Book review: 'Patriots & Partisans'

Book: Patriots & Partisans
Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 334
Price: Rs699

While reading Ramachandra Guha’s new book Patriots And Partisans, you might find yourself humming a couple of lines from a song from the 1970s: “Clowns to the left of me,/ Jokers to the right,/ Here I am,/ Stuck in the middle with you. “ There are clowns and jokers aplenty in Patriots And Partisans and charming the reader while holding his ground in the middle of Left-wing and Right-wing ideology is Guha.

Guha begins Patriots And Partisans with, “I am a person of moderate views, these sometimes expressed in extreme terms.” Except his version of “extreme” is not a bombastic opinion that makes talking heads bob in a frenzied fashion. Whether he’s attacking Anna Hazare or the culture of subservience in the Congress party, Guha presents a well-wrought argument that is written lucidly and solidly-researched, which makes him perhaps the most measured extremist we’ve got.

This doesn’t mean Guha minces his words. One of the 15 essays in Patriots And Partisans is titled “A Short History of Congress Chamchagiri”. He calls India “the most exasperating country in the world” (and also “the most interesting”). And who can forget this glorious line: “...the distance between Anna Hazare and the Mahatma in terms of moral courage and political understanding is roughly equivalent to the distance, in terms of cricketing ability and understanding, between this writer and Sachin Tendulkar.” But every statement that Guha makes is the result of careful consideration and not one is unfounded.

Guha takes the role of the writer in the current socio-political climate very seriously. “A writer must always be careful in what he says and how he says it,” he wrote in an email interview with DNA. “He must support his ideas with solid research. He must convey his ideas in as clear and logical a manner as is possible within his own limitations. I revise the manuscript of a book five or six times before I allow a publisher to publish it. I print out a draft of every newspaper column and edit and rewrite it closely.”

This rigour is evident in Patriots And Partisans, which is a collection of essays, some of which were published previously and have been “extensively revised and rewritten”. The book is divided into two sections and engaging as the second part (titled “The Word and the World”) may be, Guha is at his best in the essays that analyse India’s modern history.

“Redeeming the Republic”, “A Short History of Congress Chamchagiri”, “The Professor and the Protestor” and “The Beauty of Compromise” are beautifully crafted pieces that balance research and storytelling expertly and are an education to all aspiring non-fiction writers.
Despite being firmly in the centre, when Guha lashes out in disapproval, it’s stinging and a joy to read. Take his unforgiving analysis of Indira Gandhi’s whip-wielding as an example: “Had Indira Gandhi not promoted the notion of the ‘committed’ bureaucrat, we would not have had such a large-scale subversion of the administrative machinery, with every state government assigning departments to civil servants on the basis of caste, ideology, and personal loyalty rather than competence.” He’s as unenamoured by the Maoists and strips their campaigns of the romanticism that is accorded to them by many Left-leaning intellectuals. “The Maoists regularly murdered panchayat members and leaders (including many women),” he points out, “because they saw electoral democracy... as a threat to their vision of a one-party state.”

Guha doesn’t hide his biases — it’s easy to see why he was accused by an indignant Bengali as “Ei shala Jawaharlal Nehru shapotaar” (you ****** Jawaharlal Nehru supporter) — and some might roll their eyes at his optimism. However, it’s heartening to read an analysis of contemporary India that isn’t stifled by everything that’s awry and holds out some hope. It’s also a delight to read a book that can comfortably swing between charming interludes like Guha and his wife’s first kiss (at Premier Bookshop in Bangalore) to the problems that make the Indian Left a frustrating political option.

When asked what is the most difficult part of writing about India, Guha said, “Having merely not one life, not many. It is a privilege to be a historian (or a novelist, or playwright, or film-maker) in India, in this large, diverse, complex country simultaneously undergoing a social, political, economic and cultural revolution.” His plans for his one life include at least three books on Gandhi, a book on rebels against the Raj, an intellectual history of environmentalism, a cricketing memoir and “one or two other books” that he’s still figuring out. “Of course I will not be fit and able to do all of this — and I might die of cardiac arrest tomorrow,” he said. “A writer is permitted his dreams — and fantasies.”

Raise a drink to Guha’s good health, because among the things that Patriots And Partisans manages to do is make you hungry for the stories from India’s history that no one but Guha seems to be interested in recording and telling.