17 Quotes by Ramachandra Guha

India is no longer a constitutional democracy but a populist one.

The Constitution of India recognizes twenty-two languages as ‘official’. The most important of these is Hindi, which in one form or another is spoken by upwards of 400 million people.

An early gesture was to rename Harrington Road after a hero of the world communist movement, so that at the height of the Vietnam War the address of the United States Consulate was 7 Ho Chi Minh Sarani, Calcutta.

A common civil code will help the cause of national integration by removing disparate loyalties to laws which have conflicting ideologies.

In his speeches on Azad Hind Radio, Subhas Bose referred to Gandhi as the ‘Father of the Nation’. This seems to be the first time Gandhi was called this. The usage soon became ubiquitous.

My religion is a conspiracy My prayer meetings are a conspiracy My lying quiet is a conspiracy My attempt to wake up is a conspiracy My desire to have friends is a conspiracy My ignorance, my backwardness, a conspiracy.

My own view – speaking as a historian rather than citizen – is that as long as Pakistan exists there will be Hindu fundamentalists in India. In times of stability, or when the political leadership is firm, they will be marginal or on the defensive. In times of change, or when the political leadership is irresolute, they will be influential and assertive.

So long as the Constitution is not amended beyond recognition, so long as elections are held regularly and fairly and the ethos of secularism broadly prevails, so long as citizens can speak and write in the language of their choosing, so long as there is an integrated market and a moderately efficient civil service and army, and – lest I forget – so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive.