If Nehru saw India through its infancy as a republic, it was Indira Gandhi, who, for good or bad, shaped India’s adulthood. And there are few books which capture Indira Gandhi’s personal strengths and frailties, socialization, friendships and beliefs, all of which shaped her political life, better than Katherine Frank’s biography.
Few Indian political scientists have had much of a transformative impact on scholarship as Rajni Kothari. Not only did he set up the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, in Politics in India, Kothari build on his ideas to explain the Congress system and India’s unique model of one-party dominance.
As west Pakistani troops and irregulars stepped up their genocidal campaign in the east in 1971, American consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, wrote a dissent memo against American policy of silence on atrocities and support for Pakistan. In this exceptional book, Gary Bass exposes the dark side of American policy at a time when India stood up and helped what was to become Bangladesh.
Through the mid-1970s, political Delhi was a hotbed of intrigue and conspiracy, as Congress leaders lined up to support Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian turn, and then Janata leaders fought among themselves about who would get what share of the power piece. In these two books on the era, written at the time, journalist Janardan Thakur casts an unsparing eye on the protagonists of the time.
The only formal interruption to Indian democracy saw widespread imprisonment of political activists and the curtailment of fundamental rights. Coomi Kapoor was a young reporter back in 1975. Forty years later, her book reconstructed the dark years of the Emergency, where she combined the personal and political.
