Book Review [70] : Patriots and Partisans

Four years back i wrote a review of 'India after Gandhi' by Ramachandra Guha, a significant and lucid work on the history of Independent India (but definitely not great).

I bought his latest book 'Patriots and Partisans' couple of days back solely on the reputation built by 'India After Gandhi', but reputations are not evergreen, unfortunately. This book is a sheer waste of time and money, in this book Guha appears to be a glorified Chetan Bhagat if not less. I don't know why Mr. Guha's books are so astronomically priced, this has less than 330 pages but its price is 699 Indian Rupee (although i got 50% discount because of a sale), so effectively more than 2 Indian Rupee per page, way too expensive. I have few observations about this book:

1. Why the name of the book is what it is? The title has no relevance with the content.

2. Guha has no answers to some pertinent questions asked by some writers of 'hate' mails in 'Hindutva Hate mail' chapter, and he did not even try to answer them. He should have used the opportunity to silence the hate mongers.

3. The defense of Mr. Nehru in alleged Nehru-Edwina affair is very very weak.

4. He gives disproportionate credit for establishing democratic institutions/nation building  to Nehru but cleverly shares the blame of China debacle with other political leaders and Indian public.

5. He did not write anything about the mismanagement of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in any public forum i.e. media before the publication of this book. The mismanagement started in 2005 but he stayed silent for more than 7 years. It will be not be fair to ignore his audacious criticism of the first family of Indian politics and the creed of Chamchagiri (Sycophancy) in the oldest political party of India.

6. He assumes that all Indian right wing leaders/intellectuals are bigots, insular and parochial. He declares Atal Bihari Vajpayee govt of 1998-2004 as an insular and parochial government. He also declares that Manmohan Singh is more honest than Mr. Vajpayee (he does this in a clever way). And he does so without any proof or substance. 

Overall not a good book by any standard, this book is not even an afternoon shadow of 'India after Gandhi'

Not Recommended (5/10)