 1947 when the Radcliffe Line was announced. The partition of the Indian subcontinent has cast a long shadow. What if it had never happened? What if Nehru-Jinnah-Gandhi were able to strike a modus vivendi within a one-federation framework? These questions surface every year around independence.The indelible human tragedy of the partition aside, would an Akhand Bharat have served its citizens better? We don’t think so. We agree with Ambedkar’s assessment of this question. In Pakistan or the Partition of India, he approaches the question with detachment and realism, concluding that the forces of “communal malaise” had progressed to such an extent that resisting a political division would have led to a civil war, making everyone worse off. The partition must have been handled better without the accompanying humanitarian disaster. But on the whole, the partition was inevitable by 1947.“That the Muslim case for Pakistan is founded on sentiment is far from being a matter of weakness; it is really its strong point. It does not need deep understanding of politics to know that the workability of a constitution is not a matter of theory. It is a matter of sentiment. A constitution, like clothes, must suit as well as please. If a constitution does not please, then however perfect it may be, it will not work. To have a constitution which runs counter to the strong sentiments of a determined section is to court disaster if not to invite rebellion.” [Read the entire book here]1948What if Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t killed that year? How would the course of our history change? Gandhi spoke like an idealist and worked like a realist. He was possibly the most aware of the gap between the lofty ideals of our constitution and the reality of the Indian minds then. He knew the adoption of the constitution was only half the work done. He’d likely have devoted the rest of his life to building a liberal India at the grassroots level. His death pushed a particular stream of right-wing Hindu consciousness underground. We still carry the burden of that unfinished work.1949The Constituent Assembly met for the first time in December 1946. By November 26th 1949, this assembly adopted a constitution for India. Even a half-constructed flyover in Koramangala has taken us five years. For more context, Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly began work on 10th August 1947, and their first constitution came into force in March 1956, only to be abrogated two years later. India’s founding fathers and mothers were acutely aware that they were elite, unelected, and unrepresentative of the median Indian. They dared to imagine a new nation-state while grappling with that period's harsh economic, social, and political realities. Their work should inspire us to strengthen, improve, and rebuild—but never to give up on—the Republic of India.For more, check out the miracle that is India’s Constitution in our Republic Day 2021 special edition.1950We have written about our Constitution a number of times. It is an inspiring and audacious document in its ambition to shape a modern nation. It has its flaws. Some consider it too liberal; others think it makes the State overbearing. Some find it too long; others feel it comes up short. This may all be true. However, there is no doubt our constitution has strengthened our democracy, protected the weak and continues to act as a tool for social change. It is our North Star. And a damn good one at that. 1951Few post-independence institutions have stood the test of time as the Finance Commission (FC), first established in 1951. In federal systems, horizontal and vertical imbalances in revenue generation and expenditure functions are commonplace. Closing the gap requires an impartial institution that is well-regarded by various levels of government and the people. The Finance Commission is that institution.It’s not as if it didn’t face any challenges. As a constitutional body established under article 280 of the Constitution, it was sidelined by an extra-constitutional and powerful Planning Commission until 2014. But we have had 15 FCs in total, and each key tax revenue-sharing recommendation has become government policy.1952Our Constitution adopted a universal adult franchise as the basis for elections. Every citizen was to be part of the democratic project. There was to be no bar on age, sex, caste or education. And this was to be done in one of the most unequal societies in the world. The ambition was breathtaking. To put this in context, women were allowed to vote in Switzerland only in 1971. Not only did we aim for this, but we also moved heaven and earth to achieve it in 1952. In his book India After Gandhi, Ram Guha describes the efforts of the government officials led by the first Election Commissioner, Sukumar Sen, to reach the last man or woman for their ballot. The elites may lament vote bank politics or cash for votes scams and question the wisdom of universal franchise. But we shouldn’t have had it any other way. And, for the record, our people have voted with remarkable sophistication in our short independent history. 1953 For a new nation-state, the Republic of India punched above its weight in bringing hostilities on the Korean peninsula to an end. Not only did the Indian government’s work shape the Armistice Agreement, but it also chaired a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission (NNRC) that was set up to decide the future of nearly 20,000 prisoners of war from both sides. This experience during the Cold War strengthened India’s advocacy of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).  1954Article 25 guaranteed the freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess, practice, and propagate religion to all citizens. But how does one define a religious practice? And can a practice under the garb of religion breach the boundary of individual rights or public morality? This is a familiar conflict zone in secular States and would inevitably show up in India because everything in India can be construed as a religious practice. Like Ambedkar said during the constituent assembly debates:“The religious conceptions in this country are so vast that they cover every aspect of life from birth to death…there is nothing extraordinary in saying that we ought to strive hereafter to limit the definition of religion in such a manner that we shall not extend it beyond beliefs and such rituals as may be connected with ceremonials which are essentially religious..."In 1954, the Supreme Court gave a landmark judgment on what constitutes a religious practice in what’s known as the Shirur Math case. It held that the term religion would cover all practices integral to that religion. Further, the Court will determine what practice will be deemed essential with reference to doctrines within that religion itself.This test of ‘essentiality’ in religion has kept the public, the legislature and the courts busy since (entry of women in Sabarimala, headscarf in Islam, to name two). The outcome has bent towards individual liberty in most contexts, but the ambiguity in the definition of essential means it could go the other way too.1955Another wild "What, if” moment that we like to recall relates to Milton Friedman’s visit to the Indian finance ministry in 1955. What shape would India’s economy have taken had his seminal document “A Memorandum to the Government of India 1955” been heeded?In this note, Friedman gets to the root of India’s macroeconomic problems—an overburdened investment policy, restrictive policies towards the private sector, erratic monetary policy, and a counterproductive exchange control regime. Being bullish about India’s prospects was courageous when most observers wrote epitaphs about the grand Indian experiment. But Friedman was hopeful and critical both.The Indian government, for its part, was humble enough to seek the advice of foreigners from opposing schools of thought. At the same time, it was too enamoured by the Soviet command and control model. In fact, many items from Friedman’s note can be repurposed as economic reforms even today.Here’re our points from Friedman’s note.1956The idea of One Nation, One ‘X’ (language, election, song, tax, choose any other) is both powerful and seductive. It is not new, however. Back in the 50s, there was a view that we must not strengthen any identity that divides us. So when the question of reorganisation of the colonial provinces into new states came up, an argument was made that it must be done on factors other than language. Nehru, ever the modernist, thought the creation of language-based states would lead us down the path of ethnic strife. The example of nation-states in Europe built on language in the 19th century and the two devastating world wars thereafter were too recent then. So, he demurred.Agitation, hunger strikes and deaths followed before we chose language as the primary basis for reorganising the states. It was perhaps the best decision taken by us in the 50s. As the years since have shown, only a polity assured of its heritage and identity will voluntarily accept diversity. The melding of our diversity into a single identity cannot be a top-down imposition. We should never forget this.1957India’s economic strategy of state-led industrialisation through deficit financing in pursuit of import substitution took off with the Second Five-Year Plan. Heavy industries needed imported machinery, inflating India’s import bill. Since the exchange rate was pegged to the British pound, it meant that Indian exports became pricier. This imbalance between rising imports and flagging exports was financed by running down the foreign exchange reserves. By 1957, India witnessed its first foreign exchange crisis. This event had a significant effect on India’s economy. Instead of devaluing the rupee, the government opted for foreign exchange budgeting - every investment in a project needed government approval for the foreign exchange required to buy foreign inputs. The immediate crisis in 1957 led to controls that worsened India’s economic prospects over the next 35 years.1958The government nationalised all insurance companies a couple of years earlier. India hadn’t gotten into a socialist hell yet, so this was a bit of a surprise. The proximate cause was a fraud that few private life insurers had committed by misusing the policyholders’ funds to help their industrialist friends. A run-of-the-mill white-collar crime that should have been dealt with by the criminal justice system. But the government viewed it as a market failure and moved to nationalise the entire industry. It would take another 45 years for private players to come back to insurance. Insurance penetration in India meanwhile remained among the lowest in the world.  Also, in 1958, Feroze Gandhi took to the floor of Lok Sabha to expose how LIC, the state insurer, had diverted its funds to help Haridas Mundhra, a Calcutta-based businessman. The same crime that private insurers had done.The government would repeat this pattern of getting involved where there was no market failure. The outcomes would inevitably turn out to be worse. Seven decades later, we remain instinctively socialist and wary of capital. Our first reaction to something as trifling as a surge price by Ola or a service charge levied by restaurants is to ask the State to interfere.1959“The longest guest of the Indian government”, the 14th Dalai Lama pre-empted the Chinese government’s plans for his arrest and escaped to India. Not only did India provide asylum, but it also became home to more than a hundred thousand Tibetans. Because of the bold move by the Indian government in 1959, the Central Tibetan Administration continues its struggle as a Nation and a State in search of regaining control over their Country to this day. This event also changed India-China relations for the decades to come.1960Search as hard as we might; we hardly got anything worth discussing for this year. Maybe we were all sitting smugly waiting for an avalanche of crisis to come our way. Steel plants, dams and other heavy industries were being opened. The budget outlay for agriculture was reduced. We were talking big on the international stage about peace and non-alignment. But if you had looked closer, things were turning pear-shaped. The many dreams of our independence were turning sour.The 60s: Souring Of The Dream1961The Indian Army marched into Goa in December 1961. The 450-year Portuguese colonial rule ended, and the last colonial vestige in India was eliminated. It took this long because Portugal’s dictator Antonio Salazar stuck to his guns on controlling Portuguese colonies in the subcontinent, unlike the British and the French. Portugal’s membership in NATO further made it difficult for the Indian government to repeat the operations in Hyderabad and Junagadh. Nevertheless, that moment eventually arrived in 1961. This was also the year when India’s first indigenous aircraft, the HAL HF-24 Marut, took its first flight. Made in Bengaluru by German designer Kurt Tank, the aircraft was one of the first fighter jets made outside the developed world. The aircraft served well in the war that came a decade later. It never lived up to its promises, but it became a matter of immense pride and confidence for a young nation-state.1962Among the lowest points in the history of independent India. We’ve written about our relationship with China many times in the past editions. The 1962 war left a deep impact on our psyche. We didn’t recover for the rest of the decade. The only good thing out of it was the tempering of idealism in our approach to international relations. That we take a more realist stance these days owes its origins to the ‘betrayal’ of 1962.1963ISRO launched the first sounding rocket in November 1963. Over the years, this modest beginning blossomed into a programme with multiple launch vehicles. The satellite programmes also took off a few years later, making India a mighty player in the space sector. 1964If you told anyone alive in 1964 that less than 60 years later, Nehru would be blamed for all that was wrong with India by a substantial segment of its population, they would have laughed you out of the room. But here we are in 2022, and there’s never a day that passes without a WhatsApp forward that talks about Nehru’s faults. It seems inevitable that by the time we celebrate the centenary of our independence, he would be a borderline reviled figure in our history. But that would be an aberration. In the long arc of history, he will find his due as a flawed idealist who laid the foundation of modern India. 1964 was the end of an era.1965As the day when Hindi would become the sole official language of the Indian Union approached, the anti-Hindi agitation in the Madras presidency morphed into riots. Many people died in the protests, and it led to the current equilibrium on language policy. The “one State, one language” project moved to the back burner, even as Hindi became an important link language across the country. The lesson was the same as in the case of the 1956 states reorganisation: melding our diversity into a single identity cannot be a top-down imposition.1966The two wars in the decade's first half, the inefficient allocation of capital driven by the second and third five-year plans, and the consecutive monsoon failure meant India was on the brink in 1966. The overnight devaluation of the Rupee by over 50 per cent, the timely help with food grains from the US and some providence pulled us back from it. The green revolution followed, and we have remained self-sufficient in food since.The experience of being on the brink taught us nothing. We still believe in the Pigouvian theory of market failure, where government policies are expected to deliver optimality.  Strangely, the idea that we reform only in crisis has only strengthened. There cannot be worse ways to change oneself than under the shadow of a crisis. But we have made a virtue out of it.1967This was the year when the Green Revolution took baby steps, and the Ehlrichian prediction about India’s impending doom was put to rest. But it was also the year when the Indian government made a self-goal by adopting a policy called items reserved for manufacture exclusively by the small-scale sector. By reserving whole product lines for manufacturing by small industries, this policy kept Indian firms small and uncompetitive. And like all bad ideas, it had a long life. The last 20 items on this list were removed only in April 2015. We wrote about this policy here. 1968In the past 75 years, we have reserved some of our worst public policies for the education sector. We have an inverted pyramid. A handful of tertiary educational institutions produce world-class graduates at the top. On the other end, we have a total failure to provide quality primary education to the masses. It is not because of a lack of intent. The National Education Policy (NEP) that first came up in 1968 is full of ideas, philosophy and a desire to take a long-term view about education in India. But it was unmoored from the economic or social reality of the nation. We often say here that we shouldn’t judge a policy based on its intentions. That there’s no such thing as a good policy but bad implementation because thinking about what can work is part of policy itself. NEP is Exhibit A in favour of this argument.1969 The nationalisation of 14 private-sector banks was a terrible assault on economic freedom under the garb of serving the public interest. The sudden announcement of a change in ownership of these banks was challenged in the courts, but the government managed to thwart it with an ordinance. Fifty years later, we still have low credit uptake even as governments continue to recapitalise loss-making banks with taxpayer money.1970The dominant economic thinking at the beginning of the 70s in India placed the State at the centre of everything. But that wasn’t how the world was moving. There was a serious re-examination of the relationship between the State and the market happening elsewhere. The eventual shift to a deregulated, small government economic model would happen by the decade's end. This shift mostly passed India by. But there were a few voices who questioned the state orthodoxy and, in some ways, sowed the intellectual seeds for liberalisation in future. In 1970, Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai published their monograph, India: Planning for Industrialisation, which argued that our economic policies since independence had crippled us. It showed with data how central planning, import substitution, public sector-led industrial policy and license raj have failed. But it found no takers. In fact, we doubled down on these failed policies for the rest of the decade. It was a tragedy foretold. What if someone had gone against the consensus and paid attention to that paper? That dissent could perhaps have been the greatest service to the nation. It is useful to remember this today when any scepticism about government policies is met with scorn. Dissent is good. The feeblest of the voice might just be right.The 70s: Losing The Plot1971Kissinger visited China in July 1971 via Pakistan. Responding to the changing world order, India and the USSR signed an Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in August of that year. India had become an ally of the USSR. Four months later, the India-Pakistan war pitted India and the USSR against Pakistan, China, and the US. The Indian strategic community came to internalise USSR as a super-reliable partner and the West as a supporter of India’s foes. It took another three decades, and the collapse of the USSR, for a change in this thinking. Even today, Russia finds massive support in the Indian strategic establishment. We had problematised this love for Russia here. 1972India won the 1972 war with Pakistan and liberated Bangladesh. India’s unilateral action stopped a humanitarian disaster. The victory was decisive, and the two parties met in Simla to agree on the way forward. This should have been a slam dunk for India in resolving festering issues on the international boundary, Kashmir and the role of the third parties. But international diplomacy is a two-level game, and Bhutto played that to his advantage. We explained this in edition 30. We paid a high price for giving away that win to Bhutto.1973The Kesavananda Bharti verdict of the Supreme Court rescued the Republic of India from a rampaging authoritarian. The basic structure doctrine found a nice balance to resolve the tension between constitutional immutability and legislative authority to amend the constitution. Bibhu Pani discussed this case in more detail here. 1974You are the State. Here are your crimes. You force import substitution, you regulate the currency, you misallocate capital, you let the public sector and a handful of licensed private players produce inferior quality products at a high cost, you raise the marginal tax rate at the highest level to 97 per cent, you run a large current account deficit, and you cannot control Rupee depreciation.Result?People find illegal ways to bring in foreign goods, currency and gold. And so was born the villain of every urban Bollywood film of the 70s. And a career option for a capitalist-minded kid like me. The Smuggler.But the State isn’t the criminal here. The smuggler is. And the State responded with a draconian law to beat all others. An act the knowledge of whose expanded form would serve kids well in those school quizzes of the 80s. COFEPOSA — The Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Act. A predatory state's defining feature is how it forces ordinary citizens to do unlawful activities. COFEPOSA was the mother of such laws. It has spawned many children. 1975This blank editorial by the Indian Express says it all. 1976We view our population as a core problem. The politicians, the public servants and the ordinary citizens share this view. We don’t want to acknowledge our governance deficit. Calling population a problem allows us to shirk the responsibility of running a functioning State. We have written about the flaw in thinking about the population as a problem on many occasions.How far could we go to control the population? Well, in 1976, during the peak of the Emergency, the State decided to sterilise male citizens against their wishes. This madness ended when the Emergency was lifted. But even today calls for population control keep coming back. 1977The first non-Congress union government was an important milestone for the Indian Republic. While Morarji Desai’s government did reverse the worst excesses of the Emergency rule, its economic policies were less successful. This period went on to witness a demonetisation in search of black money (2016 from the future says Hi!), and the same old counter-productive policies in search of self-reliance.1978Despite all available evidence that statist socialism was an abject failure, the Janata government that came to power decided to double down on it. One of the great ideas of the time was to force MNCs to reduce their stake in their Indian subsidiaries to below 40 per cent. A handful agreed, but the large corporations quit India. One of those who left was IBM in 1978. The many existing installations of IBM computers needed services and maintenance. In a delightful case of unintended consequences, this led to the nationalisation of IBM’s services division (later called CMC). Domestic companies started to serve this niche. Soon there were the likes of Infosys, Wipro and HCL building a business on this. CMC provided a good training ground for young engineers. And so, the Indian IT services industry got underway. It would change the lives of educated Indians forever.1979In a classic case of violating the Tinbergen rule, the Mandal Commission recommended that the reservation policy should be used to address relative deprivation. While the earlier reservations for oppressed castes stood on firm ground as a means for addressing unconscionable historical wrongs, the Mandal Commission stretched the logic too far. Its recommendation would eventually make reservation policy the go-to solution for any group that could flex its political muscles. We wrote about it here. 1980After ditching the Janata experiment and running out of ideas to keep Jan Sangh going, the BJP was formed. It wasn’t a momentous political occasion of any sort then. A party constitution that aimed for Gandhian socialism and offered vague promises of a uniform civil code and nationalism didn’t excite many. Everything else that would propel the party in later years was to be opportunistic add-ons to the ideology. The founding leaders, Advani and Vajpayee, would have been shocked if you told them what the party would be like, four decades later.The 80s: A Million Mutinies Now1981This year witnessed a gradual shift away from doctrinaire socialism in economic policymaking. “The Indira Gandhi government lifted restrictions on the expansion of production, permitted new private borrowing abroad, and continued the liberalisation of import controls,” wrote Walter Anderson. The government also “allowed” some price rises, leading to increased production of key input materials. The government also permitted foreign companies to compete in drilling rights in India. All in all, a year that witnessed changes for the better. 1982The great textile strike of Bombay in 1982 was inevitable. The trade unions had gotten so powerful that there was a competitive race to the bottom on who could be more militant. Datta Samant emerged intent on breaking the monopoly of RMMS on the city's workers. And he did this with ever spiralling demands from mill owners in a sector that was already bloated with overheads and facing competition from far eastern economies. There was no way to meet these demands. The owners locked the mills and left. Never to come back. The old, abandoned mills remained. The workers remained. Without jobs, without prospects and with kids who grew up angry and unemployed. The rise of Shiv Sena, political goondaism and a malevolent form of underworld followed. Bombay changed forever. It was all inevitable.1983The Nellie massacre in Assam and the Dhilwan bus massacre in Punjab represent the year 1983. Things seemed really dark back then. It seemed that the doomsayers would be proved right about India. Eventually, though, the Indian Republic prevailed. 1984Her Sikh bodyguards assassinated India Gandhi. The botched Punjab policy of the previous five years came a full circle with it. An unforgivable backlash against innocent Sikhs followed. A month later, deadly gas leaked out of a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, killing and paralysing thousands. 1984 will rank among the worst years of our republic. There were two silver linings in retrospect. One, we would learn to manage secessionist movements better from the harrowing Punjab experience. Two, had Indira continued, would we have had 1991? Our guess is no.1985This was an eventful year in retrospect. Texas Instruments set up shop in Bangalore. It was to begin one of modern India’s true success stories on the world stage. This was also the year when the Anti-defection law transformed the relationship between the voter and her representative. Political parties became all-powerful, and people’s representatives were reduced to political party agents. We have written about this changing dynamic here. This was also the year when the then commerce minister, VP Singh, visited Malaysia. The visit was significant for India because it served as a reference point for Singh when he visited that country again in 1990, now as the Prime minister. Surprised by Malaysia’s transformation in five years, he asked his team to prepare a strategy paper for economic reforms. This culminated in the “M” document, which became a blueprint for reforms when the time for the idea eventually came in 1991.1986Who is a citizen of India?  This vexing question roiled Assam in the early 80s. The student union protests against the widespread immigration of Bangladeshis turned violent, and things had turned ugly by 1985. The Assam accord of 1985 sought to settle the state's outstanding issues,, including deporting those who arrived after 1971 and a promise to amend the Citizenship Act. The amended Citizenship Act of 1986 restricted the citizenship of India to those born before 1987 only if either of their parents were born in India. That meant children of couples who were illegal immigrants couldn’t be citizens of India simply by virtue of their birth in India. That was that, or so we thought.But once you’ve amended the definition of who can be a citizen of India, you have let the genie out. The events of 2019 will attest to that.1987Rajiv Gandhi’s ill-fated attempt to replicate Indira Gandhi’s success through military intervention in another country began in 1987. In contrast to the 1971 involvement, where Indian forces had the mass support of the local populace, the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) got itself embroiled in a bitter Sri Lankan civil war. Not only did this involvement end in a failure, it eventually led to Rajiv Gandhi’s brutal murder in a terrorist attack. The policy lesson internalised by the strategic community was that India must stay far away from developing and deploying forces overseas.1988Most government communication is propaganda in disguise. However, there are those rare occasions when government messaging transcends the ordinary. In 1988, we saw that rare bird during the peak era of a single government channel running on millions of black and white TV sets across India. A government ad that meant something to all of us and that would remain with us forever. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara got everything right - the song, the singers, the storyline and that ineffable thing called the idea of India. No jingoism, no chest beating about being the best country in the world and no soppy sentimentalism. Just a simple message - we might all sing our own tunes, but we are better together. This is a timeless truth. No nation in history has become better by muting the voice of a section of their own people. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Toh Sur Bane Hamara, indeed.  19891989 will be remembered as the year when the Indian government capitulated to the demands of Kashmiri terrorists in the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction case. It would spark off a series of kidnappings and act as a shot in the arm of radicals. 1990VP Singh dusted off the decade-long copy of the Mandal Commission report and decided to implement it. This wasn’t an ideological revolution. It was naked political opportunism. However, three decades later, the dual impact of economic reforms and social engineering has increased social mobility than ever before. Merit is still a matter of debate in India. But two generations of affirmative action in many of the progressive states have shown the fears of merit being compromised were overblown. The task is far from finished, but Mandal showed that sometimes you need a big bang to get things going, even if your intentions were flawed.1990 also saw the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) from the valley. A tragedy that would bookend a decade of strife and violence in India. The only lesson one should draw from the sad plight of KPs is that the State and the people must protect minority rights. We’re not sure that’s what we have taken away from it. And that’s sad.The 90s: Correcting The Course1991With the benefit of hindsight, the 1991 economic reforms seem inevitable. But things could well have been different. In the minority government, powerful voices advocated in favour of debt restructuring instead of wholesale reforms. In the end, the narrative that these changes were merely a continuation—and not abandonment—of Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s vision for India carried the day. This political chicanery deserves some credit for transforming the life of a billion Indians. 1992Harshad Mehta scammed the stock markets. It wasn’t a huge scam. Nor did it hurt the ordinary Indians. Fewer than 1% invested in markets back then. Yet, the scam did something important. It set in motion a series of reforms that made our capital markets stronger and safer for ordinary investors. Notably, over the years, Mehta came to be seen as some kind of robber baron figure. Capitalism needed an anti-hero to catch the imagination of people. Someone who could reprise in the 90s the Bachchan-esque angry young man roles of the 70s. Mehta might not have been that figure exactly, but he helped a generation transition to the idea that greed could indeed be good.Also, Babri Masjid was brought down by a mob of kar sevaks in 1992. It will remain a watershed moment in our history. The Supreme Court judgement of 2019 might be the final judicial word on it. But we will carry the scars for a long time.1993The tremors of the demolition of the Babri Masjid were felt in 1993. Twelve bombs went off in Bombay on one fateful day. The involvement of the city’s mafia groups was established. The tragic event finally led to the government rescuing the city from the underworld. Not to forget, the Bombay underworld directly resulted from government policies such as prohibition and gold controls. 1994One of the great acts of perversion in our democracy was the blatant abuse of Section 356 of the constitution that allowed the union to dismiss a state government at the slightest pretext. Indira Gandhi turned this into an art form. S. R. Bommai, whose government in Karnataka was dismissed in this manner in 1988, took his case up to the Supreme Court. In 1994, the court delivered a verdict that laid out the guidelines to prevent the abuse of Section 356. It is one of the landmark judgments of the court and restored some parity in Union and state relationship.Article 356 has been used sparingly since. We are a better democracy because of it.1995India joined the WTO, and the first-ever mobile phone call was made this year. But 1995 will forever be remembered as the year when Ganesha idols started drinking milk. This event was a precursor to the many memes, information cascades, and social proofs that have become routine in the information age. 1996Union budgets in India are occasions for dramatic policy announcements. It is a mystery why a regular exercise of presenting the government's accounts should become a policy event. But that’s the way we roll. In 1996 and 1997, P. Chidambaram presented them as the FM of a weak ragtag coalition called the United Front. But he presented two budgets for the ages. The rationalisation of income tax slabs and the deregulation of interest rates created a credit culture that led to the eventual consumption boom in the next decade. We still carry that consumption momentum.1997The creation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is an important public policy milestone for India. By no means perfect, the setting up of TRAI helped overturn a norm where government departments were both players and umpires. TRAI made the separation of “steering” and “rowing” functions a new normal. That template has been copied in several sectors thereafter, most recently in the liberalisation of the space sector. 1998India did Pokhran 2, which gave it the capability to build thermonuclear weapons. We faced sanctions and global condemnation. But the growing economy and a sizeable middle class meant those were soon forgotten. Economic might can let you get away with a lot. We have seen it happen to us, but it is a lesson we don’t understand fully.Also, in 1998, Sonia Gandhi jumped into active politics. The Congress that was ambling towards some sort of internal democracy decided to jettison it all and threw its weight behind the dynasty. It worked out for them for a decade or so. But where are they now? Here’s a question. What if Sonia didn’t join politics then? Congress might have split. But who knows, maybe those splinters might have coalesced in the future with a leader chosen by the workers. And we would have had a proper opposition today with a credible leader.1999This was a landmark year for public policy. For the first time, a union government-run company was privatised wholly. We wrote about the three narratives of disinvestment here. 2000We have a weak, extended and over-centralised state. And to go with it, we have large, unwieldy states and districts that make the devolution of power difficult. In 2000, we created three new states to facilitate administrative convenience. On balance, it has worked well. Despite the evidence, we have managed to create only one more state since. The formation of Telangana was such a political disaster that it will take a long time before we make the right policy move of having smaller states. It is a pity.The 2000s: The Best Of Times2001Not only was the Agra Summit between Musharraf and Vajpayee a dud, but it was followed by a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament. It confirmed a pattern: PM-level bilateral meetings made the Pakistani military-jihadi complex jittery, and it invariably managed to spike such moves with terrorist attacks. 2002There was Godhra and the riots that followed. What else is there to say?2003The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act and the Civil Services Pension Reform are two policy successes with many lessons for future policymakers. We have discussed these on many occasions. 2004The NDA government called for an early election, confident about its prospects. India Shining, its campaign about how good things were, wasn’t too far from the truth. It is how many of us felt during that time. The NDA government had sustained the reform momentum of the 90s with some of the best minds running the key departments. Its loss was unexpected. Chandrababu Naidu, a politician who fashioned himself like a CEO, was taken to the cleaners in Andhra Pradesh. Apparently, economic reforms didn’t get you votes. The real India living in villages was angry at being left out. That was the lesson for politicians from 2004. Or, so we were told.Such broad narratives with minimal factual analysis backing them have flourished in the public policy space. There is no basis for them. The loss of NDA in 2004 came down to two states. Anti-incumbency in Andhra Pradesh where a resurgent Congress under YS Reddy beat TDP, a constituent of NDA. TDP lost by similar margins (in vote share %) across the state in all demographics in both rural and urban areas. There was no rural uprising against Naidu because of his tech-savvy, urban reformist image. Naidu lost because the other party ran a better campaign. Nothing else. The other mistake of the NDA was in choosing to partner with the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu (TN) over DMK. TN was famous for not giving split verdicts. It swung to extremes between these two parties in every election. And that’s what happened as AIADMK drew a blank.Yet, the false lesson of 2004 has played on the minds of politicians since. We haven’t gotten back on track on reforms in the true sense. 2005The Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act came into force in 2005. The “right to X” model of governance took root.2006In March 2006, George W Bush visited India and signed the Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement with Manmohan Singh. From facing sanctions in 1998 for Pokhran 2 to the 123 Agreement, this was a victory for Indian diplomacy and its rising status in the world. You would think this would have had bipartisan support among the political class in India. Well, the Left that was part of UPA and the BJP that worked on the deal when it was in power, opposed it. Many shenanigans later, the deal was passed in the parliament in 2008. It is often said there’s no real ideological divide among parties in India. This view can be contested on various grounds. But events like the opposition to the nuclear deal make you wonder if there are genuine ideological positions on key policy issues in India. Many sound policy decisions are opposed merely for the sake of it. Ideology doesn’t figure anywhere. 2007It was the year when the Left parties were out-lefted. In Singur and Nandigram, protests erupted over land acquisition for industrial projects. The crucible of the resulting violence created a new political force. As for the investment, the capital took a flight to other places. The tax on capital ended up being a tax on labour. Businesses stayed away from West Bengal. The citadel of Left turned into its mausoleum.2008Puja Mehra in her book The Lost Decade traces the origin of India losing its way following the global financial crisis to the Mumbai terror attack of 2008. Shivraj Patil, the home minister, quit following the attack and Chidambaram was shifted from finance to fill in. For reasons unknown, Pranab Mukherjee, a politician steeped in the 70s-style-Indira-Gandhi socialism, was made the FM. Mehra makes a compelling case of how that one decision stalled reforms, increased deficit and led to runaway inflation over the next three years. Till Chidambaram was brought back to get the house in order, it was too late, and we were halfway into a lost decade. It is remarkable how bad policies always seem easy to implement while good policies take ages to get off the blocks.2009The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established in January 2009 to architect a unique digital identity for persons in a country where low rates of death and birth registrations made fake and duplicate identities a means for corruption and denial of service. Under the Modi government, the digital identity — Aadhaar — became the fulcrum of several government services. This project also set the stage for later projects such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Abha (Health ID).2010There’s petty corruption everywhere in India. It is pervasive. Not surprisingly, it is one political issue leading to mass movements in India. The anti-corruption mood gripped India in 2010 on the back of the 2G spectrum scam, where the chief accountant of the government claimed a notional loss of about Rs. 1.8 trillion to the exchequer. Auctioning of natural resources wasn’t exactly a transparent process then. It was evident there was a scam in the allotment of the 2G spectrum. But the 1.8 trillion number was a wild exaggeration that anyone with a semblance of business understanding could see through. It didn’t matter. That number caught the imagination. UPA 2 never recovered from it. More importantly, the auction policy for resources was distorted forever. We still suffer the consequences.The 2010s: Missed Opportunity2011India’s last case of wild poliovirus was detected in 2011. Until about the early 1990s, an average of 500 to 1000 children got paralysed daily in India. The original target for eradication was the year 2000. Nevertheless, we got there eleven years later. India’s pulse polio campaign has since become a source of confidence for public policy execution in India. We internalised the lesson that the Indian government can sometimes deliver through mission mode projects. 2012If you cannot solve a vexing public policy issue, turn it into a Right. It won’t work, but it will seem like you’ve done everything. After years of trying to get the national education policy right, the government decided it was best to make education a fundamental right in the Constitution. Maybe that will make the problem go away. A decade later, nothing has changed, but we have an additional right to feel good about.2013This year saw the emergence of AAP as a political force via the anti-corruption movement. AAP combines the classic elements of what makes a political party successful in India - statist instincts, focus on aam aadmi issues, populism and ideological flexibility. Importantly, it is good at telling its own version of some future utopia rather than questioning the utopia of others. 2014The BJP came to power with many promises; the most alluring of them was ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. Over the past eight years it has claimed success in meeting many of its promises, but even its ardent supporters won’t claim any success on minimum government. In fact, it has gone the other way. That a party with an immensely popular PM, election machinery that rivals the best in the world, and virtually no opposition cannot shake us off our instinctive belief in the State's power never ceases to surprise us.2015The murder of a person by a mob on the charges of eating beef was the first clear indication of the upsurge of a new violent, majoritarian polity. It was also one of the early incidents in India of radically networked communities using social media for self-organisation. Meanwhile, 2015 also witnessed the signing of a landmark boundary agreement between India and Bangladesh, which ended the abomination called the third-order enclave. The two States exchanged land peacefully, upholding the principle that citizen well-being trumps hardline interpretations of territorial integrity. 2016There will be many case studies written in future about demonetisation. Each one of them will end with a single conclusion. Public policy requires discussion and consensus, not stealth and surprise. We hope we have learnt our lesson from it.2017Until 2017, many in India still held the hope of a modus vivendi with China. Some others were enamoured by the Chinese model of governance. However, the Doklam crisis in 2017, and the Galwan clashes in 2020, changed all that. Through this miscalculation, China alienated a full generation of Indians, led to better India-US relations, and energised India to shift focus away from merely managing a weak Pakistan, and toward raising its game for competing with a stronger adversary. For this reason, we wrote a thank you note to Xi Jinping here. 2018It took years of efforts by the LGBTQ community to get Section 377 scrapped. In 2018, they partially won when the Supreme Court diluted Section 377 to exclude all kinds of adult consensual sexual behaviour. The community could now claim equal constitutional status as others. There’s still some distance to go for the State to acknowledge non-heterosexual unions and provide for other civil rights to the community. But the gradual acceptance of the community because of decriminalisation is a sign that our society doesn’t need moral policing or lectures to judge what’s good for it.2019The J&K Reorganisation Act changed the long-standing political status quo in Kashmir. Three years on, the return to political normalcy and full statehood still awaits. While a response by Pakistan was expected, it was China that fomented trouble in Ladakh, leading to the border clashes in 2020. 2020We have written multiple pieces on farm laws in the past year. The repeal of these laws, which were fundamentally sound because of a vocal minority, is the story of public policy in India. Good policies are scuttled because of the absence of consultation, an unclear narrative, opportunistic politicking or plain old hubris. We write this newsletter in the hope of changing this. 2021The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic left behind many bereaved families. People are still trying to pick up the pieces. The sadness was also interrupted by frustration because of the delays in getting the vaccination programme going. India benefited immensely from domestic vaccine manufacturing capability in the private sector. Despite many twists and turns in vaccine pricing and procurements, the year ended with over 1 billion administered doses. In challenging times, the Indian State, markets, and society did come together to fight the pandemic. So, here we are. In the 75th independent year of this beautiful, fascinating and often exasperating nation. We are a work in progress. We might walk slowly, but we must not walk backwards. May we all live in a happy, prosperous and equal society. Thanks for reading Anticipating the Unintended! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com

