‘I am not anti-English; I am not anti-British; I am not anti-any government; but I am anti-untruth—anti-humbug and anti-injustice.’
Father of the Nation, Satyagrahi, the Crusader of Truth—no matter how much is written about Gandhi, there is always something new to learn about the man and his many ideas.
Within four years of his return to India from South Africa, Gandhi had become the most famous—as well as the most controversial—person in a subcontinent with a population of over 300 million. This only goes to prove the power of his ideas and the effect of his charisma.
In ‘The Multiple Agendas of Gandhi’, Ramachandra Guha looks at some of Gandhi’s most radical ideas and how he executed them so that they have remained in the psyche of this country to this day. Read on.
The gods themselves bring destruction on women, so is it any wonder you do the same?’
Now, more than ever, it has become imperative that we talk about women’s rights and work towards gender equality. The feminist movement, in fact, took roots in India nearly a century ago, as can be seen from the life and work of Tarabai Shinde.
Tarabai Shinde was obscure in her time, and remains so in ours. But her writing, if not her life, compels our serious attention. Extremely relevant and hard-hitting, her work is indeed one of the most powerful pieces of social criticism ever written by an Indian.
Read on, as Ramachandra Guha sheds light on the inspiring thoughts and writings of the activist in ‘Tarabai Shinde: The Subaltern Feminist’.
Action above thought’—this was Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s core philosophy and how he approached most things in life.
Tilak famously opined that by remaining under the rule of the British, India as a country was leading to its own decline and a general sense of emasculation. He urged the young men of the country to protest with everything they had got, and even go to prison if necessary. This meant hitting another nail in the coffin of the British Empire.
In ‘Bal Gangadhar Tilak: The Militant Nationalist’, Ramachandra Guha brings to us a hitherto unseen side of Tilak through the latter’s writings and actions. Read on.
The striking thing about accounts of modern India is that the men and women who made its history also wrote most authoritatively about it.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale was truly the torchbearer of the ideas that became the foundation of modern India. According to him, shaking off the shackles of social and economic backwardness as well as political subjection was the most important aspect when it came to improving India.
In ‘Gopal Krishna Gokhale: The Liberal Reformer’, Ramachandra Guha tells us about the man who influenced thousands to join the fight for India’s struggle.
For all the talk these days about education for girls and women empowerment, what Jotirao Phule did for the country almost a century ago still remains unmatched.
From starting a school for lower-caste girls to promoting a rationalist outlook honed through education, Phule played a key role in the emancipation of people from the lower castes. His writing not only reflects his drive and determination but also his zeal to bring some real change and see India achieve her complete potential.
Read on as Ramachandra Guha introduces us to yet another radical who became a building block in the foundation of India’s freedom in ‘Jotirao Phule: The Agrarian Radical’.
Syed Ahmad Khan was no ordinary man. His unorthodox upbringing led to his prolific writing in many languages interspersed with radical thoughts.
He gave importance to Western education and promoted the need for communal harmony. Like writings of other Indian thinkers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, his thoughts and ideas continue to remain relevant.
In ‘Syed Ahmad Khan: The Muslim Modernist’, Ramachandra Guha captures the flavour of Khan’s intellectual and political legacy.
Raja Rammohan Roy is well-known for abolishing the regressive practice of Sati, fighting for other social reforms, and founding a new religious order within the Indian society. His contributions to building a liberal mindset are many.
Roy was perhaps the first Indian thinker who engaged with the challenges posed by both colonial rule and Indian conservatism. Roy was a liberal, quite ahead of his times, who fought for the freedom of press and promoted modern education. His writing set the tone for reformers and activists.
‘Rammohan Roy: The First Liberal of India’ by Ramachandra Guha is a glimpse into the thoughts and ideas of Raja Rammohan Roy.
Lights, Camera . . . Inaction
Unwittingly known as Alia Bhatt’s older sister, screenwriter and fame-child Shaheen Bhatt has been a powerhouse of quiet restraint—until now. In a sweeping act of courage, she now invites you into her head.
Shaheen was diagnosed with depression at eighteen, after five years of already living with it. In this emotionally arresting memoir, she reveals the daily experiences and debilitating big picture of one of the most critically misinterpreted mental illnesses in the twenty-first century. Equal parts conundrum and enlightenment, Shaheen takes us through the personal pendulum of understanding and living with depression in her privileged circumstances. With honesty and a profound self-awareness, Shaheen lays claim to her sadness, finding it a home in the universal fabric of the human condition.
In this multi-dimensional, philosophical tell-all, Shaheen acknowledges, accepts and overcomes the peculiarities of this way of being alive. A topic of massive interest to anyone living with mental health disorders, I’ve Never Been (un)Happier stretches out its hand to gently provide solace and solidarity.
‘It is immensely well done. Mr. Mehta has a real gift of exposition and an unusual one. He can give a creditable and a credible account, not only of ideas but of the people who begot them, with illuminating reason why they did so. Each of the philosophers and historians with whom he talked appears as a self-consistent and self-explanatory personality, both intellectually and psychologically . . . Obliged, in spite of his English education, to see this from the outside, Mr. Mehta may have had peculiar and inherent advantages. He has written a very lively and also a very intelligent book which mixes lightness and seriousness in the best proportion. He is perhaps a bit jocose—indeed, in the self-depreciation and understatement of his humour, more British than the British.’
—Observer (London)
In March of 1963, the Right Reverend John Robinson, Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich, wrote an article for the London Observer that appeared under the headline “Our Image of God Must Go.” Soon afterward, a book called Honest to God, by the same Bishop, appeared. The book and the article together touched off one of England’s characteristically furious controversies. It also touched off an inquiry by Ved Mehta—one of The New Yorker’s new generation of writers—into the state of Christian theology in the contemporary world. What resulted was The New Theologian.
For Mr. Mehta, Bishop Robinson turned out to be merely a point of departure; since many of the Bishop’s ideas were popular versions of ideas first developed by the pre-eminent theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann, and Paul Tillich, Mr. Mehta began his investigation by returning directly to their work. He went on to study the work of many other important theologians and clergymen, particularly the so-called Christian radicals, and held conversations with a number of them, including, in addition to Bultmann and Tillich and Robinson, Karl Barth, Eberhard Bethge, David Edwards, William Hamilton, Eric James, D. M. MacKinnon, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Michael Ramsey, Ian Ramsey, Nicolas Stacey, Paul van Buren, and A. R. Vidler. What emerges in The New Theologian is a brilliant report on present-day theology—specifically, on a movement that is sometimes referred to as religionless Christianity but that can also be seen as a movement of troubled but profoundly religious thinkers who are groping toward a reconciliation of Christian faith with the main secular intellectual currents of our age. Mr. Mehta presents not only the ideas of this extraordinary group of men but also, in stunning portraits, the men themselves.
Ved Mehta was born in India and educated in the United States and England. In the few years since he joined the staff of The New Yorker, he has established himself as one of the magazine’s most imposing figures. He combines the literary exuberance of the true writer with the intellectual rigor of the true scholar. His style is marked by wit and sweep and fire. In an earlier book, Fly and the Fly-Bottle, he brought these powers to bear on the minds and personalities of many of England’s leading historians and Oxford philosophers. In his present book, as he takes up the theologians, he distinguishes himself once more.
