Guha's India after Gandhi..The Law and the Prophets

It is revealing that Nehru found the greatest difficulty since independence in 'Creating a just state by just means' and added 'Perhaps, too, in creating a secular state in a religious country'. Secularism faced fresh set of challenges after partition. One pertained to the domain of personal laws. While there was a common criminal code, there was no attempt to replace personal laws by the colonials.

Author rightly quotes Article 44 of the constitution of India 'The state shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India'. He chronicles the events that eventually, 'After a bruising battle extending over nearly ten years, B. R. Ambedkar's Hindu Code Bill was passed into law; not, as he had hoped in one fell swoop, but in several installments:...'

We can agree with the author. "One can appreciate their (Basically Nehru and Ambedkar, with the support of Rajaji) hesitancy to take on people of faiths other than their own. For it had taken them better part of ten years to 'proceed with the Hindu community in any way they liked', that is in a way that would help bring their personal laws somewhat in line with modern notions of gender justice".

(One can question this act of pragmatism by our leaders and even though we have many things to accomplish, before we are in line with modern nations, it seems to have worked reasonably well for the majority community. I remember my father talking about a person who rushed to his second marriage to beat the law, which would enforce monogamy, by a day. The girl was known to us and her relatives along with my father, rushed to the marriage hall minutes late and were unable to prevent the second marriage. Anyway, his first marriage ended in a divorce and as it turned out the second marriage went bad for the man.

We can sit back and evaluate the extent the laws have helped us become modern in the western eyes, but it is always better if this desire for change came from within and in our own context. While I have not read, as the author puts 'the revealed words of Allah', I fear for humanity if such a large section of us are guided by laws which do not allow for change with changing times and circumstances. The author speaks of liberal muslims in the country at the time of partition. I am sure there are still many and hope can find ways to interpret their laws so that they can be more in tune with the times without loosing the basic values. For instance the punishment of stoning a person to death I saw in the movie 'Kiterunner' was nightmarish. It is not just the muslims I think of, there are numerous example of others who are dogmatic and equally cruel for many reasons, ostensibly as a counter.)

Guha's India after Gandhi...The conquest of Nature.

The author quotes Mahatma Gandhi 'India lives in her villages'. while describing the situation in the 1940's. The Indian agriculture was largely empirical, based on knowledge and traditions passed down over the generations. In short it was very basic, levels of literacy very low. Everywhere, those who worked on the land lived cheek-by -jowl with those who didn't (the service and artisanal castes). Socially caste feelings were very strong.

Rural India was pervaded by an air of timelessness, another word for stagnation to the Indian Nationalist. They resolved that when power came to them, agrarian reform would be at the top of their agenda. It was a three pronged attack, abolition of land revenue, massive expansion of irrigation and the reform of the system of land tenure. They also realised that ''To enter the comity of Nations, India had to be educated, united, out-ward looking and, above all, industrialized'.

Again good to learn that National Planning Committee was formed in 1938. Goals of 'national self-sufficiency' and doubling the standards in ten years were set. The spirit of the times seemed to favour centralized planning. The era of five year plans started with a draft plan in 1951.


(While one can look back and pass judgement on the Five year plans, massive power and irrigation projects, education and research, it is certain that the country needed a kick start to pull it out of its backwardness all across. Whether the plans were too ambitious or focused only on big projects and spread resources thin on essential areas of education can be debated forever. While private industry was still nascent and finding its feet, is seems we had people capable of taking on big projects and establish them. It is another matter how they ran later.

Did we waste a lot of resources due to inexperience, corruption and unionism? I would say yes. I can vouch that the labour output in a private industry I worked was equivalent to about 3 hours of honest work. You could easily guess how it could be in general all over the country. Barring a few, quantity won over quality, in most of the industries.

The chapter begins with a quote from M.Visveswaraya in 1920. It sounds more a wishful thinking on his part as an engineer. He hopes that the Indian people will choose wisely and act. One hopes so too, it is always a work-in-progress, especially the conquest of [Human] Nature.)