No matter how many times you have heard it, the story of Jallianwala Bagh is terrifying. But when most of us first heard the story of the massacre, we weren't mature enough to absorb the significance of what we were reading.As schoolboys we were only allowed a casual and dinky relationship with our history text books. Jallianwala Bagh could pass as another tale of woe in chapter after chapter of bloody wars.And it wasn't until we were older and for many—let's tell the truth here—watching the movie Gandhi—did the horror of it all come home.My guest today is Navtej Sarna, author of Crimson Spring—in essence a book about the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, but one that is more history than novel. It is a literary work that describes a historical tragedy through the emotions of its protagonists.  While reading his book, it struck me that we don't preserve and portray the horrors of history in any tangible form, say, like the holocaust museums; Auschwitz and other locations. And then it occurred to me that the broad dissemination of Indian history is principally among school children. And that includes mythology. Even ones that include mature themes, such as the Mahabharata.No wonder then that the authors who have given us history—whether as history or as novels of historical fiction—have become bestsellers. Think William Dalrymple with over a million Twitter followers, Ram Guha, Chitra Divakaruni, Navtej Sarna, and so many others.There is a hunger for history. And no better time than the 75th year of Indian independence to tell these tales.Crimson Spring is but another in an impressive list of books authored by Sarna. And among them the most compelling for me is his book on his literary travels: Second Thoughts subtitled, On Books, Authors and The Writerly Life.Through trying to find the origins and the final resting places of the great writers, Sarna introduces us to that wonderful world. And packages the most important works of literature in an easily digestible form.He is a diplomat—former Ambassador to the United States, Israel and former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. And he joins us today from his home in New Delhi.I am privileged to welcome Navtej Sarna to The Literary City.ABOUT NAVTEJ SARNANavtej Sarna was India's Ambassador to the United States, High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, and Ambassador to Israel. He has also served as Secretary to the Government of India and as the Foreign Office Spokesperson. His earlier diplomatic assignments were in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Tehran, Geneva, and Washington DC. His literary work includes the novels The Exile and We Weren't Lovers Like That, the short story collection Winter Evenings, non-fiction works The Book of Nanak, Second Thoughts, and Indians at Herod's Gate, as well as two translations, Zafarnama and Savage Harvest. He is a prolific columnist and commentator on foreign policy and literary matters, contributing regularly to media platforms in India and abroad. His latest book is Crimson Spring, on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.Buy Crimson Spring: https://amzn.to/3BUjMqtBuy Second Thoughts: On Books, Authors and the Writerly Life: https://amzn.to/3JBqTpoWHAT'S THAT WORD?!Co-host Pranati "Pea" Madhav joins Ramjee Chandran in the segment "What's That Word?", where they discuss the phrase "Out damn spot!"WANT TO BE ON THE SHOW?Reach us by mail: theliterarycity@explocity.com or simply, tlc@explocity.com.Or here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theliterarycity.Or here:  https://www.instagram.com/explocityblr/

