Ramachandra Guha

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Ramachandra Guha
File:Ramachandra Guha.jpg
Guha in 2010
Born (1958-04-29) 29 April 1958 (age 65)
Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh (now in Uttarakhand)
Residence Bangalore
Alma mater The Doon School
St. Stephen's College
University of Delhi
IIM Calcutta
Employer London School of Economics and Political Science
Notable work India after Gandhi
Spouse(s) Sujata Keshavan

Ramachandra Guha (born 29 April 1958) is an Indian historian and writer whose research interests include environmental, social, political and cricket history. He is also a columnist for The Telegraph and Hindustan Times.[1][2][3] A regular contributor to various academic journals, Guha has also written for The Caravan and Outlook magazines. For the year 2011–2012, he held a visiting position at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs.[4] His newest book is Gandhi Before India (2013), the first part of a planned two-volume biography of M. K. Gandhi. His large body of work, covering a wide range of fields and yielding a number of rational insights has made him a significant figure in Indian historical studies, and Guha was valued as one of the major historians of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries.

Early life and education

Guha was born on 29 April 1958 at Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh (now in Uttarakhand), where his father Ram Das Guha was a director at the Forest Research Institute, and his mother a high school teacher. He was brought up in Uttarakhand.[3][5] Ramachandra Guha studied at The Doon School[6] where he was an editor of The Doon School Weekly.[7] He graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi with a BA in Economics in 1977 and completed a Master's from the Delhi School of Economics.[8] He then enrolled at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, where he did a fellowship programme (equivalent to a PhD) on the social history of forestry in Uttarakhand, focusing on the Chipko movement. It was later published as The Unquiet Woods.

Career

Between 1985 and 2000, he taught at various universities in India, Europe and North America, including the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, Stanford University and at Oslo University (Arne Naess chair, 2008), and later at the Indian Institute of Science. During this period, he was also a fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in Germany (1994–95).

Guha then moved to Bangalore, and began writing full-time. He served as Sundaraja Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 2003. He is managing trustee of the New India Foundation, a nonprofit body that funds research on modern Indian history.

In 2000, Guha penned an essay critiquing an article[9] written by writer and activist Arundhati Roy opposing the Narmada Dam. Roy espoused the cause of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a cause Guha is also a supporter of. However, he questioned her expertise in the relevant field and argued that her activities and writings undermined rather than helped the cause.[10] Roy responded in an interview, saying that Guha was a cricket historian who had missed the boat.[11]

Guha was appointed the Philippe Roman Chair of International Affairs and History at the London School of Economics for 2011–12, succeeding Niall Ferguson.

Books

Guha has authored the chapter The VHP Needs To Hear The Condemnation Of The Hindu Middle Ground in the book Gujarat:The making of a tragedy, which was edited by Siddharth Varadarajan and published by Penguin (ISBN 978-0143029014). The book is about the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Guha is the author of India after Gandhi, published by Macmillan and Ecco in 2007. This book has been translated into Hindi in two volume namely Bharat:Gandhi Ke Baad" and "Bharat: Nehru Ke Baad" and published by Penguin.

In October 2013 he published Gandhi Before India, the first part of a planned two-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi which describes life from his childhood to the two decades in South Africa.[12][13]

Personal life

Guha is married to the graphic designer Sujata Keshavan and has two children.[14]

Awards and recognition

Bibliography

Video and online sources

Speeches

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Interview

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Books

Ramachandra Guha has authored a lot of books ranging across diversified subjects such as Cricket, Environment, Politics, History, etc.[21]

Cricket

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  • An Indian cricket century (Editor, works of Sujit Mukherjee, 2002)

Environment

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Politics and history

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References

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  3. 3.0 3.1 India Together – article by Ramachandra Guha
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  5. http://www.outlookindia.com/article/Who-Milks-This-Cow/282904
  6. Doon School product Seth to turn 60 today
  7. 'History of the Weekly' published by The Doon School (2009) p.36
  8. http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?234958
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  12. http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/en/content/gandhi-india-0
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  14. Business Standard: Lunch with Ramachandra Guha
  15. Foreign Policy: Top 100 Intellectuals
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  21. http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/67629.Ramachandra_Guha

External links