Ep 454: The Ideas of Gandhi

Ramachandra Guha (0:05)

What do you like about reading history? For me, there are two things that fascinate me. One is the inner lives of people. There is nothing as interesting as when a historian manages to make the full humanity of a historical figure visible to us. Their weaknesses, their foibles, their self-doubt, their small sorrows, their big dreams, their torments.

The other kind of history I love is the history of ideas. All of our past is a contestation between different groups of the world and the messiness of that discourse is not always evident in hindsight. India's history is a history of contestation because it is no one idea of India but many.

My guest today is therefore a historian I love for good reason as his work goes into both of these areas. In all the people that he writes about, none more so than Mahatma Gandhi, we see the human condition, we see the cracks where the light gets in. And as you will realize when you read his latest book, there is hardly anyone who can capture the battle of the ideas of India and the ideas in India as well as Ram Guha does. So settle in. This will be a stimulating episode.

Amit Varma (1:11)

Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral science. Please welcome your host, Amit Varma.

Ramachandra Guha (1:25)

Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen. My guest today is Ramachandra Guha, back for the 8th time on the Seen and the Unseen. How lucky are we? Ram's latest book is called Arguments with Gandhi, and the book documents Gandhi's arguments against the likes of Lenin, Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar and Savarkar and many more. There are fascinating sections on nonviolence, justice, religion, caste, gender and the environment. The book also has a chapter on Gandhi's influence on Martin Luther King, which I particularly loved. A lot of it was new to me. So do buy the book, do listen and yes, one more thing. I have a new YouTube show called Watching the Wheels, which I run with Shruti Rajagopalan and Pranay Kotasthane. And three days ago, on October 2nd, we released our 10th episode. This was called The Multitudes of Mahatma Gandhi, in which we took a stab, a rather long stab, at exploring the many sides of Gandhi. It was a labor of love. Do check that out and do also check out our next episode, episode 11 of Watching the Wheels, which releases later this week on Friday, October 9th, in which we argue against Gandhi's views on the economy and the environment, many of which are shared by Ram, and which we briefly discuss at the end of this episode. May the discourse flourish. But for now, listen to this great conversation after a quick commercial break.

Gather around me, friends. I have exciting news for you. I have launched a new YouTube show called Watching the Wheels, in which every week Shruti Rajagopalan, Pranay Kotasthane and I will gather to discuss what is happening in the world around us. What have we been thinking about? What do we want to brainstorm? We'll discuss ideas, share stories, argue furiously and punish each other with bad jokes. It will be fun. It will be fast. It will be fantastic and you are invited. There will be an audio version soon on every podcast strap but our primary home is YouTube. So head on over to complicatedurl.alert. Head on over to youtube.com/atwatchinghyphen the hyphen wheels.

At watching the wheels with hyphens. I'll also link it from the show notes so you can just search for it but remember the name of the show. Watching the Wheels. With Shruti, Pranay and Amit. Where the world unfolds and finally makes sense.

Ram, welcome to the Seen and the Unseen.

Amit Varma (3:38)

Thank you, Amit.

Ramachandra Guha (3:39)

I'm so grateful that you shared your wonderful book with me. We are recording this on August 8th, but your book will be out in October 2nd and no doubt listeners are listening to the episode after that. I got a chance to read it in advance so I'm very privileged. Before I start talking about the book, before we started recording this, we were just chatting about friends we won't name. But there's a thought that struck me that's really disturbed me for a long, long time. Like just yesterday, I recorded an episode for Independence Day, which is about highlights and lowlights.

One of my lowlights there was demonetization, not because of the policy itself, but because what I realized during that time is that, it was defended by people who knew it was wrong. Yes. A whole bunch of them. Some of them were people I admired greatly. I was very almost shattered by that because simultaneously the same thing happened in America. Today for all practical purposes, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party of 20 years ago don't exist. They've been torn apart. The difficult realization that I came to is that many people who you would think believe in principles, only believe in tribalism. Those principles are a uniform they wear.