She's skated down tekdis, played volleyball for her state, run through deserts and wrestled a bear with her bare hands. Ok, not the last one. Shruti Jahagirdar joins Amit Varma in episode 289 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss women's sports in India, fitness, nutrition and a world without limits. Also check out: 1. Shruti Jahagirdar on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. 2. Halomi Fitness, Shruti Jahagirdar's startup. 3. The Evolution of Cricket -- Episode 97 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Harsha Bhogle). 4. Building Sports Ecosystems -- Episode 126 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Joy Bhattacharjya). 5. The State of Indian Sport -- Episode 238 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Joy Bhattacharjya and Nandan Kamath). 6. Other episodes of The Seen and the Unseen on sport with Ram Guha, Prem Panicker, Sharda Ugra, Ayaz Memon, Snehal Pradhan and Pradeep Magazine. 7. Wait But Why by Tim Urban. 8. This Ramesh Nagdev was a blazing bat -- Makarand Waingankar. 9. Chak De! India -- Shimit Amin. 10. The Sporting Spirit — George Orwell. 11. Allah Ke Bande -- Kailash Kher. 12. Kusha Kapila and the B-Plus Baccha.. 13. Wanting — Luke Burgis. 14. Atomic Habits -- James Clear. 15. Barefoot in the Park -- Neil Simon. 16. Tiger Muay Thai. 17. Former British Boxing Champ Julius Francis knocks out troublemaker. 18. Gimme Mo -- Mohit Satyanand's newsletter. 19. The Bell Hooks quote posted by Shruti Jahagirdar. 20. Everybody Lies — Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. 21. The Mary Oliver quote posted by Shruti Jahagirdar. 22. The Case Against Sugar — Gary Taubes. 23. The Big Fat Surprise: why butter, meat, and cheese belong in a healthy diet — Nina Teicholz. 24. The Obesity Code — Jason Fung. 25. Nina Teicholz on The Joe Rogan Experience. 26. Wheat Belly -- William Davis.. 27. The Four Quadrants of Conformism -- Paul Graham. 28. Population Is Not a Problem, but Our Greatest Strength — Amit Varma. 29. The Diabetes Code -- Jason Fung. 30. Hikikomori. 31. The Confidence Gap — Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. 32. Everything is Illuminated -- Liev Schreiber, based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. 33. The White Balloon -- Jafar Panahi. 34. Majid Majidi on Wikipedia and IMDb. 35. Panchayat, Season 2. 36. Schitt's Creek. 37. This is Us. 38. The Playbook- A Coach's Rules for Life. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! The illustration for this episode is by Nishant Jain aka Sneaky Artist. Check out his podcast, Twitter, Instagram and Substack.

