Blog - Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha

Blog on Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha

THE WISE DEMOCRAT: B. R. AMBEDKAR

Posted By Penguin Books India on 19/10/2010 11:26 AM

B. R. Ambedkar is remembered today as a great leader of the oppressed castes, who did more than anyone else to give Dalits a sense of dignity and solidarity. His writings on the caste system remain of abiding relevance and interest. So do his meditations on democracy in general. Between 1947 and 1949, Ambedkar was chairman of the drafting committee of the new Constitution of India. On 25^th November 1949, Ambedkar presented the Constitution to a representative Assembly. Here he made an extraordinary speech where he uttered three warnings about the dangers that lay ahead. This, in part, is what Ambedkar said

‘If we wish to maintain democracy not .....

THINKING THROUGH INDIA

Posted By Penguin Books India on 18/10/2010 07:30 PM

My book Makers of Modern India aims to be a capacious repository of our political traditions. It showcases nineteen remarkable thinker-activists, through whose writings one can track and trace the most significant debates on politics and social reform. The first ‘Maker’ profiled in the book is the early 19^th century Bengali liberal Rammohan Roy the last, the late 20^th century Marathi radical Hamid Dalwai. In between Roy and Dalwai come such celebrated figures as Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, and Tagore, but also lesser-known (yet equally fascinating individuals) such as the precocious feminists Tarabai Shinde and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. Each chapter starts with a biographical .....