The Best Book On India

India is a contradiction. It should not exist, but it does and it is thriving!

I thought this book would take months to finish. I was wrong. It took days. Ramachandra Guha is a writer that keeps you on the edge. He makes you cancel your dinner parties and lunch dates, postpone your essential activities, and shift your sleeping time. All for what? A history book! India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha.

For a Nigerian, a history book on India! There are many parallels between India and Nigeria. There are a few differences, but the difference makes India India and Nigeria Nigeria. Nigeria and India were supposed to be siblings. Actually, we were! On every negative statistic, such as poverty rate, malaria cases, and polio cases, we come in a queue. Nigeria is either first and India second or India first and Nigeria second. During the last administration, India handed over to Nigeria the baton for being the World Capital of poverty! Cheesy. India is diverse on many grounds, including language, religion, and caste.

At Independence in 1947, India had no chance; even some Indians doubted if it would survive. The only thing that united this vast subcontinent was opposition to British colonialism. The size of India is such that it is three times the size of Europe. Most of its citizens were Hindus, but there were large sizes of other religions. It has a Muslim population of over 200 Million people today (population of Nigeria), over 26 million Christians (population of Cameroon), and it has several other religions. When Independence came, it came with the partition of India into two, India and Pakistan. Pakistan towing the path of an Islamic State, while India insisting it was a secular and plural nation. It was this description that would be tested for the next decades. India was lucky, or was it blessed? It has the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, B.R Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sardar Patel at Independence.

The charisma of these men, the power of their example, the sense of their dignity, incorruptibility, and passion for a free, democratic, and plural India were what made the difference. From here, the parallels between India and Nigeria begin to emerge. In Nigeria, tribal and religious visions won the day, primarily because the founding fathers were not as committed to a national idea as the Indian founding fathers. A popular saying is attributed to one of Nigeria's founding fathers, Obafemi Awolowo. It was reported that he said, "Nigeria is a mere geographic location." Winston Churchill actually uttered that statement, and he wasn't referring to Nigeria; he was referring to India. Ironically, it was in Nigeria that the statement proved to be true than in India. India held on as a democracy and continues today as a democracy. The process has been chaotic, as this book clearly shows, but it has held on. This book chronicles the chaos of Nagaland, the tragedy of beautiful Kashmir, and the agitations in different parts of India for environmental rights, women's rights, Dalits rights, minority rights, and several other rights.

The book pays too much attention to the Nehru family; some have criticized it for that, but if you think about it, there was no other way; the Nehru family has held onto power more than any other family in India. It did some good with it, and it did some bad with it. Nehru tried to foster democracy; it was his daughter, Indira Gandhi, who truncated democracy for the first time during a period Indian historians have named "The Emergency". This single family has invoked their father's name several times, and they've ruined it. The first Indian I met hated Jawaharlal Nehru; I understand better now.

This is a book of flaws and miracles. It is a story of a mess, but a mess that has nurtured some good fruits. India is on the rise today, and especially in technology, it dominates in an "unfair" way. You won't believe that the seeds for this dominance were sowed in the 1950s by the first Prime Minister. Others contributed immensely to adding to this unfair advantage.

As a Nigerian, the ascendance of India to the global scene holds a fascination and a lesson. Of course, all the foundations for respect for democracy, the rule of law, and a united country were important in keeping the nation. What really made it the global nation that it is today, and forced me to read this book, began with market reforms and liberalizations. It was only when India opened its markets to the world and decided to export its products and services to the world that it started making economic progress. Only then did it begin this massive lifting of its people out of poverty. In the 1980s, India's GDP Per capita was around $500, while Nigeria's GDP Per capita was around $2,300. Today, India's GDP Per capita is $2,200, while Nigeria's GDP Per capita is $2,200! India grew while Nigeria stagnated. You know what? Reforms are not a popular thing in Nigerian intellectual circles, and politicians are too populist to even think about it. The few politicians who talk about reforms have been insulted as puppets of the West.

I deeply enjoyed this book. There is so much that I learned, and there is so much that I want to say. India holds many lessons for my country.

The tragedy of Nigeria is that the vast majority of Nigerians do not read their history, not even to say they read the history of other countries. If they did, I would have recommended this book.

This book ends with the government of the BJP and Narendra Modi, who represents the very edge of India's politics. It is a show of how India has gone around from pursuing a plural vision to pursuing a vision of a Hindu India. I have some advice for Indians: look at Pakistan and look at Nigeria. Is that what you want for your country? Seventy years ago, you made the right choice: a secular plural country is far better than any religious country.

If you want to learn about India, this is a place to begin.

And yes, now I want to visit India!