To immerse yourself in literature is to immerse yourself in the world. Chandrahas Choudhury joins Amit Varma in episode 288 of The Seen and the Unseen to chat about reading, writing, friendship, Mumbai and the guests at his fantasy dinner table. Also check out: 1. Chandrahas Choudhury on Instagram and Amazon. 2. The Middle Stage -- Chandrahas Choudhury's blog. 3. My Country Is Literature -- Chandrahas Choudhury. 4. Days of My China Dragon -- Chandrahas Choudhury. 5. Clouds -- Chandrahas Choudhury. 6. Arzee The Dwarf -- Chandrahas Choudhury. 7. Bamana Arzee -- Chandrahas Choudhury, translated by Sindhubala Choudhury.  8. The Life and Times of Abhinandan Sekhri -- Episode 254 of The Seen and the Unseen. 9. Two Men Who Left Third Man Alone -- Amit Varma and Chandrahas Choudhury. 10. The Curse of Knowledge. 11. Eunice De Souza on Amazon. 12. House of the Dead —  Fyodor Dostoevsky. 13. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. 14. The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist -- Orhan Pamuk. 15. The Ferment of Our Founders -- Episode 272 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Kapila). 16. Jai Arjun Singh Lost It at the Movies -- Episode 230 of The Seen and the Unseen. 17. Madame Bovary -- Gustave Flaubert. 18. How Fiction Works -- James Wood. 19. Marcel Proust and Karl Ove Knausgaard on Amazon. 20. Six and a Third Acres -- Fakir Mohan Senapati. 21. Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? -- AK Ramanujan. 22. Sara Rai Inhales Literature -- Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 23. Rukmini Sees India's Multitudes -- Episode 261 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rukmini S). 24. Cuckold -- Kiran Nagarkar. 25. Robert Bly on Amazon. 26. A Meditation on Form — Amit Varma. 27. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life -- Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 28. Georges Simenon on Amazon. 29. Beautiful Thing — Sonia Faleiro. 30. Two Girls Hanging From a Tree — Episode 209 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Sonia Faleiro). 31. Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay on Amazon. 32. The Business of Books -- Episode 150 of The Seen and the Unseen (w VK Karthika). 33. The Bear Came Over the Mountain -- Alice Munro. 34. Against Rang De Basanti -- Chandrahas Choudhury. 35. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 36. A Godless Congregation -- Amit Varma. 37. Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek. 38. The City -- CP Cavafy. 39. Junoon on Spotify. 40. Verrier Elwin on Amazon. 41. The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin: An Autobiography. 42. Suite Francaise -- Irène Némirovsky. 43. Taking Stock of Our Republic — Episode 157 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! The illustration for this episode is by Nishant Jain aka Sneaky Artist. Check out his work on Twitter, Instagram and Substack.

He grew up breathing Kannada literature -- and he also embraced the globalised world. Sugata Srinivasaraju joins Amit Varma in episode 277 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss this confluence of the old and the new, the near and the far, his society and the world.  Also check out: 1. Sugata Srinivasaraju in Outlook, ToI/Mumbai Mirror, New Indian Express, The Wire, Mint, Twitter and his own website. 2. Furrows in a Field -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 3. Pickles from Home: The Worlds of a Bilingual -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 4. Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 5. Sugata Srinivasaraju on his father, Chi Srinivasaraju: 1, 2, 3. 6. Maharashtra Politics Unscrambled -- Episode 151 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Sujata Anandan). 7. Dodda Alada Mara (Big Banyan Tree). 8. GP Rajarathnam, AR Krishnashastry, P Lankesh and KS Nissar Ahmed on Wikipedia. 9. The Tell Me Why series of encyclopedias -- Arkady Leokum. 10. Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire on Amazon. 11. Rayaru Bandaru Mavana Manege -- The KS Narasimhaswamy poem Sugata translated. 12. Phoenix and Four Other Mime Plays -- Chi Srinivasaraju (translated by Sugata Srinivasaraju, who tweeted about it here.). 13. Ahobala Shankara, V Seetharamaiah, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, KV Narayana, Noam Chomsky, DR Nagaraj, Jorge Luis Borges and Tejaswini Niranjana. 14. Lawrence Weschler on how Akumal Ramachander discovered Harold Shapinsky. 15. AK Ramanujan and Gopalakrishna Adiga. 16. The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse -- Edited by Alan Bold. 17. Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-22 -- Shahid Amin. 18. Kraurya -- Girish Kasaravalli. 19. Deconstructing Derrida -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 20. Yaava Mohana Murali -- Gopalakrishna Adiga's poem turned into a song. 21. Ram Guha Reflects on His Life -- Episode 266 of The Seen and the Unseen. 22. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas — Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 23. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma — Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 24. Modern South India: A History from the 17th Century to our Times -- Rajmohan Gandhi. 25. Ki Ram Nagaraja at Book Brahma. 26. A Map of Misreading -- Harold Bloom. 27. The Singer of Tales -- Albert Lord and David Elmer. 28. ಪಂಪ ಭಾರತ ದೀಪಿಕೆ: Pampa Bharatha Deepike -- DL Narasimhachar. 29. The Open Eyes: A Journey Through Karnakata -- Dom Moraes. 30. Dom Moraes on DR Bendre's love for numbers. 31. DR Bendre, Kuvempu, Shamba Joshi, MM Kalburgi, Shivaram Karanth, VK Gokak and Chandrashekhar Patil. 32. Da Baa Kulkarni, Sriranga, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Bhisham Sahni, Kartar Singh Duggal and HY Sharada Prasad. 33. His Will Was His God -- Sugata Srinivasaraju on HY Sharada Prasad. 34. Jeremy Seabrook on Amazon. 35. Aakar Patel Is Full of Hope -- Episode 270 of The Seen and the Unseen. 36. The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual — Ramachandra Guha. 37. The Life and Times of Mrinal Pande -- Episode 263 of The Seen and the Unseen. 38. Sara Rai Inhales Literature -- Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 39. The Art of Translation -- Episode 168 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Arunava Sinha). 40. Negotiating Two Worlds, Bilingualism As A Cultural Idea -- Sugata Srinivasaraju delivers the HY Sharada Prasad Memorial Lecture. 41. Karunaalu Baa Belake -- A Kannada version of 'Lead, Kindly Light'. 42. Liberal impulses of our regional languages -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 43. Why Resisting Hindi is No Longer Enough -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 44, The Indianness of Indian Food -- Episode 95 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Doctor). 45. Steven Van Zandt: Springsteen, the death of rock and Van Morrison on Covid — Richard Purden. 46. Roam Research and Zettelkasten. 47. Sixteen Stormy Days — Tripurdaman Singh. 48. The First Assault on Our Constitution — Episode 194 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh). 49. Nehru's Debates -- Episode 262 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh and Adeel Hussain). 50. Speaking of Siva -- Ak Ramanujan's translations of the Vacanas. 51. Not Waving but Drowning -- Stevie Smith. 52. Pictures on a Page -- Harold Evans. 53. Notes From Another India -- Jeremy Seabrook. 54. Good Times, Bad Times -- Harold Evans. 55. John Pilger on Amazon. 56. Sugata Srinivasaraju's pieces in Outlook in 2005 on the Infosys land scam: 1, 2. 57. ‘Bellary Is Mine' -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 58. Deca Log: 1995-2005. A history in ten-and-a-half chapters, through the eyes of Outlook -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 59. The Sanjay Story: From Anand Bhavan To Amethi -- Vinod Mehta. 60. Lucknow Boy: A Memoir -- Vinod Mehta. 61. Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker -- Ved Mehta. 62. Off the Record: Untold Stories from a Reporter's Diary -- Ajith Pillai. 63. A Town Offers Its Shoulder -- Sugata Srinivasaraju. 64. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction -- Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. 65. Dhanya Rajendran Fights the Gaze -- Episode 267 of The Seen and the Unseen. 66. The Story of an Income Tax Search — Dhanya Rajendran on Instagram. 67. George Plimpton, 76; 'Paper Lion' author, longtime literary editor, amateur athlete -- David Mehegan. 68. Does The Paris Review Get a Second Act? -- Charles McGrath on literary magazines as "showcases of idealism." 69. My Father's Suitcase -- Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize lecture. 70. Gandhi's Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India -- Dhirendra K Jha. 71. Harmony in the Boudoir -- Mark Strand. 72. Of Human Bondage -- W Somerset Maugham. 73. Man's Worldly Goods -- Leo Huberman. 74. Autobiography -- Bertrand Russell. 75. Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens and George Orwell on Amazon. 76. Madame Bovary -- Gustave Flaubert. 77. Reflections on Gandhi -- George Orwell. 78. The Tyranny of Merit -- Michael Sandel. 79. Home in the World: A Memoir -- Amartya Sen. 80. Living to Tell the Tale -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 81. Ayodhya - The Dark Night and Ascetic Games by Dhirendra Jha. 82. Team of Rivals -- Doris Kearns Goodwin. 83. My Last Sigh -- Luis Bunuel. 84. Interview with History -- Oriana Fallaci. 85. Ryszard Kapuscinski on Amazon. 86. Journalism as Literature -- Salman Rushdie on Ryszard Kapuscinski. 87. Mallikarjun Mansur, Bhimsen Joshi and Kumar Gandharva on Spotify. 88. Vachanas sung by Mallikarjun Mansur and Basavaraja Rajguru. 89. Outlander, Knightfall and Money Heist on Netflix. 90. Sugata Srinivasaraju's Twitter thread on the songs of DR Bendre. This episode is sponsored by The Desi Crime Podcast. You'll find them on all podcast apps. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! The illustration for this episode is by Nishant Jain aka Sneaky Artist. Check out his work on Twitter, Instagram and Substack.

Take our listener survey here. In this episode, Shruti speaks with Ramachandra Guha about his latest book, “Rebels Against the Raj.” They discuss the influence of foreigners who renounced their native nationalities to become Indian, Gandhi's legacy, economic protectionism, constraints on free speech, cricket and much more. Guha is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history. For the academic year 2011–12, he held a visiting position at the London School of Economics He has also been a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Follow Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan  Follow Ramachandra on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ram_Guha  For a full transcript of this conversation including helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.  Check out Macro Musings: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings Follow Macro Musings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Macro_Musings Subscribe to Macro Musings on your favorite podcast app.

Historians write about the lives of others -- but what about their own journeys? Ramachandra Guha joins Amit Varma in episode 266 of The Seen and the Unseen to reflect on his notion of home, how he got from there to here, and the strange dreams that sometimes come. Also check out: 1. Rebels Against the Raj -- Ramachandra Guha. 2. Savaging the Civilized -- Ramachandra Guha. 3. A Functioning Anarchy?: Essays for Ramachandra Guha -- Nandini Sundar and Srinath Raghavan. 4. Ramachandra Guha on Amazon. 5. A Cricket Tragic Celebrates the Game -- Episode 201 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 6. Taking Stock of Our Republic -- Episode 157 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 7. Understanding Gandhi. Part 1: Mohandas -- Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 8. Understanding Gandhi. Part 2: Mahatma -- Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 9. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life -- Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 10. Aadha Gaon -- Rahi Masoom Raza. 11. Jamuna Kinare Mera Gaon -- Kumar Gandharva. 12. What Have We Done With Our Independence? -- Episode 186 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pratap Bhanu Mehta). 13. A Fish in the Water -- Mario Vargas Llosa. 14. Subaltern and Bhadralok Studies -- Ramachandra Guha. 15. MN Srinivas on Amazon. 16. Manu Pillai on Amazon. 17. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Manu Pillai: 1, 2, 3, 4. 18. Sanjay Subrahmanyam on Amazon. 19. The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World -- Linda Colley. 20. Linda Colley on Amazon. 21. Upinder Singh and Nayanjot Lahiri on Amazon. 22. Sturgeon's Law. 23. David Gilmour on Amazon. 24. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin -- Charles Darwin. 25. Of Gifted Voice: The Life and Art of MS Subbulakshmi -- Keshav Desiraju. 26. Finding The Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music -- Amit Chaudhuri. 27. Symphony No.3, Op.36 — Henryk Gorecki. 28. Mallikarjun Mansur, Bhimsen Joshi, Kumar Gandharva, Kishori Amonkar, Basavraj Rajguru, Sharafat Hussain Khan, DV Paluskar, Faiyaz Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee, Bismillah Khan, Vilayat Khan, Buddhadev Das Gupta, Arvind Parikh, Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande, Veena Sahasrabuddhe, Rashid Khan, Venkatesh Kumar and Priya Purushothaman on YouTube. 29. Raju Asokan and Subrata Chowdhury on YouTube. 30. Veena Doreswamy Iyengar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in Jugalbandi, 1962-62. 31. Hamsadhvani -- Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, 1950s in Bangalore. 32. Dhano Dhanne -- Jaya Varma and the Chandigarh Choir. 33. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do -- Judith Rich Harris. 34. The Intellectual Foundations of Hindutva -- Episode 115 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 35. In Absentia: Where are India's conservative intellectuals? -- Ramachandra Guha. 36. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism -- Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 37. Religion and Ideology in Indian Society -- Episode 124 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Suyash Rai). 38. Political Ideology in India -- Episode 131 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rahul Verma). 39. Sara Rai Inhales Literature -- Episode 255 of The Seen and the Unseen. 40. The Chipko Movement -- Shekhar Pathak. 41. DR Nagaraj, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Sujit Mukherjee, Tridip Suhrud, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Girish Karnad and Mahasweta Devi on Amazon. 42. Marxvaad aur Ram Rajya -- Karpatri Maharaj. 43. The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual -- Ramachandra Guha. 44. Yuganta -- Irawati Karve. 45. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra on Amazon. 46. Reconcling the Nagas -- Ramachandra Guha. 47. The State of Our Farmers -- Episode 86 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Gunvant Patil). 48. KT Achaya on Amazon. 49. Shiv Visvanathan on Amazon. 50. Manthan -- Shyam Benegal. 51. Science as a Vocation -- Max Weber. 52. AA Thomson on Wikipedia. 53. Ernest Hemingway, W Somerset Maugham, Penelope Fitzgerald, Barbara Pym and Leo Tolstoy on Amazon. 54. The Kingdom of God Is Within You -- Leo Tolstoy. 55. Anna Karenina -- Leo Tolstoy. 56. War and Peace -- Leo Tolstoy. 57. Father Sergius -- Leo Tolstoy (translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude). 58. Middlemarch -- George Eliot. 59. Limonov -- Emmanuel Carrère. 60. The Netanyahus -- Joshua Cohen. 61. The Gate of Angels -- Penelope Fitzgerald. 62. The Knox Brothers -- Penelope Fitzgerald. 63. Nicholas Boyle on Amazon. 64. Gandhi's Formative Years -- Ramachandra Guha's essay that mentions Boyle's Laws of Biography. 65. Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography -- Sarvepalli Gopal. 66. The Wire -- David Simon etc. 67. The Second Coming -- William Butler Yeats. 68. Ramachandra Guha interviewed by Madhu Trehan. 69. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India -- Akshaya Mukul. 70. Granville Austin on Amazon. 71. The Citizenship Battles -- Episode 152 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Srinath Raghavan). 72. The Multiple Tragedies of the Kashmiri Pandit -- Ramachandra Guha. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free!

Ramachandra Guha has been an astute and lucid guide to Indian history, with an ability to paint both the broad canvas as well fill in the minute details. Most people know him as a columnist – sometimes controversial, but always insightful and engaging. But there is another side to him, that of the scrupulous historian and scholarly path breaker –  in the field of environmental history, the social history of Indian cricket, the history of the Indian republic, and in biographies of lesser-known figures like Verrier Elwin and very public figures like Gandhi. This episode of BIC Talks is a series of extracts from a Festschrift in honour of Ramachandra Guha, originally presented as a BIC Streams session based on A Functioning Anarchy, a collection of essays by historians, social scientists, ecologists and journalists- edited by Nandini Sundar and Srinath Raghavan- in appreciation of the scholar in Guha.

This episode of Red Inker, we have a legendary writer from India, Ramachandra Guha. With the release of his book, I asked him to come on so we could talk about his journey as a cricket fan, from dreaming about being a nightwatchman, all the way through to helping run the BCCI. We talk about patriotism, cricket governance, the beauty of Warne and Wasim, radio commentary and leaky toilets. - To support the podcast please go to our Patreon page. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=32090121. If you like this podcast, you may like the YouTube page https://www.youtube.com/jarrodkimberyt. You can find Ramachandra Guha on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Ram_Guha. His latest book is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B087T536KC/. This podcast is edited, mixed and produced by Nick McCorriston, he's at https://www.nickamc.com and https://www.twitter.com/nickamc. The theme tune is by Red Crickets https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Red_Crickets/Red_Crickets.

The tables are turned in episode 200 of The Seen and the Unseen. Host Amit Varma is in the firing line, replying to questions from 22 of his past guests and fans as Shruti Rajagopalan plays proctor. They talk about poker, podcasting, politics, policy and the personal.  Show Notes 1. Select episodes of The Seen and the Unseen featuring Shruti Rajagopalan (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), Manu Pillai (98, 127, 156), VK Karthika, Rajat Ubhaykar, Chinmay Tumbe, Prem Panicker (41, 46), Joy Bhattacharjya, Akshaya Mukul, Ira Mukhoty, Parvati Sharma, Manimugdha Sharma, Supriya Gandhi, Harsha Bhogle, Karthik Muralidharan, Srinath Raghavan (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), Pranay Kotasthane (1, 2), Hamsini Hariharan (1, 2, 3, 4), Russ Roberts, Arvind Subramanian, Ram Guha (1, 2, 3), Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Narayani Basu, Amardeep Singh, Aakar Patel, Rahul Verma, Ashok Malik, Barun Mitra+Kumar Anand, Matt Ridley, Neelesh Misra, Puja Mehra, Rajeswari Sengupta (1, 2), Aanchal Malhotra, Alex Tabarrok (1, 2, 3), Madhavi Menon and Mohit Satyanand (1, 2, 3, 4) 2. A Godless Congregation -- Amit Varma. 3. Agarkar’s Donkeys: A Meditation on God -- Amit Varma. 4. Luck is All Around -- Amit Varma. 5. Why I Loved and Left Poker -- Amit Varma. 6. The archives of Amit Varma's poker column for the Economic Times, Range Rover. 7. Selected works by George Orwell: Essays, 1984, Animal Farm. 8. Selected Works by Frédéric Bastiat: The Law, That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen. 9. A World of Stopped Watches — Amit Varma. 10. A Picture of Hell, and No Kerosene -- Amit Varma. 11. ये लिबरल आख़िर है कौन? -- Episode 37 of Puliyabaazi, featuring Amit Varma discussing Friedrich Hayek. 12. Facts Don’t Matter. Stories Do -- Amit Varma. 13. Every Act of Government Is an Act of Violence -- Amit Varma. 14. We Are Fighting Two Disasters: Covid-19 and the Indian State -- Amit Varma. 15. The Blank Slate -- Steven Pinker. 16. Almost Invisible -- Mark Strand. 17. The Power Broker -- Robert Caro. 18. The Lord of the Rings -- JRR Tolkien. 19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time -- Mark Haddon. 20. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? -- Thomas Nagel. 21. Economics in One Lesson -- Henry Hazlitt. 22. Haal-Chaal Theek Thaak Hai -- Subrat and Pavan. 23. The Road to Serfdom -- Friedrich Hayek. 24. The Intellectuals and Socialism -- Friedrich Hayek. Also check out Amit Varma being interviewed on libertarianism, public choice theory, the math of sports, IPL & T20 cricket, and assorted subjects. You can now buy Seen/Unseen swag. And a four-volume anthology is on the way. And ah, registrations are now open for Amit's online courses, The Art of Clear Writing and The Art of Podcasting.

As India completes 73 years, it's worth taking stock of our journey so far. Pratap Bhanu Mehta joins Amit Varma in episode 186 of The Seen and the Unseen, an Independence Day Special that takes a discursive look at the political and social currents that made us what we are. Also check out: 1. Pratap Bhanu Mehta's writing in the Indian Express. 2. The Burden of Democracy -- Pratap Bhanu Mehta. 3. On Politics -- Alan Ryan. 4. The Making of Modern Liberalism -- Alan Ryan. 5. Human Dignity -- George Kateb. 6. Patriotism and Other Mistakes -- George Kateb. 7. Conversation and Society -- Episode 182 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Russ Roberts). 8. Fixing Indian Education -- Episode 185 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 9. The Three Languages of Politics -- Arnold Kling. 10. The Dark Side of Democracy -- Michael Mann. 11. The Emergency -- Episode 103 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Gyan Prakash). 12. The Ideas of our Constitution -- Episode 164 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Madhav Khosla). 13. The Facts Do Not Matter -- Amit Varma. 14. A Meditation on Form -- Amit Varma. 15. An Indian Political Life: Charan Singh and Congress Politics, 1937 to 1961 -- Paul R Brass. 16. Taking Stock of Our Republic -- Episode 157 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 17. Who Broke Our Republic? -- Episode 163 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Kapil Komireddi) 18. Participatory Democracy -- Episode 160 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ashwin Mahesh.) 19. A Life in Indian Politics -- Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jayaprakash Narayan). 20. Kashmir and Article 370 -- Episode 134 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Srinath Raghavan). 21. The Citizenship Battles -- Episode 152 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Srinath Raghavan). 22. Indian Society: The Last 30 Years -- Episode 137 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Santosh Desai). 23. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism -- Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 24. Political Ideology in India -- Episode 131 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rahul Verma). 25. Religion and Ideology in Indian Society -- Episode 124 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Suyash Rai). 26. The Intellectual Foundations of Hindutva -- Episode 115 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 27. Crime in Indian Politics -- Episode 114 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Milan Vaishnav). Do also check out Amit's writing course, The Art of Clear Writing, and subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter.

Our economy goes down, down, down. Our stock market is hyped up, up, up. Amit Varma and Vivek Kaul make sense of this paradox in episode 6 of Econ Central. Also discussed: The economic principles behind good writing, the game theory behind rebellion in the Congress, and how both Amit and Vivek are enemies of Lutyens.   Also check out:1. Steve Jobs and His Black Turtleneck -- Amit Varma (on decision fatigue). 2. This Passing Moment -- Amit Varma (on opportunity cost). 3. How to Escape From the Shallows -- Amit Varma. 4. That Will Be England Gone -- Michael Henderson. 5. If Gold Is a Bad Investment, so Are Stocks -- Vivek Kaul. 6. A Sustained Bull Market? -- Debashis Basu. 7. Radical Uncertainty -- Mervyn King & John Kay. 8. A Game Theory Problem: Who Will Bell The Congress Cat? -- Amit Varma. 9. Congress Crisis is Structural -- Pradeep Chibber & Rahul Verma. 10. Political Ideology in India -- Episode 131 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rahul Verma), 11. Taking Stock of Our Republic -- Episode 157 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 12. Mohua Moitra interview by Barkha Dutt. 13. Who Moved My Interest Rate? -- D Subbarao. 14. RBI Is Behaving Like a Football Goalkeeper -- Vivek Kaul. 15. Of Football Goalkeepers, RBI Governor Subbarao and the Art of Doing Nothing -- Vivek Kaul. 16. Green Shoots in the Desert Sand -- Episode 2 of Econ Central (w discussion on poverty and inequality at the end). 17. India’s Problem is Poverty, Not Inequality -- Amit Varma. 18. Books by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Steven Pinker, Philip Tetlock, Nate Silver & Per Bylund. 19. Fooled by Randomness -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb. 20. The Blank Slate -- Steven Pinker. 21. Superforecasting -- Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner. 22. The Seen, the Unseen and the Unrealised -- Per Bylund. 23. Conversation and Society -- Episode 182 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Russ Roberts).  24. Farmers, Technology and Freedom of Choice: A Tale of Two Satyagrahas -- Amit Varma (on GMO foods). 25. The Audio Publishing Boom -- Episode 11 of Publishing Perspectives (w Amit & Arcopol Chaudhuri among others). Registrations for the August batches of Amit's course, The Art of Clear Writing, are now open. Rush! And do check out Bad Money and Vivek's other books

Indian decision makers often blindly copy public policy from abroad, without considering whether it would work in local conditions. Shruti Rajagopalan and Alex Tabarrok join Amit Varma in episode 180 of The Seen and the Unseen to explain the damage caused by such 'isomorphic mimicry,' and why it happens in the first place. Also check out: 1. Premature Imitation and India’s Flailing State -- Shruti Rajagopalan & Alexander Tabarrok. 2. Modern Principles of Macroeconomics -- Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok. 3. Modern Principles of Microeconomics --  Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok. 4. DeMon, Morality and the Predatory Indian State -- Episode 85 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 5. The Delhi Smog -- Episode 44 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vivek Kaul). 6. Is India a Flailing State? -- Lant Pritchett. 7. We Are Fighting Two Disasters: Covid-19 and the Indian State -- Amit Varma. 8. Political Ideology in India -- Episode 131 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rahul Verma). 9. Ideology and Identity -- Pradeep Chhibber & Rahul Verma. 10. Understanding Gandhi. Part One: Mohandas -- Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 11. Understanding Gandhi. Part Two: Mahatma --  Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 12. Akhil Katyal's poem on caste. 13. Caste in Modern India -- Episode 52 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 14. Women at Work -- Episode 132 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Namita Bhandare). 15. Metrics of Empowerment -- Episode 88 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Devika Kher, Nidhi Gupta & Hamsini Hariharan). 16. Here’s What’s Wrong With the Maternity Benefits Act -- Suman Joshi. 17. FSI in India -- Episode 11 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Alex Tabarrok). 18. Twelve Dream Reforms -- Episode 138 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan, Rajeswari Sengupta & Vivek Kaul). 19. Slums in India -- Episode 21 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pavan Srinath).  20. Order Without Design -- Alain Bertaud. 21. The Power Broker — Robert Caro. 22. The Death and Life of Great American Cities — Jane Jacobs. 23. The Right to Property -- Episode 26 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 24. Swachh Bharat -- Episode 82 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 25. Modi's Lost Opportunity -- Episode 119 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Salman Soz). 26. Education in India -- Episode 77 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Amit Chandra). 27. The Art and Science of Economic Policy -- Episode 154 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vijay Kelkar & Ajay Shah). 28. In Service of the Republic -- Vijay Kelkar & Ajay Shah. 29. The Importance of Cities -- Episode 108 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Reuben Abraham & Pritika Hingorani).

Historian Ramachandra Guha is perhaps the leading Gandhi authority in the world today. He has written two major biographies, Gandhi Before India(Vintage 2013) dealing with his time as a lawyer and activist in South Africa, and Gandhi 1914-1948 The Years That Changed the World (Vintage 2018). Ram Guha speaks to Tony about five speeches. Four relate to the struggle for independence.  They are the Banaras University speech of 1916, the Statement at the Great Trial of 1922, The Eve of Salt March Speech of 1931 and the Quit India speech of 1942. For our speech of the week, Ram reads a fragment of this last speech. The fifth and final speech is speech of the week, and is a spiritual statement Gandhi made at Kingsley Hall in Oxford during a summit he attended in England in 1931. Guha expertly weaves information about these critical speeches into the broader narrative of Indian independence, and even has things to say about partition, Gandhi's assassination the cult of Godse, and current day tensions between an ascendant Hindu nationalist movement under Prime Minister Modi and various minorities. Ramchandra Guha was himself arrested in his home city of Bengaluru protesting against a  discriminatory citizenship law. He was carrying a poster of Gandhi at the time of arrest. Episode supported by GreenSkin™ and PurpleSkin™ avocados at http://lovemyavocados.com.au.  Also for sporting artworks, gifts and home wares, check out Sporting Nation. Ram's cricket book is A Corner of a Foreign Field and is a classic of sportswriting. To purchase a signed copy of Tony's sports book, 1989: The Great Grand Final visit his website. It's also available widely online. Please subscribe to the podcast, visit Speakola,  and share any great speeches that are special to you, famous or otherwise. I just need transcript & photo /video embed. Speakola also has Twitter and Facebook feeds. Tony Wilson's author website is here. He's on twitter @byTonyWilson. Ramachandra Guha is @Ram_Guha and he has 2.2 million followers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ram Guha, Yogendra Yadav वामपंथी हड़पना चाहते हैं, आपकी property! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ishkaran-singh-bhandari/message

Seven decades after Independence, India is still wracked by poverty and strife. Who is responsible? Kapil Komireddi joins Amit Varma in episode 163 of The Seen and the Unseen to excoriate every political player of Independent India. No prisoners taken. Also check out: 1. Malevolent Republic -- Kapil Komireddi. 2. Kashmir and Article 370 -- Episode 134 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Srinath Raghavan). 3. Understanding Gandhi. Part One: Mohandas -- Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 4. Understanding Gandhi. Part Two: Mahatma -- Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 5. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism -- Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 6. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India -- Akshaya Mukul. 7. India's Founding Moment -- Madhav Khosla. 8. Where Have All the Leaders Gone? -- Amit Varma. 9. Democracy in Pakistan -- Episode 79 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pranay Kotasthane & Hamsini Hariharan). 10. The 2019 Elections -- Episode 122 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Sadanand Dhume). 11. Radically Networked Societies -- Episode 158 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pranay Kotasthane). 12. The Emergency -- Episode 103 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Gyan Prakash). 13. Taking Stock of Our Republic -- Episode 157 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 14. A Game Theory Problem: Who Will Bell The Congress Cat? -- Amit Varma. 15. An Area of Darkness -- VS Naipaul. 16. India: A Wounded Civilization -- VS Naipaul. 17. The Discovery of India -- Jawaharlal Nehru.

Action packed week it was. Ram Guha sizzled with Bhakt Banerjee in an epic faceoff, we went into the Shaheen Bagh protests and captured some great reactions, then we finally out out an episode on the ;'VISION' Jumla - to talk about all that and the approaching elections and TONS of your questions....here is another action packed episode of Saturday Night Live! ****** Support #TheDeshBhakt to keep us independent ***** PATREON - https://www.patreon.com/thedeshbhakt PAYPAL - https://www.paypal.me/thedeshbhakt INSTAMOJO - https://imjo.in/XU5arJ ****** Get the New DeshBhakt Merch! ******* India Shipping Only - https://kadakmerch.com/thedeshbhakt *********Follow us on ************ YouTube: - https://youtube.com/thedeshbhakt Twitter :- https://twitter.com/thedeshbhakt Instagram :- https://instagram.com/akashbanerjee.in Facebook :- https://www.facebook.com/akashbanerjee.in SoundCloud :- https://soundcloud.com/thedeshbhakt --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/support

India has endured -- but as we celebrate another Republic Day, we must remember that we cannot take this for granted. Historian Ramachandra Guha joins Amit Varma in episode 157 of The Seen and the Unseen to examine some of the currents of history that brought us here, and are still in flux. Also check out: 1. The books of Ramachandra Guha on Amazon. 2. Ramachandra Guha's columns in the Telegraph. 3. Understanding Gandhi: Part 1: Mohandas: Episode 104 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 4. Understanding Gandhi: Part 2: Mahatma: Episode 105 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ram Guha). 5. Patriotism vs Jingoism -- Ram Guha's speech at the Kerala Lit Fest. 6. The Citizenship Battles -- Episode 152 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Srinath Raghavan). 7. A Life in Indian Politics -- Episode 149 of The Seen and the Unseen (w JP Narayan). 8. The Intellectual Foundations of Hindutva -- Episode 115 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Aakar Patel). 9. Religion and Ideology in Indian Society -- Episode 124 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Suyash Rai). 10. Political Ideology in India -- Episode 131 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rahul Verma). 11. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism -- Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 12. The Indian Conservative -- Episode 145 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Jaithirth Rao). 13. India's Lost Decade -- Episode 116 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Puja Mehra). 14. Lessons from an Ankhon Dekhi Prime Minister -- Amit Varma 15. We Must Reclaim Nationalism From the BJP -- Amit Varma  16. Where Have All the Leaders Gone -- Amit Varma 17. Why Nationalism -- Yael Tamir 18. Notes on Nationalism -- George Orwell 19. The Flaming Feet and Other Essays -- DR Nagaraj 20. Becoming the Mahatma -- Sunil Khilnani's review of Ram Guha's biography.

Today’s show involves very little me! Which is a nice change. Instead, the head of McMaster’s Peace Studies program, Dr. Chandrima Chakraborty, interviews Dr. Ram Guha about his epic work, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948. Enjoy!

Ram Guha and Gideon Haigh are two of cricket's most passionate fans. They also happen to be two of the sport's best writers. Listen in as they catch up for the first time in many years. This is one fascinating conversation you don't want to miss. CREDITS Host: Gideon Haigh Guest: Ramachandra Guga Producer: Kog Ravindran Audio Engineer: Gavin Nebauer This podcast is brought to you in association with the Australia India Institute @ Delhi and founding partners La Trobe University and the University of New South Wales. This podcast is brought to you in association with Asialink Business.

Aadit Kapadia, Sunanda Vashisht and Pramod Kumar Buravalli discuss Ram Guha’s charges of the Modi government being ‘anti-intellectual’, the debate on the ‘hinduization’ of Onam. They also discuss the upcoming UP Elections, the Family feud in SP and the Afghan president’s visit to India.

Sunanda Vashisht, Aadit Kapadia and Pramod Kumar Buravalli discuss NSA talks in Bangkok, California massacre and role of ISIS and Ram Guha whines about anti intellectualism of NDA government